Talk:The Floral Dance

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Nice but dubious bit[edit]

At the moment it says ... describing the sound of the band, with its "cornet, clarinet and big trombone; fiddle, cello, big bass drum; bassoon, flute and euphonium". This is not strictly accurate as the Helston Town Band is a brass band and does not include clarinets, fiddles, cellos, bassoons or flutes, which is lovely but raises a couple of issues for me. Firstly, why are we commenting editorially on the accuracy of song lyrics? Is that a thing? Song lyrics tend to be a bit made-up, unless they are claiming to be accurate documentary material, so, actually, who gives a monkey's? It's a song. Secondly, why are we comparing the lyrics, which we quote in full, with the Helston Town Band, which the song doesn't mention at all? Not that band, not that place. The closest it gets is Played by the village band perchance which is a long long way from saying it is referring to a specific band that still exists in the real world and then you have, I fear, to synthesize the rest. (See above under: song, not an accurate official document maybe?) Thirdly, even if somehow we could citably demonstrate that the band in the song is indeed this one, (And I think we can't!) all we would then need to do is show that by 1911 the point about the instrumentation is correct because in 1911 it was operating with a properly set-up British Brass Band lineup. The business about the fiddle and so on sounds a lot more like a typical village band setup from before brass bands were formalized, so we would need a timeline to show that it was all correct. I don't buy it: I think it strongly suggests OR/SYNTH. I have marked it as OR and I would like to change it to something much much less specific. I would be grateful for others' comments though and I am certainly willing to be persuaded, with refs, if I have got this wrong. Best wishes to all DBaK (talk) 13:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see that the bit about which I was expressing concern has just been removed by TSP. As I hope is clear from what I said ^ up there I support this – I really don't think that bit could stay in there with no sourcing: it's really just chatty speculation. Best to all DBaK (talk) 20:10, 8 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]