This one’s a beaut. Map, context, mini-playlists for your auditory enjoyment.
Category Archives: Music
A wildly-irresponsible experiment
We probably shouldn’t be doing this. All the feedback about The Beatles chart, what’s good and what’s missing, makes us think there must be a better way to capture the wisdom of the crowd than in fb comment threads. We could do this with a wiki, but the data would not be structured enough. WeContinue reading “A wildly-irresponsible experiment”
Beatles map follow-ups
So many good things generated on social media from our last post, entirely focused on The Beatles map, which makes me think that folks didn’t actually read the full post? But I digress. Among the conversational highlights: I accidentally had two arrows pointing to Led Zeppelin. Thank you for spotting this Ian! Some additions toContinue reading “Beatles map follow-ups”
How does one map an influence?
As we begin to map influences, a whole bunch of questions arise about how the map should work. How best to represent the context of the relationship? Was the influence in the form of a direct reference, a sound, a mood, or something more ineffable? The genre whiteboard was a good warm-up exercise, but theContinue reading “How does one map an influence?”
The Great Depression Gap
Something struck us when we assembled the digital version of the music whiteboard. There was a decade-long gap in the 1930s where no major new genres of music emerged in the United States, in stark contrast to the decades before or since. That’s not to say that there was no new music. But the economicContinue reading “The Great Depression Gap”
A Bigger Whiteboard
As mentioned in the Reboot post, it quickly became clear that our efforts to map the history of culture, starting with music, could not be sufficiently represented in two-dimensional physical space, nor would a whiteboard allow us to leverage the wisdom of the community to make additions, fill blind spots, and treat this as aContinue reading “A Bigger Whiteboard”
Reboot Reboot
It had been stirring in my mind at a low simmer since my previous startup, Renew, announced that it was closing its doors in January 2020. We had six severance-fueled weeks to figure out what we were going to do with our lives, and with that bit of breathing room I thought to myself: “IContinue reading “Reboot Reboot”
Bing – Bang – Bong
There is beauty in experiencing the light of original works refracted through the lens of the influenced. We give you the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain covering ‘Satellite of Love.’
Rage drummer Brad Wilk on influence
“I think it’s really important, and it’s a lesson I didn’t learn until my late teens: Whatever bands that you love, go find out what bands they love, and what bands turned them on, and then you really start getting into the human aspect of it because the further back you go in time theContinue reading “Rage drummer Brad Wilk on influence”
INXS and Beck and St. Vincent
I don’t know exactly how INXS influenced either of them, but man alive is this one of the best covers of anything ever. Three years later it’s still stuck in my head.