Pop Culture Gadabout | ||
Tuesday, September 21, 2004 ( 9/21/2004 06:39:00 AM ) Bill S. ODDETIES & ORACLES – This web log has seen more than its share of typos and misspellings, but our Zombies disc review has got to be the first time we've made a blunder by spelling a word correctly. As Jim Kosmicki in the Comments section first noted, the proper way to write the title of the Britpop group's classic album is Odessey & Oracle. Looking it up on the web, I uncovered more than one explanation for the album's quirky spelling. But the one that makes sense to me is the simplest: album cover artist Terry Quirk misspelled the word when he painted the cover, and the band decided to stick with it. In the years since, though, writers and critics have regularly struggled with this spelling: a Disc and Music Echo story from 1968 announcing the band's split just before the album came out spells the title word Odyssey, while rock critics in the years since have regularly "corrected" the spelling. Even Rhino Records, which released a now out-of-print CD mastering of the disc several years ago, committed the error in a written tribute to the band. So I'm staying with tradition by not correcting my review on this blog (it was changed when the piece got posted on Blogcritics, however), if only to demonstrate that I know how to properly spell "odyssey." # | |
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