User talk:Mjb

[edit] Archives

• September 2002 – June 2006 – Topics: Welcome · White Rabbit (song) · Calvin and Hobbes · Remainder and Modulo Operation · Other stuff · Up to · Scheerer's phenomenon · PITA · XML · HTML · Klaus Schulze and techno · Character encoding · Your comment? · EBCDIC · Ellipsis comment · Talk:LSD · Han unification · It should be noted that · Wal-Mart · Wal-Mart criticism split · Odd character display · Dear divbox user · IDM · ISO 8859 and Unicode · Unicode related articles · cleaning · Special characters at Latin-1 · Percent encoding · xml links by 81.68.98.163 · Featured article review · Re: Lil Louis · Dayton NPOV edit · Joel Stein Edit · Page name for temperature articles · IDM as "Intellectual Dance Music" · Persian Jews · South Park City · www.asciilist.com on ASCII · Re: Template:Main · Apologies · Your comment at Club Music · Roller Derby · User:Brian G. Wilson · AMBER Alerts · My recent edits
• July 2006 – December 2007 – Topics: Apology · Wikipedian Rollergirls · Electronic dance music · Your note · Fairly worthless awards? · IDM · a user conduct RFC · Northern Soul and ABC · Trafford publications · Join us in the "Terminator" Article discussion page...please... · Thanks · Apizza! · Uniform Resource Identifier · XML intro · HTML WG edits · Flashback (band) · John Bedini article · Professional v. Amateur, take 27 · Acid house · Trivia and WP:FIVE. · Category:Roller derby · User talk:64.38.167.66 · Please be nice to the newbies · Harvest Records · Acid house · Minnesota RollerGirls · Character set tables · Roller Derby and Its History · de:User talk:Raymond

[edit] Roller Derby

I was unaware of the previous discussion. But I must ask you, with all the fluff in that piece, why pick on this one thing? Croce is probably better remembered than "Episode 27 of The Untouchables", for example. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 04:27, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Well yeah, I would rather include it all, as we did previously, since that appeases the monthly stream of contributors who want to add one tidbit or another. But someone got a bee up their butt about excessive "trivia" and tried to kill the whole section, so the compromise was to remove all the music info, under the theory it was likely to keep growing, whereas the other info was pretty stable. Apparently that person hasn't visited any of the articles about popular TV shows or any number of other pop culture topics, and decided to pick on the roller derby article that day. Also I feel it should all be included because who are we to assume a researcher will not find the info of value?

If you wouldn't mind, could you add a note of support to Talk:Roller derby#Roller derby songs again? Maybe point out that the length of the article is not so much of an issue anymore, since we've spun off the history section into its own article. —mjb (talk) 04:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

It was ignored. Well, I tried, anyway. :( Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 04:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't get discouraged! The talk page isn't visited much, the conversation isn't really highlighted, and we haven't directly solicited input from the guy who tried to axe the pop culture section, nor from any of the article's curators (which besides myself is like 2 other people).

It's actually better this way. It'll take some time, but eventually we'll get some other interested folks to weigh in...hopefully in favor of restoring and retaining all the info. The idea is to gather some votes/opinions, and in the meantime, demonstrate through its stability and longevity that the article isn't suffering, and may in fact be benefiting, from having a "roller derby in pop culture" section.

I look at it like this: the longer the article stays in roughly its present state without anyone else coming along and trying to prune it (or further tag it for review), then the more persuasive our argument that there's no harm, and there is potential benefit, in keeping track of all the roller derby in pop culture "trivia". Folks who keep coming in and attempting to undo the deletions just makes for a stronger case for us.

Also, this is a battle that's raging in earnest in other places on Wikipedia: WP:IPC and its discussion page; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trivia and Popular Culture/Discussion; Template talk:Trivia; Wikipedia talk:Trivia sections; probably elsewhere... I have a feeling the lack of consensus on these issues can be part of our defense. Just be patient :) —mjb (talk) 08:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Afro Cosmic

Hi. If you weren't already aware, I just wanted to let you know that there's already an article about this at Cosmic Disco.P4k (talk) 00:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't! And now I'm wondering how I missed it. Thanks. I'll tag both for a merge. —mjb (talk) 02:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Techno

Hi Mike, I just wanted to tease out this paragraph if possible

Though initially conceived as party music that was played on daily mixed radio programs and played at high school club parties in Detroit, techno has grown to be a global phenomenon. High school clubs such as Snobbs, Hardwear, Brats, Comrades, Weekends, Rumours, and Shari Vari created the incubator in which techno was grown. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local dance music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs and their music. As these local clubs grew in popularity, groups of DJs began to band together and market their mixing skills and sound systems to the clubs in order to cater to the growing audiences of listeners. Locations like local church activity centers, vacant warehouses, offices and YMCA auditoriums were the early locations where the underage crowds gathered, and where the musical form was nurtured and defined.[citation needed]

I'm just wondering about the chronology here, what period are we talking about?

