Talk:Hollywood Dream

Correct Release Year

I have been trying to find an authoritative source for the release year of the "Hollywood Dream" LP. The current version of the article infobox "Released" attribute has '1970 (main article "Overview")'. This seems to be referencing this text in said section:

The original 1970 release opened with ...

which has no citation itself. There are no other references or mentions of "1970" in that section, or the article even.

Despite the significance of this album, its connection to Pete Townshend, and the band having its own website, which is still running, I had a hard time finding an authoritative reference.

Part of the problem is that important sites have the LP release year as 1969. Examples being allmusic.com and rateyourmusic.com, both of which currently have the release date as 1969.

The most authoritative reference I found is the back cover artwork of this 2009 CD reissue (Esoteric Recordings ECLEC 2149 on discogs.com) where the CD back cover explicitly states "Originally released as Track Records 2406 003 in September 1970". Earlier Polydor CD artwork did not have such text that I could find, unfortunately.

Searching for this LP with "September 1970" came up up with lots of hits but all seemed like copy/pastes of unreferenced sources.

But, Billboard Magazine did have relevant matches. The earliest match for the LP, ie, not the 1969 single, is in the "Tomorrow" section on page 10 of the September 12, 1970 issue.

I've used Billboard Magazine numerous times for Wikipedia research as well as personal research. The "Tomorrow" section is new to me but sounds like the "coming releases" sections that I'm used to.

In addition, the October 24, 1970 Billboard has "Hollywood Dream" at position 196 on the "Top LP's" chart, presumably either just entering the chart or exiting. It states that the LP has been on the charts for 3 weeks, at the time. This supports a September 1970 release.

At this time, September 1970 seems to be an accurate release date given the text on the Esoteric Recordings ECLEC 2149 release mentioned above and the matching Billboard details. I hope other Wikipedians can provide a more authoritative source or can refute what I have listed here.

As such, I'm sufficiently confident that the the Esoteric Recordings link is a much better source than is currently cited, particularly given the 1970 Billboard Magazine details cited above.

I will be updating the article with this reference for now.

By all means add a better reference if you have one.

Wantnot (talk) 04:21, 8 August 2019 (UTC)