Talk:David McWilliams (musician)

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Now rewritten. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

His official website [3] 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)[reply]

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:

".. complete with a Rudy Vallée sound-a-like (John Carter) singing through his hands to imitate a megaphone sound."

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]