Also, there is an interview with Atkins that I have started pillaging to support other claims which you might want to look at here if you haven't already, because it also clears up the May/909/House incident, he sold it, it wasn't a loan, there is another interview elsewhere that supports this, where Atkins says it was Fowlkes who broke the news that Derek has "sold the sound" to Chicago. Also, the question of Techno City, wasn't that technically an electro tune? Isn't No Ufo's really the tune that broke Techno as "a sound", it basically fused electro/disco/synth pop (perhaps even dub, with its use of delay lines), and in so doing made a clear break from each of the preceding genres? Atkins also says he "used the term techno to describe earlier bands that made heavy use of synthesizers such as Kraftwerk, although many people would consider Kraftwerk's music and Juan's early music in Cybotron as Electro. Techno is considered today as a specific genre." that's from his myspace blurb.

Cheers. Semitransgenic (talk) 16:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I've responded on your talk page. Thanks! —mjb (talk) 20:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to give a detailed reply, I agree with much of what you say, from what I can see a genuine musicological analysis has never really been done, this is a problem in terms of establishing facts. It would take countless interviews, then an effort to try and reach consensus agreements - regarding a chronology that relates to what influenced what, the records, artists, etc. I think it could be done, but it's a huge task, plus most of these guys are kinda celebs now so pinning them down with their record collections would be problematic, to say the least. What surprises me is the increase in academic inquiry regarding so called "vernacular" electronic music, in the last 5-8 years, yet I keep coming across stuff that is precisely what you say, "folklore", but no one seems eager to tackle this. There are a few good academic items out there, I just have not had a chance to dig into any of it, but it would really help if something more "authoritative" could be used to underpin the information presented in the article. A lot of the webpage links are very poor and should maybe be removed, plus the books listed are not being exploited to the extent they could be (i.e. quotations etc. as you have pointed out). Most of what I added really just reflects personal knowledge, it serves only to flesh things out a bit, relative to what was there previously, I would like to eventually elaborate on this using suitable source material.

I tried to circumvent the earliest example debate by pushing back to Raymond Scott's work. Though why not go back to Russolo if it's futurism we are discussing? then again try dancing to it : )

The stuff from Juan's myspace page I took to be his words, as far as I'm aware he operates the page personally but I could be wrong about that, you might have a better idea.

Thanks for your feedback, best Semitransgenic (talk) 21:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, thanks for understanding. Oh, for quite a while the article did mention Russolo. When I rewrote the article in July 2002, I mentioned him in what I now admit was a rather unencyclopedic 'musicology' section (which has since evolved into the not-much-better 'production techniques and technology' section). The Russolo bit was removed in August 2007. —mjb (talk) 23:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of Roller Derby Leagues

I think I'm just going to leave that page alone, and let you and others work on it. Take my comments as you will. Something to be careful of, is some folks on here really throw a fit if you claim ownership of an article or a page, so you may want to leave out your hopes for the article and what the article means to you, because that kind of goes against wiki-speak. Here's an example of how to convert what you're saying into wiki-speak: Convert "I do think of the list as documenting the sport's growth throughout its history..." to "The list makes most sense chronologically, by documenting the sport's growth througout its history..." This makes it so people can't acuse you of trying to own an article.

Keep up the good work on roller derby information on here. Fredsmith2 (talk) 02:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] citation

Hello, no punk was racist or nationalist : it was not at all the state of mind of that group. everyone should know that by now. Siouxsie explained it in a recent interview for "Tracks" on "Arte" channel. She used the swastika to shock the oldest generation as there was a huge gap between generations in Britain in the mid-70's. Most of these punks were naive, they left school to early : most of them started to read books after 1976. So, that it was to shock the bourgeois, and certainly it was not a national front statement. Carliertwo (talk) 15:54 21 march 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 15:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I realize that — at least, I share the plausible and prevailing belief that Nazi fashion in punk, and Siouxsie's fashion choices in particular, existed for shock value. But for purposes of an encyclopedia, we can't just state it like it's fact, with nothing to back it up; this isn't like a fan site. Pointing to interviews where she explained it makes a world of difference. I did some digging and found on the official Arte site a page that mentions the episode in which she's interviewed: here. It doesn't actually have the interview in it, though; they do have some interview transcripts archived, but not hers yet. I went ahead and added the reference to the article, taking you at your word about what she says in it. Thanks. —mjb (talk) 23:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

mjb: Thanks alot. Wikipedia just makes more sense now because of people like yourself and the others. I learned alot, and appreciate your help immensely. I will get my message out, but not here. So... thanks again! Have a great one man...
Randomblink (talk) 14:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)