Talk:David McWilliams (musician)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 05:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyright problem
This article has been reverted to an earlier version as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. Text entered in  duplicated at least in part material from. Other content added by this contributor may have been copied from other sources and has been removed in accordance with Copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. Content added by other contributors subsequent to the introduction of this material can be restored if it does not merge with this text to create a derivative work. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:15, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Now rewritten. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Only child?
Obituary in The Independent: "Born in the Cregagh area of Belfast in 1945, David McWilliams moved to Ballymena when he was three. He grew up with seven brothers and sisters and as a teenager..."

Obituary in The Irish Times: "David McWilliams was born on July 4th, 1945, in the Cregagh area of Belfast, as only child of Sam and Molly McWilliams."

Who knows which paper is right? So I removed "an only child" from the sentence "McWilliams was born in the Cregagh area of Belfast, an only child and moved to...". The fact was not that important anyway. Sijtze Reurich (talk) 13:07, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No answer, but I suspect that the Irish Times has it right, and that the IP who keeps adding it is probably acting in good faith. None of the tributes on this site, including those from family members, make any mention of any brothers and sisters, although one post from a family member does mention "Marion, a cousin who was taken into the family".  You're right, it's not really relevant either way.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:24, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * His official website says: "David McWilliams was born on July 4th, 1945, in the Cregagh area of Belfast, as only child of Sam and Molly McWilliams." But note Ref 1 in the article is not "Obituary in Irish Times", but is just that offical website (but there are 7 obituaries to choose from). Martinevans123 (talk) 18:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Megaphone?
The sound of McWiliams' voice singing the chorus of "The Days of Pearly Spencer" has a distictive "far-away, distant, distorted" sound. The source currently provided in this article (offical wesbsite) says:
 * "His début single God and My Country was issued in 1966, and in 1967 The Days of Pearly Spencer was released. Featuring distorted vocals through the use of a megaphone as in The New Vaudeville's Band Winchester Cathedral, the record won David McWilliams much-deserved recognition."
 * but if we look at The New Vaudeville Band we find this:


 * ".. "Winchester Cathedral", a song inspired by the dance bands of the 1920s and a Rudy Vallee megaphone style vocal."
 * and in "Winchester Cathedral" we find:

But what's going on with McWilliams? The distortion sounds very much like the standard Digital Signal 1 telephone frequency clipping distortion. Indeed, the original promotional video (see YouTube) seems to support a "phone voice" interpretation (but in a rather bizarre reverse-photo-sequence fashion), rather than any megaphone interpretation. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:14, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * ".. complete with a Rudy Vallée sound-a-like (John Carter) singing through his hands to imitate a megaphone sound."


 * This site states, apparently authoritatively, that "the unusual sound in the chorus is not a megaphone. McWilliams actually sang the chorus through a telephone from his home to the studio." - not a WP:RS though.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:02, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunate that's not WP:RS. But let's hope it was a reverse charge call. Martinevans123 (talk)
 * Why should the singer have gone to the trouble of phoning it in? It's more likely the sound was achieved in the studio using a combination of EQ and mild phase distortion.110.168.26.219 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 07:37, 16 September 2016 (UTC)