a case for time travel (part one)

There's an apocryphal tale that when 70s band, Free, signed to Island Records, its owner, Chris Blackwell, asked them to consider changing their name. I think he was afraid of putting Free on the album covers and having punters believe they were gratis. Bassist Andy Frazer, who must have been only 15 at the time, stoically told Blackwell the band was called Free and he could take it or leave it. Of course, this implies a certain degree of irony on Blackwell's part, or maybe irony was lost on him, I don't know: they were Free, not The Free.

Forty years on it's causing a problem no one at the time could have been aware of. Try Googling for the band. Even Wiki's disambiguation has them way down towards the bottom of the page. For youTube, it's best to go for Paul Rodgers or one of the other band members, and take it from there. It's worth it, you forget how good a band they were. And so young. When they started making records not one of them was over 18. I suppose that doesn't sound like a big deal today when we have Britain's Got Talent, X-Factor, etc., but it was; there wasn't so much instant fame. Yet singer Rodgers was just 17 and had one of the best soul voices in Britain. He still does - I checked it out - but he looks more like Tom Jones these days. Even the roguish looking broken tooth is capped. More is less, dear boy.
~

Further thoughts on bands and the definite article. There was the case of Eurythmics being constantly introduced as The Eurythmics. The Rolling Stones became Rolling Stones for a while (at the same time as Keith Richards became Keith Richard - after a while it was said he wasn't sure which it was), and then back to The Rolling Stones. Them could never have been The Them, and The Who has to be The Who, of course, even though the question mark was dropped. But The Guess Who? Surely not. (That's my question mark btw - they don't even have that.)