Armed only with "a box of colored crayons," Guardian journalist Dorian Lynskey has produced a singular history of popular music. Taking his cue from Simon Patterson's celebrated piece of Brit-art "The Great Bear" - the London Underground map with the stations replaced with the names of comedians, philosophers, saints and footballers - Lynskey has ascribed each station on the tube system to a band or musician. To make matters more complicated, he has also designated each line to a genre and tried to match every transfer station with an artist who links the intersecting "lines" of music. Hence it is now theoretically possible to take the Blues and Country line from Louis Jordan, change at Beck, and then ride the Electronica and Dance line all the way to Kraftwerk. Posters of the map are for sale here. (via The Modern Age)
The Village Voice, meanwhile, has an interview with various members of the Wu-Tang Clan, who began their comeback tour yesterday in New Haven, Conn. As with all extended family get-togethers, the Wu-Tang reunion has been beset with complications: Not least the logistical dilemmas posed by getting the eight surviving members, and various affiliates, in the same place at once. "It's always going to be hard to put 12 people together," says Mathematics. "Everybody is different, and we all grew up. Everybody is grown men nowadays; we all have family. Twelve, 13 years down the line, people do change." Still, U-God remains optimistic: "It's been 12 years of miscommunications, 12 years of burned bridges," he says, "but Wu-Tang is still the greatest rap crew of all time."
-- Matt Glazebrook
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