Talk:House Of Mayors

So, someone wanna explain this entire EP to me?

John Linnell sings songs about former NYC mayors. You can find it on eBay, sometimes. -Ecks

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So…where can I buy this?

I checked a lot of the major places like gemm, etc, and didn't find it. Best bet is to watch eBay...but they don't come up too often. --Duke33 17:23, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I thought so. There are no downloads of any songs on House Of Mayors. :(

i have not seen a copy in my 3 or so solid years of ebay trawling.... i think saying that they "don't come up too often" is a bit of an understatement.  : ) -- 19:04, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I have it, I wish the rules would let me share - Yamfox

"Hall" truly a misprint?

Is "Hall of Mayors" really a misprint or were later presses just retitled? The discs of the later prints have "Hall" on them as well as the sleeve stickers.

that's interesting but i still think it's a misprint. having a track titled "house of mayors" on an album "hall of mayors" seems unlikely. -- 20:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I wouldn't say it's unlikely - when the disc first came out, I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition - the House at the end of the Hall, so to say. In any event, unless we've had confirmation from the band, we're really just assuming it was a misprint and not a creative decision. As mentioned above, the disc also "Hall", not just the sleeve. Also, I'm pretty sure there was only one pressing, so maybe it was corrected midway through the issue (if indeed it was an error). I got mine as part of Hello when it was released, and it says "Hall", so I'm pretty sure that was the original issue/pressing/mistake which was corrected/etc. - Deysian

I've asked John on Tumblr. Until we get confirmation, I don't see how we can speculate and call it fact. I put up a perfectly fine *neutral* comment in the current one's place, which was immediately reverted - an action which I completely resent, by the way. This is ostensibly a "knowledge base", therefore speculation and supposition should be clearly labeled as such. This *isn't* the opinion page or collected vanity page for a handful of stubborn obsessives.

For example:

FACT: Hello subscribers received one of two different versions of this disc for reasons unknown. Some people believe that the copies which were entitled "Hall of Mayors" were misprinted.

SPECULATION: Anything regarding multiple pressings, original versus intended issue, creative decisions, etc, unless explicitly verified by John or John.

I'm not going to belabor this any more right now. Like I said, I posed the question to Flans to settle the issue.

In any case, the line as written also made very little sense grammatically, so I've edited it for clarity.

-Deysian

You "resent" having your edit reverted? Do you understand the nature of a wiki is that it's a collaborative effort, in which people can change things at any time? This is ridiculous. Why would the EP have a different title than the song? Do you have any examples of TMBG ever doing something similar? And if it was somehow intentional, why wouldn't it have been on all the copies? This isn't "speculation." To say it's not a misprint just makes no sense. --Self Called Nowhere (talk) 04:41, 16 December 2015 (EST)

It doesn't matter - the truth is that it is speculation until it is confirmed by the band, and neutral language is more appropriate for the time being - "possibly a misprint", for example. Most likely it *was* a misprint, but we don't *know* that. *That's* the point. It's about the difference between fact and supposition. -Deysian

well sadly, flans's memory is so unreliable it's very possible we may never get a definite answer. hoping for the best on that one. w/r/t "speculation", i think it does have a place here on this site in small quantities when called for. for instance, we don't know for a fact that the version of birdhouse from dial-a-song didn't come after the album version, but it is pretty safe to assume that it came before. likewise, i think we can safely say that "hall" is "likely" or "probably" a misprint. no, we don't know for certain, but it seems highly unlikely that a release with a track entitled "house of mayors" would be called "hall of mayors". (particularly when there are copies with the "house" title as well). -- 15:06, 16 December 2015 (EST)

That's why "probably a misprint" would be ideal. There's a bit of speculation on this site that may be problematic, in my opinion... for example, I think that everything under the "musician credits" section ought to have a disclaimer that they are our collective best-guesses except when explicitly stated... but I agree with you 100% that some measure of speculation is necessary in order to have a functioning group here.

With something like a demo version of a song, my opinion is that it safe to assume nearly all the songs' demo versions predate the studio versions. I don't think there's a single person alive that would debate this, though if there was a compelling reason to, I would gladly re-evaluate. With something like this, however, we have to admit other possibilities I'd say, at the very least to be honest in the trivia sections. Even if it was not a conscious creative decision, the possibility that they changed their mind about the title midway through the production run should be entertained, and the word "incorrectly" ought to be removed from the main page.

My resentment over the reversion stems from that it seemed totally 'knee-jerk', because in addition to making the statement more neutral, I edited the original phrase for clarity. Had it been changed to retain the syntactical edits while reverting to the message of the pre-edit content (i.e., that it was a definitely a misprint), I would have felt differently. I'm sure my reaction to the reversion was also somewhat knee-jerk, and possibly involves past experiences with the specific user, and for that I apologize. -Deysian

Update, and I suppose my last comment on the matter. Flans replied. He's "fully forgotten" what had happened or that it had ever happened in the first place, as Ant predicted above. My issue with the Trivia Section on this article still exists and is well-documented, and I don't see the value in discussing it further at this time. Thanks. -Deysian, 12/18/15

Do copies actually exist with "House of Mayors" printed on the CD? I ask because I got a copy years ago on eBay, and it says "House of Mayors" on the cardboard sleeve, but the CD still says "Hall of Mayors" on it. Now it's possible the person who sold it to me could have had copies of both versions and accidentally switched the CDs, but either way, I've still never seen an image of the "correct" version of the CD. Even Discogs doesn't have one, though they do have an image of the CD that says "Hall of Mayors." Drew (talk)

yes, my "house" copy says "house" on both the sleeve and disc. -- 13:02, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

House of Mayors

I found this album downloadable online a few years ago...free! Can't remember where tho.

I think it's an amazing album that has stuck in my head and it took me quite a while before I realized that the melody in House of Mayors is essentially repeated from the Processional tracks! The 3 Processionals gear you up to House of Mayors and gives House a familiarity which makes it that much more 'acceptable' without knowing why. Anyone else ever notice this?

Homemade Bootleg Issues

My dad made this bootleg copy probably fourteen or more years ago. Although it's on CD (with Louisiana, tons of JL solo live tracks, and an All Things Considered interview,) it has noticeable tape-hiss, and you can hear nearly inaudible versions of the songs playing about two seconds before the audible version starts (is there a term for that?). One of the most bizarre flaws is that you can sometimes hear faint voices in the tape-hiss! Is it like that on all versions, or could it have just been the consequences of a poorly-made bootleg?

sounds like a bad tape dub. the term is print-through, by the way. the faint voices is probably actually radio; when working with receivers, audio cables can act as antennas. -- 00:33, 21 August 2013 (EDT)

Rare

It's things like this that make me want TMBG to release a large rarities collection of the near-impossible-to-get tracks from all of their projects (TMBG, John Linnell, Mono Puff). Things like House of Mayors, The 1985 Demo Tape, etc... Then again, this current age of the internet has partially solved it. It would just be nice to be able to get some of these tracks without having to either spend hundreds of dollars or download them in a possibly illegal way. -Bouncer15111 (March 22, 2017)