Bands/artists whose names are frequently misspelled by writers, casual/pretend fans, etc.

Inspired by seeing "Gil-Scott Heron" the other day for the 100th time... ARGH!

What else is common?

the courteneers

"Led Zeplin." Everywhere, constantly.

I see it quite frequently as "Led Zepellin"

About 181,000 results on Google!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovesliescrushing

Lovesliescrushing (often misspelled Loveliescrushing, and actually spelled as all lowercased "lovesliescrushing")

Loveliescrushing

I always see "Led Zepplin"

Also, Peter Hamill – there used to be a Rolling Stone hack who spelled his name that way

Einstürzende Neubaten

Not the same thing but it annoys me when people write The Swans

(see also THE Melvins, THE Cardiacs.)

Oum Kalsoum.

sunn O))) deserves special recognition as a band whose name is never misspelled by even the most casual of fans

Jeff Magnum=Jeff Mangum.

Eliot Smith, Missy Eliot.

St Etienne.
For Christ's sake, look at a fucking album sleeve. It's SAINT. I see this in print even from writers I know to be dedicated fans. Unless the subs fuck it up.

"The" is a difficult one. Does anyone refer to Ramones without the definite article? Although The Stereophonics always annoys me, because it's not like there's a singular Stereophonic to justofy a definite article before a plural.

Buzzcocks were never "the"

same with eurythmics (sp?), talking heads, eels etc... but what the fuck do these bands expect?

St Etienne.
For Christ's sake, look at a fucking album sleeve. It's SAINT. I see this in print even from writers I know to be dedicated fans. Unless the subs fuck it up.

lol i always read this as "Street Etienne"

imo it's annoying when bands add/remove "The ______" throughout various releases. case in point: Smashing Pumpkins, who were The Smashing Pumpkins up until Zeitgeist, i believe.

(i do realize this wouldnt be an issue if i hadn't bought Zeitgeist, btw)...

Keith Richard to thread.

The Pixies vs. Pixies is the one i see most btw (latter is correct)

St Etienne.
For Christ's sake, look at a fucking album sleeve. It's SAINT. I see this in print even from writers I know to be dedicated fans. Unless the subs fuck it up.

this actually bothers you?

i mean ... are you okay?

After the Rolling Stones signed to Decca Records in 1963, their band manager,Andrew Loog Oldham, dropped the "s" from his surname believing "Keith Richard", in his words, "looked more pop".[18] (In the late 1970s Richards reestablished the "s" to his surname.)

Do you like Pixies?
Do you like The Pixies?

Which one sounds less idiotic?

xpost ... I didn't start this thread!

But yes, in print, it does bother me. If a journalist can't get the name of their favourite band right, what more important things are they getting wrong?

xpost

Should be "Do you like the Pixies?" imo.

Complaining about St. Etienne is a bit like complaining about Belle and Sebastian with an "and" instead of an ampersand.

Belle 'n' Sebastian

I refer to Pixies as "the pixies" in real life. like ^upthread said, not adding that "the" implies literalism.

My Bloody Valentine: Bullet for My Valentine, My Chemical Romance

I've sworn to myself that I would get over this but outside the internet realm is annoys me like no other. i'm 13.

I've seen Autechre's "Untilted" as "Untitled" before.

Also 'Confield' as 'Cornfield'. But they're pretty much purposefully confusing, right?

My Bloody Valentine: Bullet for My Valentine, My Chemical Romance

I've sworn to myself that I would get over this but outside the internet realm is annoys me like no other. i'm 13.

The number of times I've mentioned MBV and the reaction's all "Uh, doesn't sound like my sort of thing"...

I've seen Aphex Twin's "Peek 824545201" called "Peek 82454520".

That's when they don't play it all the way through.

fwiw

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/417K45SQXJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

boom, headshot

Pat Benetar

http://www.ifmusic.co.uk/images/product_images/stetienne-onlylove.jpg

lol you guys

I've seen Aphex Twin's "Peek 824545201" called "Peek 82454520".

― corey, Wednesday, March 2, 2011 9:02 AM (2 hours ago)

I'm dying here

sorta just generally chucke whenever i hear the x (infinity) number of ways bjork can be mispronounced

buhjork
bork
jork

Yes, Saint/St. Etienne has appeared both ways on the artwork, as has Belle and/& Sebastian.

re: Pixies. In print, it's best to refer to them simply as Pixies, but if you're conversing about them aloud I think it's perfectly acceptable to throw a small "the" in front of the name (same goes for Ramones).

A

Bonno, off The U2.

Morisey. Morrisey. Morissey.

Ozzie Osbourne. Ossie Ozbourne.

