Talk:Imaginos/Archives/2015

Albert Bouchard

Braka (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)This a devilishly confusing record, but pretty obviously was meant to be an Albert Bouchard solo album, compressing Sandy Pearlman's 3-LP 'Imaginos' concept into a single CD/LP. Numerous reasons are given for the bewildering cavalcade of musicians present on the final product, but they seem mainly to revolve around Columbia/CBS's refusal to release a Bouchard solo album, and Bouchard/BOC's refusal to work with each other.

Nevertheless, the current entry states that the album was released by BOC 'without Bouchard's involvement', when the liner notes state he contributes 'guitar, percussion and vocals', and he is conspicuously the main musical writer.

I know A. Bouchard's drumming (and have in fact been in contact with him from time to time), and there is no way that the drums on this album are played by him. There is nothing of his subtle, virtuoustic, subtle skins-work - however he was always a guitarist for BOC, and the guitar part is plausible (although there are about 10 guitarists cited in the credits).

Can we emphatically say that Albert Bouchard does not appear on what was, after all, supposed to be an Albert Bouchard album?

Braka (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't know about that, but Al *did* do his own demo of the project and, as you might imaginos, it eventually found it's way to the Internet. Google 42bece8d4590d887ead813849560c9bf3a7b99f2.

99.74.74.182 (talk) 16:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Imaginos/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dementia13 (talk · contribs) 00:04, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

My initial impression is the same as what the peer reviewer said: this needs a copy edit. I'll check your citations as I do that, but be warned that the sentence-by-sentence workover this needs is going to take a couple of days. I'm likely to find things that need attention as I go through the review, but at first glance it appears that the material is comprehensive and well-supported by references, so this should not be a difficult article to pass. One thing that makes me groan: I suspect that the critics who call this "the heaviest BOC album" have never heard anything prior to Agents of Fortune. If you can balance that opinion with any more citations to the contrary (like the Metal Archives reference), it would put my conscience a little more at ease :) As a subject for a Wikipedia article, this is probably their most interesting album, and while I've so far only given it a quick skim, it appears that you've done a good job with it. Dementia13 (talk) 00:04, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for picking up the job of reviewing this article. I tried to do my best to clean up the script using the best English that I can muster, but a copy edit is very welcome. About Imaginos being the heaviest album of BÖC I agree with you, but I can't find reviews which give a comparison for the music of this album, with the exception of the feeble The Revolution by Night and Club Ninja. I'll keep on searching... Lewismaster (talk) 13:47, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Does the Kerrang! #206 that you cited have anything to say on the subject? Anyway, that won't affect the outcome here, it's just that I get the sneaky feeling of perpetuating some kind of untruth. After double-checking against the GA criteria, the article meets all of them (assuming that your references don't turn out to be bogus :) ), except in some places for the quality of the writing. I see that as the result of having a lot of referenced material that's worded just a little too closely to the original source, instead of synthesized into a new article Please keep an eye on the page and alert me if my editing changes the meaning of anything; sometimes it's unclear what's trying to be said. Dementia13 (talk) 21:37, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Don Kaye in the Kerrang! #206 article just raves about the album comparing it to Secret Treaties, while the rest is in an interview with Pearlman and Bloom, which I abundantly used as source. I slightly changed the phrasing about the heaviness of the album and it may be more accettable. Lewismaster (talk) 06:31, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Some writing advice: resist your tendency to begin sentences with phrases such as "In 1987," "However," and other such phrases that delay getting to the point of the sentence. If the sentence has a real kick-ass point, it might be effective to build up to it gradually, but if you overuse that, it makes the reader feel like a yo-yo being jerked around on a string. "We're going here - wait, no, we're going here- no, we're going here...". Just dive in.

Enough of that. The article meets GA criteria, but the "Reviews/Reception" section has a small pair of problems that need to be fixed before I can pass it:

On the contrary, Martin Popoff, author of a Blue Öyster Cult biography, "dismiss it as somewhat of a sell-out".

That "dismiss" doesn't fit, gramatically. Either it's misquoted, or the source had a grammar error. If the latter is the case, it needs a [sic] after "dismiss". If the former is the case, recast the quote. "Dismiss" implies that the sentence either starts with the word "I" or is talking about the opinion of a group of people who may or may not include Popoff, so it needs to be clear from whose perspective that quote comes. You may need to provide more of the original quote to make that work.

Fixed. I wrote an incomplete quote. Lewismaster (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

If Wikipedians are sticklers about providing citations, they're downright militant when it comes to quotes. Every quote must be followed by a citation, or someone will come along and tag, or even delist, your article. The last paragraph has two sentences whose quotes are not followed by citations:

The reviews posted by Blue Öyster Cult's fans and by buyers of the album on the customer review site Epinions[126] and on the online collaborative metadata database Rate Your Music[127] are in general quite positive, praising Imaginos as a "creative masterpiece", but underlining that the work is not a group effort but "the brainchild of Bouchard and Pearlman".'

Fixed. I copied the exact quotes and provided reference. Lewismaster (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

The few negative customer reviews lament mainly the fragmented and "dodgy 80's production" which makes Imaginos "a very messy and confusing concept album".

Fixed. I copied the exact quotes and provided reference. Lewismaster (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Each sentence has two quotes. If those quotes appear on the same page of the original site, you can use a single citation at the end of the sentence; otherwise, you need a separate citation for each quote. You need to do this even if these are covered by the citation that appears directly before. Dementia13 (talk) 16:13, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your great copy edit. If there are other fixes that you think should be applied to the article, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll be waiting your final judgement. Lewismaster (talk) 22:05, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks good, and I won't bore by naming the GA criteria, but it meets them all. Funny how such an obscure album, by a band seven years past their last commercial and creative peak, would have such an interesting history, but it seems that BÖC was actually put together for the purpose of eventually recording this album, and Imaginos' history is the band's history. Amazing, and good work on a subject that deserved this kind of treatment. Pass. Dementia13 (talk) 22:23, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for my third GA article. I think that the story of this album deserved to be told properly, to correct many contradictory and poorly sourced reviews that I found while I was doing my research for the article. And now to the next... Lewismaster (talk) 08:36, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

About sources

The Musicians' Olympus website is a copyrighted reference site administred by Miguel Terol. The same info can be obtained from the LP sleeves of the cited musicians, so I changed the refernces accordingly. Raffaella Berry, whose blog is used as source for criticism of the album, is a frequent collaborator of professional prog music websites as Prog-sphere, Power of Prog and DPRP. She is not connected to BÖC or Columbia records and I think that she can be considered a reliable author in expressing her opinion on the album. Regarding the opinions expressed in Prog Archives and The Bodisatthva Beat websites, they should be considered fans reviews, so I changed the sentence to accomodate them. Finally, the Prog Archives review has been eliminated from the Critical Reception section. Lewismaster (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I felt that Prog Archives and Metal Archives were both valid fan review sources. Dementia13 (talk) 01:06, 12 June 2012 (UTC)