Urban Planners or Spiders on Drugs?

My friend Nick recently pointed me in the direction of a beautiful work of information artistry: Subway Systems of the World, Presented on the Same Scale. It reminded me of that study of spiders on drugs and the various sorts of webs they weave from some years back.

If we use the latter as a key to the former, it appears that Moscow's and Madrid's metros were designed by a spider on benzadrine, while Chicago's was built by a spider on chloral hydrate.

The Carbon Cycle

When I was a freshman in college, I was trying to major in creative writing. My professor in the "creative writing 2" course was a woman whose name I have long since forgotten, but little snippets she'd read us out of her fiction have stuck with me.

One was about a man who would stand on a freeway overpass in LA with a baton and "conduct" traffic. This was something that she really saw -- everyday on her commute at the time -- and she worked it into the narrative of a novel she was writing at the time.

I've thought of that man often over the years, but today I found myself wondering how he would feel were he to read her novel and see himself there. Would he be angry that she hadn't asked his permission to be a character? Would he be honored?

This got me thinking further: What if someone reading her novel had found the idea of conducting traffic so charming that the reader then took up the practice? What if a different author then wrote about that reader?

What if the original conductor himself had been inspired by a story he'd read that my professor didn't know existed, but which she ended up referencing in her novel, which was then read by a third person who had read the original and thought my professor's reference had been intentional?

Perhaps ideas in art cycle through the world much like atoms of carbon do.

Alphabetical Shuffle: How?

The stretch of songs beginning with "How" are an aching, beautiful set, and has me wondering another very human question: Why is "How" so difficult sometimes? It can be even more difficult than "Why".

How (The Cranberries)
How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
How Deep is Your Love (The Bee Gees)
How Do I Let A Good Man Down? (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings)
How Do You Sleep? (Evangelicals)
How Do You Sleep? (John Lennon)
How Does It Feel? (Ronettes)
How Does It Feel? (Spacemen 3)
How Long Do I Have To Wait For You? (Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings)
How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths)
How Sweet It is (To Be Loved By You) (Junior Walker & the All Stars)
How Sweet It is (To Be Loved By You) (Marvin Gaye)
How You Been (Certainly, Sir)
How? (John Lennon)

Alphabetical Shuffle: Car, car chase terror

I've been listening to all of my songs in alphabetical order by title for a few weeks now (only while at work). Occasionally, a true bit of poetry emerges from what is ultimately a sort of shuffle, and while I mostly comment on this via Twitter, I'm going to start documenting such moments here when they require lengthier explanation. Here's one now...

"Car" by Built To Spill followed by "car chase terror!" by M83

"Car" is one of my favorite Built To Spill songs and it has a wonderful line in it: "I want to see movies of my dreams." "car chase terror!" seems like the audio portion of a movie about someone's dream and thus seems like a fitting response to that line. It adds a little careful-what-you-wish-for element as well, since this particular dream seems more like a nightmare.

Go Solo

Several years ago, while at a party, a friend of mine remarked that musicians tend to fare better once they go solo after having been in a band. I think his statement was something like, "I should just go solo; everybody does better once they go solo." This prompted us to start listing examples and counter examples. It dominated the conversation at that party and well beyond.

Recently, while attempting to bring some order to the files on an old hard drive, I found the list we made and was again amused. Since I now have a blog, I can post it here! And hopefully the comments feature will allow the list to grow.

I've added my current commentary in brackets.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
First, the rules we gradually established were:

- The band cannot have contained the solo artist's name (e.g. Paul Simon / Simon & Garfunkel doesn't count)

- The band must have temporally preceded the solo career (e.g. George Harrison / Traveling Wilburys doesn't count)

- Solo career means solo MUSIC career (e.g. Keanu Reeves / Dogstar doesn't count)

- Solo career also means SOLO career (e.g. Cracker / Camper Van Beethoven doesn't count)

- Success/popularity is measured by record sales (I've been using the RIAA database to figure gold/platinum sales -- thanks, Eric [Roston, I assume? Also, this database seems a lot crappier for doing this kind of research now.])

Where there has been controversy, I've relayed the RIAA stats as the ratio of the number of solo records that went either gold or platinum to the number of band records that did.

[Additionally, I've now italicized examples on this list I find highly suspect, but that, due to the aforementioned crappification of the RIAA database, I am too lazy to do the math for.]

Ryan Adams (Whiskey Town)
Beyonce (Destiny's Child)
Bjork (The Sugarcubes)
Bobby Brown (New Edition)
Busta Rhymes (Leaders of the New School)
David Cassidy (The Partridge Family)
Nick Cave (The Birthday Party)
Eric Clapton (Cream)
George Clinton (Parliament Funkadelic)
Phil Collins (Genesis)
Dr. Dre (NWA)
Danny Elfman (Oingo Boingo)
Eminem (D-12)
Brian Eno (Roxy Music)
Roky Erickson (The 13th Floor Elevators)
Peter Frampton (Humble Pie)
Peter Gabriel (Genesis)
Juliana Hatfield (Blake Babies)
Lauryn Hill (The Fugees)
Billy Idol (Generation X)
Michael Jackson (The Jackson Five)
Joan Jett (The Runaways)
Janis Joplin (Big Brother)
Paula Kelly (The Drop Nineteens)
Ben Kweller (Radish)
Kool Moe Dee (Treacherous Three)
Ted Leo (Chisel)
Aimee Mann (Til Tuesday)
Ricky Martin (Menudo) [This one's weird -- isn't Menudo still a "band"?]
Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs)
George Michael (Wham!)
Van Morrison (Them)
Ozzy Osborne (Black Sabbath) -- 47:27
Iggy Pop (The Stooges)
Lou Reed (The Velvet Underground) -- 2:0
Lionel Ritchie (The Commodores)
Diana Ross (The Supremes) -- 19:5
Elliot Smith (Heatmiser)
Will Smith (DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince)
Rod Stewart (The Faces)
Sting (Police) -- 32:25
Justin Timberlake (N'Sync)
Tupac (Digital Underground)
Steve Winwood (Traffic)
Neil Young (Buffalo Springfield)

And the even more controversial:
Morrissey (The Smiths) -- 3:3
Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) -- 0:0
Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac) -- I'm leaving this up here for history's sake, but 17:46.
Frank Zappa (The Mothers of Invention) -- 1:1