Wednesday, June 22, 2011

It’s a kind of magic carpet ride



















I subscribe to a number of art and design RSS feeds and one, in particular, focuses on information graphics or data visualization. Even though their latest blog entry, A Timeline of Modern Music was, obviously, music related, what was unique about this infographic was that it was interactive instead of static as most of them tend to be.

Okay, I thought, let’s see if Queen makes an appearance somewhere in the 100-year musical span that the infographic purports to cover. So by pushing up on the “navigate” button on the right side of the window, the years scroll down towards the user along with relevant historical moments from that year in the seven genres of music listed at bottom.

Logic would dictate that Queen shouldn’t make an appearance until 1971 at the earliest — unless the graphic was including birthdays — so I scrolled way the hell up to the late 60s and slowed the carpet ride down to a slow glide so I could click on some of the flagged moments to see where we were at. Nothing Queen related for 1971, 1972, 1973, or 1974 . . . but the only media entry 1975 was the video for Bohemian Rhapsody, which kickstarted the music video age. Ha, there it was.

To be honest, I half-expected The Buggles would get that distinction in 1981 when Video Killed the Radio Star became the first music video played on MTV. (As an aside, Russell Mulcahy directed this video so there’s still a Queen tie-in to that landmark moment as well.)

There was nothing else Queen-related on this infographic as far as I could tell — not even a mention about Freddie’s death or the tribute concert. Oh well, at least they made an appearance nonetheless.

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