Talk:Chicago XXXII: Stone of Sisyphus

To do

I have initiated a supermassive rewrite and expansion of the whole article, especially the intro and the History sections, and the references. — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 05:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

General goals:

• General copy editing, using more neutral language.

It can be extremely difficult to use totally encyclopedic (dry, detached, neutral WP:NPOV Wikipedia:Controversial_articles) language when describing intense events which happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, synthesized together from various different sources. We need to adhere to the rules as strictly as possible. My initial draft removed a lot of existing non-neutral verbiage, and perhaps introduced some new ones, but was extremely careful not to.

A few sources have been used which are of questionable reliability because they weren't published in a vetted environment and with the authenticity of authorship having been verified yet. That has been done because such information was used extremely sparingly, because the cited portion was only that which expounds upon information which has been already corroborated in reliable sources, because it was used only after the vast majority was sourced literally by the book. All of this was only considered because information on Sisyphus can be very sparse.

For example, we have very little idea (nothing but basically gossip and vague secondhand information) why the record label rejected the album. And we have no *proof*. There were never any quotes from the record company whatsoever, and the word "uncommercial" is basically dust in the wind. I was extremely careful to use Wikipedia's guidelines of controversial subjects as I understand it, and to only use direct quotes which are both substantial in nature and which are specifically referenced.

Specific goals:

• add the total runtime to the end of the track listing (|total_length=) and to the infobox if applicable
• Move to B class. Peer review and copy editing for a dry, neutral, detached tone. WP:NPOV Wikipedia:Controversial_articles
• Find those alleged interviews whereupon the band relates the album itself to the myth of Sisyphus, but it's probably good enough to let the reader draw a link.
• Find a source which describes the fundamentally changing mass market for music of the 1990s, to be drastically influenced by grunge and such (candidates are in the External links). Cite some other bands (especially Chicago's original 1960s and 1970s contemporaries) who had a lot of trouble adapting to the likes of Nirvana. Compare to the strategies employed by bands such as Kansas, Rush, the Doobie Brothers, Earth, Wind & Fire, Blood, Sweat & Tears, etc.
• Make a more comprehensive list of every work in which a song from Stone of Sisyphus was released, prior to its own official release. Smuckola has the sources on that, and will do that.
  • "The Show Must Go On" corresponds to "Falling In Love" from Ink by The Fixx (The Greatest Music Never Sold, p. 74)
• Find all promotional material, interviews, or mentions of Sisyphus in anticipation of its original release
  • cite performing "The Pull" on Chicago: In Concert at Greek Theatre during the 1993 summer tour
• Find references to specifically how the band's organization quashed discussion, though it has so far been found that all such forums were all online and long since disappeared even from archive.org.
• Expound upon the different types and sources of the leaks of the bootleg mixes, as described in the book The Greatest Music Never Sold.
• Examine the further sources cited in The Greatest Music Never Sold.
• Mention Felicia Parazaider's role as poet and lyricist.
• Mention the mixing and remixing as cited in The Greatest Music Never Sold.
• Get a copy of the liner notes from Bill Champlin's Through It All and from Sisyphus.

Sources and neutrality

Right on, Dobbyelf62! Thank you for the barnstar! Tireless is right; Sisyphus has been herculean!  ;) My recent dump here represents probably 40 cumulative hours, including one 8 hour solid session, and it's still just a draft! The thing is that we need less biased writing. As I just wrote on this talk page, you're inserting some stuff so far which I have been very careful to leave out so I think you should revert that. In general, I know that even though I put at least a cumulative 40 hours on this rewrite so far (including one 8 hour solid session), I have already used some prose which is less than fully encyclopedic and needs to be carefully rewritten.

In the Allmusic source it says that Warner decided not to release the album due to it sounding uncommercial. I did add another source bringing the number of references to 14. The source does contain some speculation, however. Unfortunately it will be very hard to find references that do not contain any speculations. Due to the lack of interviews, we won't really know why Warner refused to release the album.

To make it to B class, it will need several more reliable sources. 14 references won't cut it. Some sections are weak and will need expansion. The article also lacks a Reception section. Even though there probably aren't many reviews, it will only improve the article. Try looking at other B class articles for help. Thanks!Dobbyelf62 (talk) 21:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I haven't formally looked for reviews yet, but most of them that I've seen are just terrible. They tend to be lazy, adolescent mudslinging, which I don't really consider to be a review, and it's thrown into a general article discussing a bunch of other things. They say things basically akin to "they think this is good, but it's not". lol.  :-( Yeah maybe that describes most of the "music review" community, I dunno. Most of Allmusic's summaries that I've seen are just worthless junk. So yeah aside from my bellyaching here, I'll keep looking too.

