User talk:Explorer1302

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May 2019

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Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 20:59, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Release dates

Hi, I saw your edits to the singles release dates for Vienna... I'm not going to change them and start an edit war until I can get some better sources because an RS is better than nothing, but they are unquestionably wrong, at least for "Vienna" and "All Stood Still", even if you have found a source for these dates - the source is definitely wrong then. This is because with the chart collection system used at the time by BMRB it would have been literally impossible to have a charting date less than 15 days after the release date. Sorry if I sound stubborn and arrogant for contradicting a reliable source, but this is absolutely 100% a fact. Richard3120 (talk) 09:40, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your message, Richard (you're not Richard Peat by any chance?).

My name is Rodney Meiklejohn and I'm in Dunedin, New Zealand. I started what ended up being a very lengthy research project back in January as the 40th anniversary of Ultravox's 'One Small Day' single was about to occur and I'd always been aware that the release dates given with 'The Collection' singles compilation were incorrect, all except for the 'Love's Great Adventure' single, which was released just three weeks before 'The Collection', so you'd expect that to at least be correct.

I referred to on-line scans available of the various music magazines and newspapers from the time (such as 'Record Business', 'Music & Video Week', 'Record Mirror', etc ...) and there was consistency between the release date of the albums and singles, the publication of the press advertisements and the official UK chart entry dates. With the exception of the first single on Chrysalis, 'Sleepwalk' (and possibly the second single, 'Passing Strangers', due to conflicting release information, which I can explain) all entered the UK chart on the Saturday of the week after the Friday release date (for example, the 'Visions In Blue' single was released on Friday, 11th March 1983 and is recorded as entering the official UK singles chart on Saturday, 19th March 1983). I made the mistake of submitting all of this to the 'Discogs' website and having to verify my findings against all sorts of disagreements, even the likes of "singles were never released on Fridays". I can provide you with evidence of what I've collated, which is probably best provided via website links, but it is rather long-winded. I also went on to research the Talk Talk and A Flock Of Seagulls discographies and found the exact same continuity between the published release dates, the press advertisments and the chart entry dates. I appreciate this contradicts your statement regarding the time period between release dates and chart entry dates, but the continuity of this evidence is quite conclusive, not only with Ultravox's Chrysalis releases, but also with other artists on other labels (Talk Talk on EMI and A Flock Of Seagulls on Jive, for example).

I'm aware that release dates published by these magazines and newspapers may not necessarily be accurate, but given that they would have been provided by the record labels or the artists' management, they can't all be wrong, and as I've suggested, these were cross referenced with the appearance of the press advertisements for the singles and albums and the official UK chart entry dates.

If you'd like to discuss this further, and you're comfortable with this suggestion, it might be easier to do so via e-mail, as I'll be able to provide you with reference links to verify my research.

Thanks again for your feedback, Richard.

Kind regards,

Rodney Meiklejohn. Explorer1302 (talk) 10:20, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rodney, thanks for your reply, and for not being offended at my belligerent stance! First of all, I am not Richard Peat, whoever he may be! So, I do not doubt in the slightest that you are faithfully reproducing dates that you have found in reliable sources, and you are correct in that the majority of release dates in the UK up until around 1984 were on a Friday. What baffles me is that it would mean that some of these singles, including "Vienna" and "All Stood Still", would have only been on sale for one day before the data was collected for that week's chart – the following week ending date of Saturday implies on first glance that the record had been on sale for a week by that point, but in fact the chart was ready by Tuesday morning of that week and announced on BBC Radio 1's lunchtime show. It had been compiled over the previous weekend from sales data diaries picked up from the record stores during Saturday, hence my statement that the single would have only been on sale for one day.

I've been doing some research and it's clearly true that the really big acts in the UK at the time, like the Jam and the Police, were able to chart highly after one day of sales – the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me" was released on 19 September 1980 and went straight in at no. 1 the following week, which means it must have sold more in one day than any other single managed with an entire week's worth of sales, which is an impressive feat. So I am going to have to walk back what I said above, but it still doesn't explain some of the anomalies between records charting after one week, and records that charted after a fortnight – I'm still puzzled by that. Richard3120 (talk) 18:05, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No worries at all, Richard! I try to be quite considerate of other points of view, as we're learning all the time, even if we don't think it's of any use to us! Unfortunately, the internet is far too full of bitter, angry people. If you casually check out any social media topics, there are 'keyboard warriors' having a go at each other within a couple of sentences. Is it any wonder humans have been waging wars across the planet for thousands of years?

'Richard Peat' is a chap I corresponded with five years ago, mostly about Messengers (Danny Mitchell & Colin King), who, as you may be aware, provided live support to Ultravox during their tours. Richard is a big fan of Visage as well, so we exchanged quite a bit of information. I just thought it would've been humorously coincidental if you were actually him!

The Chrysalis Records releases changed from Fridays to Mondays sometime during 1985. All of the Ultravox singles and albums had Friday release dates up to and including 'The Collection' (2 November 1984). Midge's Ure's first solo album, 'The Gift', and its related singles, had Monday release dates, as did the Ultravox 'U-Vox' album and related singles during 1986-1987.

Yes, I certainly concur that the official UK chart composition is something of a mystery! I can't say that I've invested much time studying the process, as I've just accepted the results as published. With Ultravox being a fairly high profile band throughout the early eighties, I've just assumed that's how it worked ... the singles and albums were released on a Friday, and the following Saturday they entered the chart. Would it really be from just one day of sales though? Perhaps it is, although that doesn't seem to make sense, as how would these 'immediate' chart entrants weigh-up against an album or single that had been released at least two weeks prior to chart entry, as you've suggested? But, it's not just the highly popular artists. From my research into my favourite artists, the majority have this one-week chart entry period, although not necessarily with every release. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark is another example. Their 'Messages' single, which was only their third at the time (or fifth, if you count the three releases of 'Electricity'), entered the chart over the same one-week duration. However, I have read comments on-line on other discography sites suggesting that the previous Friday prior to the Saturday chart entry is the latest possible release date that can occur for chart entry. That's another reason why 'The Collection' release dates are certainly incorrect ... 'Passing Strangers' has a release date printed of (Wednesday) 15 October 1980, with a chart entry date of (Saturday) 18 October 1980. I don't think so! Similarly, the 'Vienna' single has a release date of (Thursday) 15 January 1981, with a chart entry date of (Saturday) 17 January 1981, and so on ... So, that's why I essentially ignored everything on the internet and started researching from scratch, primarily to avoid all of the misinformation that's spread everywhere.

I wish you well with uncovering anything further on this subject matter, Richard. Thank you again for your contact.

All the best ...

Rodney. Explorer1302 (talk) 10:11, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't agree with you more – I have no social media apart from Instagram to see my friends' photos... I have absolutely no interest in Twitter/X or anything like that, and wasting my time arguing with people on the internet who I've never met. I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong, and I've learnt something here which helps me with my own research, so it's a positive experience all round.

Yes, it would have been only one day of sales, because of the way the UK chart was compiled at the time, which was manually and with no computers. From 1969 to 1983, the chart was compiled by the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB). Sales were entered manually into "diaries" and these were then picked up and delivered by courier to the BMRB, where they would compile the chart. The thing with the Saturday chart entry date is that this is a week ENDING date – in fact the new chart was first announced on BBC Radio 1 on the lunchtime show the previous Tuesday, as any British person in their 50s and 60s will well remember. You can see this confirmed in a BBC article here. And the relevant issue of Music Week didn't go on sale on that Saturday, but was usually available by the Wednesday, with the new chart printed in it.

So the basic timetable of events was as follows – I'll use the 1st of the month for the Friday, because it makes it easier to count how many days have passed:

Friday 1st – record released
Saturday 2nd – weekly sales diaries collected from record shops and delivered to BMRB
Saturday 2nd to Monday 4th – charts compiled over the weekend at BMRB
Tuesday 5th – charts released and Radio 1 announces the new chart at lunchtime
Wednesday 6th – publication of Music Week containing the charts, dated w/e Saturday 9th
Saturday 9th – earliest possible charting date for a record released on the 1st
Sunday 10th – chart played on Top 40 show on Radio 1

So you can see that it really was only one day, possibly two days, of sales that would have counted towards the following week's chart. But of course Friday and Saturday were the busiest days in record stores, so there was a reason to release records on a Friday and maximise the hype for a new release and get people going out to buy it. But this single day of sales is why I found it so hard to believe that a record could chart purely on that one day, and why I consider two weeks much more likely. However, it does explain why it was rare at the time for singles to enter the chart inside the top 20, and usually took two or three weeks to climb up the chart. The big exception at the time were the Jam – three of their four chart-topping singles entered the chart at no. 1. But they were also one of the first bands to move their release schedules to a Monday, as they realised that they had such a devoted fanbase, their fans would buy the new single as soon as it came out, they wouldn't wait until Friday.

In January 1983, Gallup took over the chart compilation and changed from a manual sales entry system to one that electronically registered it at the point of sale. This not only meant that the sale was instantly registered at Gallup, it also improved the accuracy of the chart (the workers in record stores often forgot to record sales in the diary) and reduced the possibilities of chart fixing. The chart compilation time dramatically sped up and by 1987 Gallup could produce the chart ready for the Top 40 show on the Sunday (i.e. the 3rd of the month, using my timeline above) instead of the following week. This was a major factor in record companies switching over from Friday release dates to Mondays, because there was no advantage now in releasing a record on a Friday – if the new chart was going to come out on the Sunday, you may as well release your product on a Monday and maximise your entire week's sales up until the stores closed on Saturday afternoon.

