A History of Modern Music: the timeline

A seven-part series charting the history of modern music, tackling a different genre each day and picking 50 key moments.

You can play with the interactive timeline (image above) and read all the articles (see ‘about this series’ down this page’s left column).

Their history of dance music, for example, includes an ‘ultimate playlist’ of 100 hits from the past 33 years. As an added bonus, each list is followed by carping from disgruntled readers. Each includes multiple sidebar pages like Tadao Kikumoto invents the Roland TB-303.

I’m gobsmacked by it – awfully decent of the Guardian, really.

Nov 24

VID Sports music #4 – ‘Person Pinball’ from 2011 Animation Block Party

[via Vortex Anomaly]

Nov 18

Leading by example

[via STFU, Conservatives]

Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak…. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear.
- Chris Hedges 11-15-11

Nov 15

DJ Rodney Bingenheimer doc. video (90m)

In Southern California in the 1980s, KROQ had this weird un-DJ-like guy named (seriously) Rodney Bingenheimer, who came on late at night on Sundays and played punk records and new bands like Blondie, The Ramones, X, Joan Jett, Devo and Cheap Trick. Did this weirdo really have some influence? A 90-minute 2004 documentary now on YouTube, Mayor of the Sunset Strip ( Part 1) tells his story, and it’s weirder than you may have imagined.