We just have to be very, very, very, careful to read and re-read and re-re-read the guidelines on controversy and synthesis, with such a murky and historical subject. And I'd really like it to stay totally classy and professional, which is why I halfheartedly cited that semi-wonky storytelling memo from Dawayne, which was resurrected from some fan's Geocities account through archive.org.  :-o *lightning strikes me* I don't want gossip or heresay or fan service, but I was just citing specific ideas in it, to flesh out the already-reliably-sourced ideas. So don't dip far into that source. He's one of the best resources anyone could ask for, so I will try to get him to clean it up and publish it on his web site. Furthermore, I bought the book Greatest Music Never Sold just so I could look up its bibliography, which has even more quotes and sources (the whole chapter on Chicago is available on Google Books, in the link that I cited in the article, so everyone should read that pronto). I sent the article to Tim Wood for review and for additional sources.

But when it comes to getting this recent major revision out, like Jason said, "I'm just glad that it got to see the light of day." THANKS! — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 23:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

According to the Tim Wood (not Cook) source, it mentions that Giant Records were considering releasing the LP. In an interview with Modern Drummer Magazine (1995), Tris mentions that the album was going to be released in a few months. This could have meant that the band members at the time were unaware about Warner's decision to not release the album. This could have also meant that Warner Bros decision was made last minute. Due the article being published in 1995, this might suggest that the release date was pushed back later but later decided not to release the album at all. Is any of this worth mentioning in the article?

I'm pretty sure Carlos Santana had struggled through the grunge era. After the failure of his 1992 album, he would call on Clive Davis for his album "Supernatural", which would be his most successful album, producing hits like "Smooth" and Maria Maria". Thanks Dobbyelf62 (talk) 19:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I have that Dec 1995 Modern Drummer magazine, as I cited. I am in an ongoing dialog with Tris to clarify the timelines, but he's thinking that the interview material had been shelved (*groan*) for some time, having taken place long before its eventual publication. LOL. The interview dialog describes Night & Day: Big Band in the past tense, but Stone of Sisyphus in the future tense. So I guess it had been extensively rescheduled, or something? And I found another weblog-style site which magically names multiple release dates. But I have no reliable sources for this. Weird.

Anyway, when I cited Tris's MD interview, I was alluding to the fact that yeah it was a last minute deal for WB to drop a bomb on them all. Once my brain unfrazzles from being caught up in recreating and reliving the whole Greek epic lately, I'll revisit all of my sources. I just did that somewhat tonight, to clarify this issue some more.

I don't suppose there's an overall umbrella article in some trade rag like Rolling Stone that maybe describes the organizational activity of WB at the time. Dunno. I did find http://www.rocksbackpages.com/ which is an archive of music industry literature, for a few hundred dollars a year (no thanx), containing several super great Chicago interviews. Check out the Kruger URLs I added; those are major sources inside of Greatest Music Never Sold. Just like Sisyphus, it's a blast from the early 90s -- I bought this book just for its bibliography, and here I find actual URLs printed in it just like how everybody found cool Internet sites back then.  :-o — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 20:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Cquotes

I've noticed that there are a couple of quotes used more than once in the article (DaWayne Bailey's quote). There's no point in having a quote reappearing throughout the article. What do you you want to do about it? Dobbyelf62 (talk) 21:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, there is. It's called a cquote aka a pull quote, and that's exactly what it's intended for. It highlights a minimal element of a substantial quotation from elsewhere in the article, intended to be informative in another context. They are in magazines and newspapers all the time, but I'm currently the only wikipedian I've ever seen who uses them correctly. Everyone else abuses the template as just big, pretty quotation marks for a regular quote. BTW, there is no "DaWayne"; that's not some ghettoized nickname; his real name is "Dawayne". :) — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 21:52, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

My mistake! Dobbyelf62 (talk) 21:58, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Let's put it this way; it's something I learned about (because it's so widely misused) and is a good idea if someone has the right content and skills to use it correctly. Some Wikipedians get bent out of shape over cosmetic stuff, and it doesn't have to look totally perfect but I just want to make sure that it's used tastefully and correctly. I would hope that if it looked 'weird' at first, it'd only be for a moment and only because correct usage of cquote is unheard of on Wikipedia.  :) — Smuckola (Email) (Talk) 23:27, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Dobbyelf62: Hey brother. I wanted to let you know that I knew that you were fairly correct as far as the quotes being awkward. I had originally kinda taken the step to set it up in the more progressive format of using pull quotes, where you take existing quotes and you brightly highlight a little summary of them somewhere else, especially in another relevant spot. And it gives some overview context to a larger body of text, or it connects two areas, or it just plain piques the reader's interest. That's how they do it in magazines and newspapers and books. Anyway, I think I just figured out how to format it and trim it better so that it's not awkward and it's finally how I'd intended it to be. And I did a bunch of other editing. Our new pal, Spike Wilbury, has said that he digs it. I hope it looks good. I just thought I'd let you know and that once again, I didn't mean to blow you off! ;) — Smuckola(talk) 04:54, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

@Smuckola: It's all cool! Hopefully Chicago and Yes get inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Dobbyelf62 (talk) 20:47, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Goals

How do you want to fit in the third goal (changes of music in 90s) into the article? I don't know how to work that in there. Can you please clarify? Dobbyelf62 (talk) 15:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

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"Bigger Than Elvis"

I deleted the part about the isolated bass track (who cares?), and clarified the language about Jason presenting the song to his father as a gift.