Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2016 December 6

= December 6 =

New York Raiders/Nassau Coliseum
New York Golden Blades says that when the World Hockey Association wanted to put a team (originally known as the New York Raiders) in the New York area in its first season, "The team was initially slated to play in the brand-new Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island. However, Nassau County didn't consider the WHA a major league and wanted nothing to do with the Raiders." This is uncited. The Nassau Coliseum did manage to secure a team in the National Hockey League instead, the New York Islanders. That article says, "County officials did not consider the WHA a major league and wanted to keep the Raiders out. However, they discovered that they couldn't legally lock out the Raiders until they persuaded an NHL team to play there." That's cited to http://www.whahockey.com/raiders.html -- although that source doesn't say anything about the county wanting to keep a supposedly minor-league WHA team out of their arena, nor that they would need to have an NHL team to legally prevent the WHA team from playing there. So there isn't any source provided in either article for the county's antipathy toward having a WHA team in their arena.

And it doesn't make sense to me, either. How would it have been against the county's interests to have another tenant in their arena, paying rent for 40 home games a year? Before the Islanders were formed, the Coliseum had only one regular tenant, the New York Nets, and after spending $32 million building the arena, I would think that the county would have wanted to get as much use out of it as possible. Of course, having an NHL team would have been more desirable than having a WHA team, but that didn't mean that a WHA team should have been shunned. After all, Madison Square Garden managed to be the home arena for the WHA's Raiders while already serving the NHL's New York Rangers (albeit on unfavorable terms for the Raiders). And Boston Garden, Maple Leaf Gardens, and Pacific Coliseum also managed to have both NHL and WHA teams simultaneously at various times as well. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:36, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't say that having an NHL team would "legally lock out" a WHA team from using the arena. --76.71.5.45 (talk) 09:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If it is not in the source, remove the statement entirely. If it can't be proven, and it seems like bullshit to you, it's probably bullshit.  If someone comes along later with a reliable source, they can show their source so we can add it back in later.  -- Jayron 32 18:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Who wrote more songs?
Me and my friend are having a huge argument about it, so I just decided to ask here:

Which band wrote more songs, The Beatles or The Who? Covers of songs by other bands don't count, nor do individual records (like Imagine by John Lennon). I'm pretty sure the answer is The Who, but my friend is insistent that The Beatles wrote more. Can someone clarify the answer for us so the argument can end? UN$¢_Łuke_1Ø21Repørts 19:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Category:Songs written by Lennon–McCartney lists 193 songs; while they were the primary songwriters for the Beatles, there were a few written by George Harrison (roughly 2 per album), which gives another 20 or so songs, and at least one song Flying (Beatles instrumental), credited to all 4 songs. That gives us 215ish songs.  Category:Songs written by Pete Townshend, the primary songwriter for The Who, only has 132 songs in it; throw in a few dozen by other members, and that's still less than 200.  Plus, we'd have to pull out all of the Solo songs Townsend did.  The Beatles win.  -- Jayron 32 20:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * For comparison, there are also List of songs recorded by the Beatles and List of songs recorded by The Who (both of which include songs that do not have their own article on WP and thus aren't included in the categories). I currently don't have what it takes to make an exact count on each list (excluding the covers of songs by other bands etc.). ---Sluzzelin talk  23:19, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently I don't even have what it takes to read beyond the first sentence. The second sentence of the Beatles list: "There are a total of 409 songs listed on this page, with 172 of them being cover songs and 237 being original compositions.". The Who's list still would need to be counted though. ---Sluzzelin talk  23:31, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A quick count (by taking the fact that scrolling down by a screen reveals 30 new songs) suggests that there about 220 songs on the The Who list, and since some of those will be covers then it is almost certain (barring a failure to count on my part) that there are fewer written by them than the Beatles. MChesterMC (talk) 10:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well done. The only caveat I would add is that The Who are still active (granted that their last studio album was released a decade ago), so Roger and Co. could have a shot at passing the Fab Four if they so chose. Matt Deres (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * One thing that throws people off in the accounting is how prolific the Beatles were in such a short time. Their entire recording history covers only about 7 1/2 years (mid/late 1962 - late 1969/early 1970) while The Who started almost at the same time, recorded much longer period of time (late 1964-2006).  The Who, however, released no albums between 1982-2006.  Look at the numbers.  The Who released 11 albums over their lifetime; throwing out the outlier Endless Wire, that's 10 albums from 1965-1982, ten albums in 17 years, which is about an album every 20 months or so.  The Beatles released (going by the official modern canon, which gets confusing because of the difference between US and UK releases), 12 albums in 7.5 years, which is an album every 9 months.  Not counting singles, EPs, etc.  How?  The Who was always a touring, live band.  The Beatles were primarily a studio band, so much so that after 1966 they stopped touring.  Except for the occasional one-off mini concert or TV performance, they basically quit performing live and did all of their work in the studio.  The Who went the other way; they even tried to write an album live on the stage (see Lifehouse, which became the nexus of Who's Next) they preferred live performance over studio work.  All the Beatles did was write and record; which is why they have more original songs to their credit.  The Who spent a LOT of their professional life touring and performing.  -- Jayron 32 19:19, 7 December 2016 (UTC)