Talk:Da Strike

Single or EP?

Is this a single or an EP? It seems like an EP, and the article presents it as a collection of 4 songs, rather than an article on a song, as most of the other entries in the Category Punk rock songs do. If it was released on record it would likely be considered a 7" EP, which is more the established punk rock presentation/term than "single", which is more often used for major label releases that receive widespread air play on commerical radio. That's my take on it anyway. Can I change it? -R. fiend 23:26, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I had trouble deciding this very thing. Looking at the definition of an Extended play, a single is one or two songs (5-15 mins), and an EP is five to eight (15-35 mins). I understand this isn't a rigid guideline, but I wasn't sure what to consider this because there are four songs on it and it plays around 10 minutes long. Therefore, I concluded that it should be considered a single rather than an EP. Also compared to other Millencolin EPs like Use Your Nose and Skauch, it is definitely much shorter. Is there an example of a record of similar length from another band? - Mattingly23 13:27, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The whole 7" record format was a standard (and may still be) for small unsigned punk rock bands several years back. Since most stores won't sell demo tapes, and most bands of that sort can't afford to release their own full length LP, and CD technology wasn't as accessable as it is today, it was the way for bands to get heard beyond whatever tours they did. It was also a good way to discover new bands, as $3 or so was the standard 7" price and one could take a gamble on a band that sounded promising without spending much. So there are thousands of such albums, usually with 4 or more songs, sometimes as many as 8 (punk rock songs generally being shorter than mainstream ones). I knew people who had hundreds of these back in the day; looking through my smaller collection I see quite a lot of that are in the 10 minute range. An interesting note is that 7" records are widely known as 45s, because as singles they were all played at 45 RPM, but to punks they were known as 7"s because many were played at 33 RPM in order to fit more music on them. I think they full name would be 7" EP, so I would call "Da Strike" an EP. I guess one way to tell if such a record is a single or an EP for sure is by its name, if its the name of the first song then it might be a single, but many 7" EPs had separate titles, as most albums do. That doesn't help in this case however. Anyway, that's my take on it. Sorry if I just told you a lot of stuff you already knew. Now I'm wondering if this is covered in Wikipedia anywhere. I'll have to take a look. -R. fiend 16:16, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explaination, I was not aware of those standards. However, it seems like it gets referenced as a single in other places. On the liner notes of The Melancholy Collection (here) they call it a single. On other sites, though, I don't really see a consistent labeling of this or their other EPs/singles. If you think it should be an EP, I think it would be fine to change it. - Mattingly23 03:13, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Glad I was of help. Incidentally I inserted most of that information into the Extended play article. I think I probably will change the reference here to EP; it would give a link to the article I just expanded, which could be useful. Also, one of my main issues was that the article is in the Category "Punk rock songs" and the article is not about the song at all, but about the EP/single/album/whatever that the song is on. If it were an article on the song I'm suspecting it might be considered too minor for an article. There aren't yet any real solid guidelines for what songs should or should not have articles, but the general feeling, as of now, seems to be the song has to be particularly notable, apart from being popular for a few months back in '92 or whatever. Articles on albums/EPs are given more latitude. -R. fiend 04:02, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)