I totally put "the" in front of band names like Pixies & Ramones, but usually lower-case if it is not officially part of the name. I am bad people, obviously.

Yo La Tango

jazkamer/jazzkamer/jazkammer/jazzkammer

(this one's their fault, admittedly)

Pharaoh (Pharoah) Sanders

http://labs.google.com/britney.html

Thelonius (Thelonious) Monk

Roger Daltry (Daltrey)

Erroneous Monk

sorta just generally chucke whenever i hear the x (infinity) number of ways bjork can be mispronounced

buhjork
bork
jork

― kelpolaris, Wednesday, March 2, 2011 2:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nobody ever misspells it, though

Jon Entwhistle

And obviously bands like Motörhead or Blue Öyster Cult are often written without the umlaut.

Garry Beers

tbh most people incl. myself pronounce it byork when it's actually closer to byerk

Or, well: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Is-Bj%C3%B6rk_Gu%C3%B0mundsd%C3%B3ttir.ogg

Arvo Part (wtf?)

I often type "Kayne" instead of Kanye. I'm become extra-vigilant about this lately.

(Working on I've/I'm.)

Mary Hopkin's name is actually written as "Mary Hopkins" on the spine of a CD of hers I own. she must despair.

I don't have any strong feelings re: the St./Saint Etienne debate, although I was pretty miffed when my local FYE filed about half of their CD's under "Saint Etienne" and the other half under "St. Etienne", as if they were two different bands.

I often type "Kayne" instead of Kanye. I'm become extra-vigilant about this lately.

― clemenza, Thursday, 3 March 2011 02:06 (9 minutes ago) Permalink

(Working on I've/I'm.)

― clemenza, Thursday, 3 March 2011 02:08 (7 minutes ago)

Im'ma become extra-vigilant...

I was SURE that back around '85 or so, MuchMusic reported that Billy Squier had some kind of contract-rider stating that he'd earn a bonus of some sort if concert promoters misspelled his name as "Squire", and I made mention of it on some long-ago thread. Alas, Googling reveals no such thing to be so.

Nevertheless, there's stlll a coupla DOZEN references to "Billy Squire" on ILM alone!

He used to be a folk singer and in a hippie commune band, so I'll go ahead and post Samuel Delany (misspelled as Delaney) here.

Kristen Hersh.

I spelt it that way once on a 4ad mailing list when raving about her, and a 4ad staff member wrote a rather scathing reply about how shit a fan I must be if I can't even get her name right ;_;

Arvo Part (wtf?)

You mean like it should be Pärt? Yeah but accents are a whole other issue, I don't get too worked up about people who write Einsturzende for Einstürzende (or even Einstuerzende) or Brotzmann for Brötzmann. You almost never see Górecki although in theory you need that accent on the O. A lot of folks don't even know how to type those accents on a US/UK keyboard and I don't think they need worry too much.

Then there is the whole issue of typography, do we really need to write Motörhead when the umlaut over the O is just an affectation? I've even seen people argue that Xtrmntr-era Primal Scream should be written as Prml Scrm because that's how it was written on the sleeve.

You mean like it should be Pärt? Yeah but accents are a whole other issue, I don't get too worked up about people who write Einsturzende for Einstürzende (or even Einstuerzende) or Brotzmann for Brötzmann. You almost never see Górecki although in theory you need that accent on the O. A lot of folks don't even know how to type those accents on a US/UK keyboard and I don't think they need worry too much.

Nevertheless, these are names that are frequently misspelled. Arvo's last name is not Part, it's Pärt. Björk is not Bjork, and her name is written as "Björk" in all of her album covers. "A" and "ä" and "o" and "ö" are not the same letter, nor are they pronounced the same, so it's still a misspelling. It's kinda like me spelling Led Zeppelin as "Led Seppelin", because the Finnish language doesn't use the letter "z".

IMO it's an example of Anglo-centrism: "we don't use those umlauts or accents in our language, so we don't have to care about it if other languages do." I can understand not using them on a message board, where you just want to type stuff fast, but if you're writing a professional article, there's no real excuse for misspelling the names.

And all this time I thought it was Avro Part...

iced tea

Mary Hopkin's name is actually written as "Mary Hopkins" on the spine of a CD of hers I own. she must despair.

― administratieve blunder (unregistered), Thursday, 3 March 2011 02:12 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^kudos

It's kinda like me spelling Led Zeppelin as "Led Seppelin", because the Finnish language doesn't use the letter "z".

guessing you have a Z on your keyboard though and don't have to dick around copypasting it from Word or whatever though, right?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/MHbrightonwiki.jpg/220px-MHbrightonwiki.jpg

**just.. scribble that "s" ... out..."

xpost darnit.

missy elliott ALWAYS misspelled as missy elliot. why? why do people do this? HATE.

