Talk:The Allman Brothers Band discography

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[edit] Studio and live albums

Breaking studio and live albums apart for a group like the Allman Brothers makes little sense, since live albums were an essential part of their story, and since Eat a Peach is such a hybrid. I suggest this discography be reorganized along the lines of the Grateful Dead discography, making a distinction between contemporaneous live albums and retrospective live releases. Wasted Time R 20:14, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

So done. Wasted Time R 00:39, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Previous and next albums in infobox

To paraphrase Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#Chronology, the previous and next albums in the album infobox should be limited to the main album releases. This suggests that compilations and archival / retrospective live releases should not be included. See this recent edit as an example of an editor applying this guideline, which I believe is intended to emphasize the main body of work of a musician or group.

  1. I would like to suggest that for Allman Brothers Band albums we include compilations and retrospective live releases anyway. By including all ABB albums, readers can click through, either forwards or backwards, to see all the albums. This is a great way to link all the album articles together. It also provides a chronology of all the official ABB releases. (So far there are some albums without articles, but hopefully the missing articles will end up being written.)
  2. If a preponderance of editors disagrees with this suggestion and feels that only the "main" albums should be included, then, in the infoboxes for the other (non-main) albums, what should be listed as the previous and next albums? — Mudwater 00:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I've seen it done both ways. I usually include compilations released during the band's lifetime (which is all of them for the Allmans) in the main sequence. Compilations often have historical significance in a band's development — they indicate a resting place before further artistic change, or a change of record label, or a breakup. As for threading the non-main albums in the other alternative, that's usually botched ... they link to the surrounding main albums, but the main albums don't link to them. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Wasted Time R makes a good point about the purpose of the chronology: to illustrate the artistic development of a band. In the cases of main albums, the proof is right there in the music. In the case of comps or archival releases, however, the proof can only be in the text of the article. (And in many cases, bands have little to do with those releases, or the impetus was just a payday.) Imagine you just had a stack of the albums and no other information: you could listen to the main ones and discern plenty about the artistic development of the band. Insert the comps/archival releases, though, and you can only guess why they're there. For this reason, I recommend we follow the WP:ALBUM guidelines. (Mudwater, thanks for the heads-up about this discussion.) —Zeagler (talk) 01:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the best way to remain in line with WikiProject Album standards as well as make the albums easily accessible is to create an ABB template. See Template:King_Crimson for a nice one. —Zeagler (talk) 15:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

It's been more than two weeks since I raised this question. So far we have me in favor of including all the albums and not just the main releases, Wasted Time R sort of in favor, and Zeagler opposed. Since there's not strong support for my suggestion, and also only two other editors have stated an opinion, perhaps it would be best to follow the project guideline for now, and include only the main releases. "P.S." Creating an Allman Brothers Band template is a good idea. — Mudwater 20:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I've gone through all the main albums -- listed in the "Studio and 'current' live albums" section -- and updated the previous and next albums, when necessary, to include only this group. — Mudwater 21:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC)