Talk:Helmet (band)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Alternative music Portal This article is part of the Alternative music WikiProject, a group of Wikipedians interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage of articles relating to Alternative rock. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the Project's importance scale.

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by WikiProject Musicians, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed biographical guide to musicians and musical groups on Wikipedia.

Contents 1 Born Annoying/Discography 2 According to Stanier himself... 3 According to Mengede's ... ? 4 Album sales figures 5 Not enough talk about genre listing 6 Born Annoying in the discography 7 Live Recordings

[edit] Born Annoying/Discography

Everything in the discography is a full-length album except "Born Annoying." Since there were several singles and an EP released with that title, it belongs in a (currently nonexistent) singles/EPs section of the discog, not in with the LPs. El Mariachi 02:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Also the albums in the discography should be listed in chronological order (ie. starting with the oldest and ending with the most recent, and not the reverse). --IronChris 17:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] According to Stanier himself...

The general impression I've gotten from reading/hearing interviews with John Stanier is that he really, really doesn't like talking about Helmet's breakup or anything concerning Page Hamilton since that time (if you can't say anything nice, ... ). I've never seen any interview of any sort with Bogdan, so it's hard to know what he thinks. Hamilton, on the other hand, has been pretty open about his perspective of how the shit has gone down. What I've gleamed from Hamilton is that Bogdan has absolutely no musical interest in doing anything Helmet-related ever again. Whether he has any personal issues with Hamilton or if he approves of Helmet existing in his absence, I don't know. Stanier obviously does have personal issues with Hamilton. Page claims John has totally snubbed him. So it seems that the "truth" is probably somewhere in the middle—if Stanier had any interest in knowing what was going on with Helmet reforming, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to find out. I don't think he gives much of a damn what Page does, so while it might be true that Helmet was reformed without his knowledge or "permission", it seems kind of irrelevant and misleading. With that in mind, I'm going to delete that parenthetical statement from the article and change the wording such that it's a little more clear that, rather than a clear offer and refusal to reform, the members simply didn't communicate out of spite. Which pretty much ruled out any chance for a reformation with the original members, anyway.—Lazytiger 19:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] According to Mengede's ... ?

The line in the "early years" section about whether it was Peter Mengede's wife/girlfriend/sister who suggested the name Helmet is up in the air. I read initially on bornannoying.com that it was his wife, so I put that in the article but then someone later changed it to sister. Then I saw the YouTube video on myspace.com/helmetny where Page is being interviewed and he mentioned it. The words "sister" and "girlfriend" were uttered, but not "wife". Maybe it was a then-girlfriend, but later-wife. I dunno. Now someone changed it back to wife. I'm leaving it alone because I simply don't know. If anyone does know for sure who it is, leave a message here with your source/reasoning. Thanks.—Lazytiger 04:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This is from a 1991 interview with Page Hamilton in Flipside #79:

Interviewer: I think it's a really powerful name without being too corny at the same time. That's kinda rare these days.

Hamilton: It's a little more indicative of what we do, more so than Poly Orchids. We were just sitting there eating, Peter's sister was here from Australia. We were sitting with another friend of ours... Our friend said "You should call the band 'Helmut'!"

After watching the YouTube video, now I understand. Page and Mengede were at lunch with both Mengede's sister and his girlfriend, and Mengede's girlfriend is the one who suggested Helmut. They might have later gotten married, but if she was his girlfriend at the time, then I suppose it should say "girlfriend" in the article.

By the way, according to that same interview, it wasn't specifically after Helmut Kohl, that was just a connection Page made because he'd gone to school in Germany when Kohl was Chancellor. Druff 18:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for clearing that up. Another thing—the next sentence says that Hamilton didn't care for the idea. What's the basis for that statement? It sounds like he thought the idea was just fine. Is this perhaps just referring to the spelling? If so, that could be made more clear. Maybe: "While Hamilton didn't care for the Germanic spelling, the Anglicized "Helmet" was quickly embraced." Or something like that.—Lazytiger 19:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess we're seeing one situation in two different ways. Since Page didn't name the band Helmut, in my view that in and of itself means that he didn't like the idea of naming the band Helmut. Whereas apparently in your view, Page naming the band Helmet means that he did like the idea of Helmut. To me it's a difference between a noun and a proper noun, to you it's a difference between a U and E. Druff 23:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, I never even thought of it that way. And of course, I don't know how Page thought of it. Either way, one led to the other. As long as that's made clear, I'm not going to make a fuss about the details. You can fine-tune the blurb if you want.—Lazytiger 00:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Album sales figures