It's kinda like me spelling Led Zeppelin as "Led Seppelin", because the Finnish language doesn't use the letter "z".

guessing you have a Z on your keyboard though and don't have to dick around copypasting it from Word or whatever though, right?

Well yeah, that's why I said I can understand message board writers not using the umlauts. However, if you're professional journalist who gets paid for writing an article, it shouldn't be to bothersome to, say, copypaste the artist's correct name from his Wikipedia page. But apparently some can't be arsed to do that:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/08/21/composer-arvo-part-debuts-fourth-symphony-los-angeles-in-the-united-kingdom/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2004/jan/02/1

Not exactly a shortage of composers with "funny foreign names" in the classical world either

I think with some non-the plural noun bands you kind of need the 'the' to not sound dumb when talking about them - e.g. I would always say the Pixies but would be happy to talk about Swans. Who knows what my criteria are.

I have some excessive pedantry going on with maintaining the single quotation marks in Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Even though I'd be v unsurprised if a Bonnie Prince Billy or a Bonnie "Prince" Billy had slipped through the cracks on some album artwork and I hadn't noticed.

xp no I more or less agree w/ you Tuomas, I just meant the Zeppelin/Seppelin thing isn't strictly comparable

mclusky

Tuomas do you find 'ss' an acceptable substitution for 'ß'

actually from experience I know that certain fonts don't support all the accented letters, and if you're laying stuff out using Indesign it just leaves a space where the letter was if it can't find it

this festival called Sŵn (Welsh for sound) started in my town a few years back and after I while I think they just accepted that ppl weren't going to write it properly and removed the hat, so to speak

McLusky gets spelled a number of dumb ways but if you just mean the capitalisation then I gots no truck with that, it just looks like a typo on the page

Tuomas do you find 'ss' an acceptable substitution for 'ß'

It's more acceptable than replacing "ä" for "a", since "ss" and "ß" are the same sounds. Also, IIRC Germans themselves have replaced "ß" with "ss" in some of their words.

However, if a band clearly uses "ß" to spell its name in its album covers and other material, then a proper writer should use the "ß". Can't think of any such band, though.

ah, we go doot doot...

Buzzcocks were never "the"

Bring back the 60s when bands were called stuff like The Cream, The Can, The Pink Floyd.

Ah, "The Can", named by MMooney as it was a euphemism for "The Toilet", then he left and the other guys dropped the The, possibly as they didn't understand it.

(Oh, alright, they probably did....)

http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/83/Sonic_youth_sister.jpg

Cream were never "The", surely?

Brian Matthews still calls them that

http://app.onlinephotofiler.com/images/A_4/8/8/9/9884/3f195aff8e004f009ac637709f0e2137.Large.jpg?u=1

http://www.45cat.com/image/086/cream-sunshine-of-your-love-polydor.jpg

My label's bigger than your label..

(oops)

Pretty sure my mate Les, who's a 60s jazzer type, routinely refers to the Cream and the Pink Floyd - not that he ever listened to them, pop rubbish as far as he's concerned

Surprised to discover the other day that Carpenters didn't have a "the" either. I'm always scrupulous about the ones I know about, like Pixies, but there must be dozens I get wrong. Not that it matters a great deal, obviously.

A lot of folks don't even know how to type those accents on a US/UK keyboard and I don't think they need worry too much.

otm ^^

i can do anything on a mac keyboard but haven't a fuckin clue how to type umlauts and various accents on a PC

Further diacritical trouble: I try to get the accents right for names in print (sub-editor, part of my job to spell things right), but it can be a struggle: some mags I've worked for use cheap shitty fonts missing the necessary sorts, so it becomes this confused discussion between me, the editor and design, which ends up with 'mark it, and we'll put it in at repro'. (& i am freelance, so often not around to make sure this happens).

It looks like Motoerhead are kings of inappropriate umlaut expansion: 179,000 hits vs. 18k odd for Moetley Cruee.

American Idol hopeful Ashthon Jones, with that tricky second "h".

Ashthon Jones

Why do people inflict this shit on their kids?

can pretend fans really like the pretenders? makes you think.

Ashthon Jones

Why do people inflict this shit on their kids?

Dinosaur Jr -- no period (the correct way!)

people always put Jr.

i'd wager this is one that ppl could dig up conflicting cover art/sleeves for, but hey

Speaking of periods, I think you are supposed to write R.E.M. not REM, no?

can pretend fans really like the pretenders? makes you think.

― bnw, Thursday, March 3, 2011 1:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

one time on VH1 i saw Mark McGrath refer to James Honeyman-Scott as "James Honeyman" and thought that fuckin' guy is totally fronting about how much he knows about The Pretenders