I bought The Collection when it came out (I was 14) and remember thinking even then that the release dates given there were complete nonsense. Unfortunately record companies are very bad at keeping accurate details of release dates, which means that even the dates on the official websites of bands cannot be trusted – I had an argument once with someone over release dates for the Police's albums, pointing out that it was pretty suspicious that three consecutive albums had exactly the same release date listed on the website, and that this would have been a Wednesday or whatever. There was also a long-standing "fact" that Nick Drake's second album Bryter Layter was released on 1 November 1970, because that was the date that the record label had given to his official biographer... no fault of the biographer who was given duff information, but it didn't take a genius to work out that Island Records had dropped a clanger, because 1 November 1970 was a Sunday, and no record shop in the country would have been open, either to take delivery of record stocks or to sell the album. So yes, you are right to forget what's on the internet and go back to the original sources, because even "reliable" sources like official websites and the BPI do not have correct dates. Richard3120 (talk) 17:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for going to so much trouble on my behalf, Richard, with my apologies for the delayed reply. I was away last weekend and have not got back to anything I was doing at home during the week. I should consider giving up paid work as it tends to take up too much time!

I have previously read bits and pieces about the compiling process of the charts. I recall the mention of couriers on motorcycles collecting the diary data from participating stores. However, I don't recall previously being aware that the chart data was available on Tuesdays of each week, so I guess that pretty much confirms the processing timeline, as you've very kindly provided an example of. Yes, I guess the clincher to understanding and accepting this further is the fact that these "one-week entrants" entered the chart at significantly lower positions than their eventual peak. If we take my beloved Ultravox's 'Vienna' single for example, it entered at No.52, but after an additional full week of sales it had jumped to No.16. I was previously aware of these chart entry positions, but had never really given any consideration to the process behind the release date/chart entry date relationship. Going through the original single releases though, I see that 'Love's Great Adventure' was the most successful chart entry single, entering at No.23, and you'd have to consider that period to be the height of the band's popularity. Albums are certainly more popular, given that 'Rage In Eden' entered at its peak position of No.4 and 'The Collection' doing the same at No.2. So, the chart entry position does make the process more believable, in that a popular artist's new release would enter at a much lower position in the chart, compared to a less popular artist's release with one or two weeks sales, before spending two, three or more weeks climbing to its peak position with weeks of sales behind it. But, certainly, those super popular artists, such as The Jam and The Police, as you've mentioned, obviously had huge numbers of sales over the intial Friday and Saturday to totally dominate the charts as they did. Of course, for some of these older artists now, they still have so much of a fan-following to this day, that their recent material jumps straight into the top 4 or 5 upon release ... Gary Numan, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Tears For Fears and Peter Gabriel, for example. Actually, I joined Gary Numan's Pledge Campaign for his 2017 album 'Savage (Songs From A Broken World)', so I was eager to see how it would perform upon release. The album was released on Friday, 15 September 2017, and it went straight into the chart at No.2 on Thursday, 28 September 2017, so I realised the chart process had changed, as it was not only a Thursday entry date, but also two weeks later. Similarly, the follow-up album, 'Intruder', was released on Friday, 21 May 2021 and entered the chart at No.2 on Thursday, 3 June 2021.

It's certainly been a learning experience for me, trawling through endless pages of music magazines looking for release dates, and then cross-referencing against other sources to ensure consistency. I did notice that although most of the material was released on a Friday (until 1985), there were some who had already changed to Monday dates, as you mentioned. Talk Talk, released by EMI, is an example. Only their debut single, 'Mirror Man', has a Friday release date and everything else after that was released on a Monday. Virgin Records also changed to Monday dates a couple of years earlier, as John Foxx, the original founder member of Ultravox, was signed to them from late 1979 and his material changed from Friday to Monday release dates in July-August 1983.

My enthusiasm to discover the correct dates for the Ultravox material has now become a bit of an obsession! I'm also hoping to find the release dates for the original compact disc releases, and I've already found three of those. But, it certainly is quite astonishing as to how many "official" sources out there in Internetland are completely wrong. I've just been going through Peter Gabriel's material, and his official website has the Monday release dates in the same week as the Saturday chart entry date. So, I've just been though the music magazines to check for the release dates and was not only thankful to find all of them, but that our theory holds true, as they were released on the Monday of the week before! I don't have enough enthusiasm to write to the Peter Gabriel webmaster and provide all of the correct dates, because I know that I'm then going to have to explain everything (again), as I've had to do on 'Discogs' and provide all of the evidence. I have changed some other artists' release dates on Wikipedia, but only for a select few of my favourite artists, and legitimately just to remove the existing incorrect information, but I have only done so after concluding my usual exhaustive research to verify the dates. But, as the correct information is available 'out there', if you spend enough time looking for it, it seems a bit of a shame not to put it to good use, but it's just so exasperating trying to convince others of the authenticity of what you've done and that you're not just appling a 'guess' to the release date.

Anyway, that's enough nonsense from me for another weekend, but thank you very much once again for taking the time to communicate all of this very helpful information, Richard. It is very much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Rodney. Explorer1302 (talk) 23:13, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]