Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 May 11

= May 11 =

Golden Brown (The Stranglers) vs. Gold and Silver (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
The article on "Golden Brown" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Brown doesn't mention "Gold and Silver" by Quicksilver Messenger Service as an inspiration or influence. You may listen to "Gold and Silver" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhraiPTORhI

There seem to be not just similarities but identical music. It would be interesting to find out if the songs are so similar by coincidence or by design.

Phil


 * This "similarity" has been noted on a few blogs and forums like this and this, but nothing authoritative enough to be quoted in the article. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:22, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Mother's Day and US restaurants
On Mother's Day every restaurant is overflowing here. So, my question is why do many restaurants advertise or offer discounts for Mother's Day. That would seem to be illogical, as it can only cut into their profit margins, assuming they would get all the customers they could handle without it. In fact, I would expect them to offer incentives to take Mom out on any other day, to distribute the customer load so they can handle it better. The only reason I could see for doing what they do is if it's like TV sweeps week, and the total count on Mother's Day is used to rank restaurants, which is important somehow, like in getting banks loans, in order to expand. StuRat (talk) 14:10, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * It would be like any kind of sale or discount at any store: "Volume." The per-person profit margin may be smaller, but the total intake may be larger than what they would get on a typical Sunday. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:18, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That doesn't make sense if they would already be at 100% capacity on Mother's Day, without the advertising, which is my assumption. StuRat (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * That assumption may not be safe - and also, I went to a place the other day which was running its Mother's Day special from Thursday through Sunday. I would say business was brisker than usual. And while Sunday might be at capacity at certain points in time, it's not likely to be at capacity all day. But it might be at capacity for a longer period of time than otherwise. In any case, stores that run sales have got this figured out. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:13, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The number of restaurant chains that lose money or go bankrupt each year implies that at least a few don't have it all figured out. I just got a coupon from Friendly's and tried to locate one in my area, only to find out all the ones in Michigan seem to have closed. StuRat (talk) 16:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Businesses of any kind that go bankrupt (I mean real bankruptcy as opposed to "strategic" bankrupty) obviously couldn't figure out how to survive. The ones that do survive, do have it figured out, or at least they think they do. Consider this: If it costs you 50 cents to make one hamburger, and you sell one hamburger for a dollar, that's 50 cents profit. If you sell a hundred hamburgers at 75 cents, it may have cost you 50 dollars, but your total profit is 25 dollars. 25 dollars is better than 50 cents. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:03, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * In the abstract, Bugs' example is the principle that in Perfect_competition, marginal cost equals marginal price: a business can either charge more (and sell fewer units) or charge less (and sell more, albeit with a smaller profit margin). In a competitive market, economic theory predicts that the business makes the most profit when it sets price equal to marginal cost.  Whether this applies to restaurants on Mother's Day is up for debate. OldTimeNESter (talk) 20:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

The discount may just apply to the main meal.Dessert,starters and drinks are always high profit areas. Or the discount may only apply to Mom,so profit is still made on the other meals.Again,if you enjoyed the discounted meal,you may well come back and pay full price.It's not as illogical as it seems ,Hotclaws (talk) 00:51, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Kathy Kirby and David Cross?
The article Kathy Kirby states that,

In the early 1980s, Kirby had relationships with musician David Cross and lawyer Alan Porter

Is that the same person as David Cross (musician) from King Crimson? Initially I would have thought it unlikely, but this source says that the David Cross who had a relationship with Kathy Kirby was a violinist, and the David Cross from King Crimson is also a violinist. So is it the same person or not?

There can't have been that many professional violinists with the name David Cross active in British music in the 1970s and 1980s, but at the same time I can't see any clear evidence that it is the same person either.

The source also states that the David Cross that had a relationship with Kathy Kirby was the same David Cross that played on Lynsey de Paul's hit "Sugar Me" in 1972. Here's a YouTube link to that song. It's worth noting that the David Cross of King Crimson played on the album Larks' Tongues in Aspic released the following year, in 1973, so there was definitely a David Cross active at about that time.--Lookbackbeforeyouleavemylife (talk) 21:03, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Without answering directly on the question, before deciding that two British musicians from roughly the same time period could play the same instrument and share the same name, it's not an entirely unknown phenomenon. Consider drummers Roger Taylor and Roger Taylor, singers Paul Young and Paul Young, keyboardists Dave Stewart and Dave Stewart, guitarists Mick Jones and Mick Jones... So, without answering the question directly, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that there would be multiple violinists named David Cross... -- Jayron  32  21:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)