Could whoever added the sales figures for Betty and Aftertaste please cite their source(s)? Thanks.—Lazytiger 14:21, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not enough talk about genre listing

I've heard Helmet listed as everything from nu-metal, to groove metal, to funk metal, to pop-punk. I personally find the idea that they could be categorized as metal slightly laughable, since what I have heard from them generally doesn't include any sort of technicallity. I personally would class them as pop-punk, even though they generally have dirty heavier songs, because their style is remeniscent of sum 41 and some of their songs do sound an awful lot like a nice pop-punk tune. Also, from what I've heard there is a lot of power chord usage going on here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.191.85.153 (talk) 16:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Born Annoying in the discography

Thank you for your contributions, Chris77xyz. I don't mean to be adversarial, but Born Annoying has been added and removed previously from the list. As explained below the list, Helmet has many oddity releases, most of which are out-of-print (including Born Annoying), and none of which really deserve more attention than the others. So, it's all or nothing as far as oddities go. Trying to create a comprehensive list of these releases in the Wikipedia article is redundant since more than one fan website already has such lists. They are mentioned in the links section. The fact that Born Annoying has an article I think warrants its mention, but it still shouldn't be in the list of "real" still available releases.—Lazytiger 23:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Live Recordings

I'm really not sure that a list of live recordings is appropriate on Wikipedia. Unless anyone can provide a reason why they should be here I'll remove them in the following days. hellboy (talk) 05:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. It is a level of information that—beyond being hard to verify—simply isn't warranted here.—Lazytiger (Talk | contribs) 13:12, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Henrikbauer, I appreciate your enthusiasm and effort in compiling your list of live Helmet recordings. You should understand, however, that Wikipedia is not a good place for this esoteric level of information. This would be great material to include on a personally-run Helmet fan site. In fact, I encourage you to do that. I have a feeling your contributions here will continue to be removed.—Lazytiger (Talk | contribs) 17:02, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as I see it, the list of live recordings violates WP:INDISCRIMINATE in particular section 4 which reads Statistics. Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. I'd suggest it probably also violates WP:NOT#LINK and WP:NOT#DIRECTORY. I agree completely with Lazytiger, a fan site, not Wikipedia is the ideal place for this kind of information. hellboy (talk) 01:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmet_Live_Recordings if you keep bitchin now, go kill yourselves.

Thanks for your kinds word hellboy (talk) 12:52, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I've done some further research into the issue, and according to the notability guidelines for Music Album WP:MUSIC "Demos, mixtapes, bootlegs, promo-only, and unreleased albums are in general not notable; however, they may be notable if they have significant independent coverage in reliable sources.". I can't see anything in the way of significant indepenant coverage (not do I think it's likely we will) so I'm going to mark any bootleg related articles for deletion on these grounds. hellboy (talk) 03:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Ladies+Gentlemen, this thing is just gettin on my nerves. I can also post that whole info on my own private website where no one sees it and no one else can add stuff to it. I can make links to my website then for the sake of linking to something, haha. I want to turn helmet@wikipedia into the most extensive place for helmet info, and you guys are working on the opposite. lets keep it clean, free of content, and boring. what you guys are doing is poison to the wikipedia idea. -Henrikbauer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henrikbauer (talk • contribs) 04:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand that it is desirable to place information on Wikipedia since it's much higher profile than a personally-run fan site. But Wikipedia is not, cannot, should not be all things to all people. Some things, no matter how dear to oneself, simply don't make the cut. However, at least one of your concerns can be easily solved—if you want other people to be able to contribute information, simply use the MediaWiki software on your fan site. Buy yourself a domain such as helmetwiki.org and you'll be well on your way to creating "the most extensive place for helmet info." If the information therein is worthy of attention, it will become a resource that is sought and found. We are obviously at odds about what constitutes "poisoning" Wikipedia. I believe you're poisoning it by contributing excessive content that doesn't help general understanding of the topic at hand.—Lazytiger (Talk | contribs) 04:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Please take a good read a What Wikipedia is not before making judgements about what you feel should and shouldn't be on this site. Despite what you may think should be included in this site, if it goes against Wikipedia policy, then you're fighting a losing battle. There are clear guidelines as to what should be included on this website, and so far you have shown nothing but disrespect for these, in fact I question if you've even bothered to read them at all. hellboy (talk) 06:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)