At 08:31 AM 3/12/2004 -0600, Sager, Greg wrote:
>What Kelly's getting at, I think, is that so much of this sort of thing
>depends upon the people involved in the conversation. I have several friends
>who are diehard Who fans, and in any conversation with them that deals with
>music "Pete" is the immediately-understood shorthand reference to Pete
>Townshend. But that wouldn't work in a discussion about music with my
>non-Who-diehard friends; it probably wouldn't even work here on Audities, a
>list loaded with Who fans, unless the Who had already been referenced in the
>discussion and the implication was thus clear. Same with "Brian" among my
>friends who are Beach Boys mavens.

This topic came up years ago on another list, when someone was complaining
(not entirely seriously) that people tend to call male musicians by their
last name and female musicians by their first name.  My theory at the time,
and I stick with it, is that there seem to be more female artists with
unusual first names than there are males ditto.  I mean, you don't need to
spell out who you mean if you say Alanis, or Britney, or Aretha, or Norah,
whereas you can't just say "Paul."  (McCartney?  Simon?  Weller?
Chastain?)  There are exceptions galore, of course -- for me, just saying
"Nellie" means Nellie McKay, but especially in speech instead of writing,
where no one can hear the different spelling, 95% of the world would think
I meant either the Portuguese-Canadian pop singer Furtado or Mr. Hot In
Herre -- but I think there's something to be said for this theory.

S