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meccalecca

Voice of Reason

Gender: Male

Location: The Land of Enchantment

noWaxJim wrote:

Of course, seeing as this site is based on charts, simple solution would be to stick everything in a chart like "History of Music - Punk Picks" or "Jamaican Joints" or whatever...

I think that's the way to do it. I've started my NYC late 70s chart and I think it'll prove useful in the future for sure.
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http://jonnyleather.com

creator

Age: 37

Location: chicago

sp4cetiger wrote:

I could, but it would make the individual entries much longer and even less forum-friendly. One thing we could do is, every few years, put together all of the substantive posts and a list of recs into a single summary for each topic (e.g., punk, prog, Jamaica, etc.).

Thoughts anyone?

I was thinking that we could separate it into decades.

A Guide to the 1950's
A Guide to the 1960's
etc.

And then we could separate each of those into genres. For example, the 1970's could have sections for progressive rock, roots reggae, post-punk, punk rock, and whatever other genres were significant to that period. Of course, many of those genres spanned multiple decades, so they may appear in other guides. Each genre could even be worked on by multiple people; for example, if meccalecca wants to discuss NYC punk and another member wants to discuss British punk during the 1970's.

I also wouldn't mind compiling everything into a PDF or chart at the end. Smile

sp4cetiger

noWaxJim wrote:

Either that or get albumaster to open a whole new sub-forum for it... this sounds like it could be quite a substantial undertaking, much like Mancsoulsister's book when unfortunately never saw the light of day. You'll get people commit then at the last minute bail out.

Yeah, fortunately that won't have much of an impact on the project as a whole if it happens. I had originally planned to write everything myself, so anything that others can contribute is just bonus.

Quote:

Of course, seeing as this site is based on charts, simple solution would be to stick everything in a chart like "History of Music - Punk Picks" or "Jamaican Joints" or whatever...

I think this is a good idea as a supplement. Anybody who is hesitant to contribute should remember that the text that they write can easily double as chart notes.

Still, it's difficult to communicate a historical narrative in chart form, so I also think it would be good to consolidate the text somewhere. A sub-forum probably isn't necessary, but we could add a link to the consolidated text and thread in one of the existing sticky threads. The history thread itself shouldn't need to be stickied right now, since it will get bumped every time I add a summary.

sp4cetiger

creator wrote:

I was thinking that we could separate it into decades.

A Guide to the 1950's
A Guide to the 1960's
etc.

And then we could separate each of those into genres. For example, the 1970's could have sections for progressive rock, roots reggae, post-punk, punk rock, and whatever other genres were significant to that period. Of course, many of those genres spanned multiple decades, so they may appear in other guides. Each genre could even be worked on by multiple people; for example, if meccalecca wants to discuss NYC punk and another member wants to discuss British punk during the 1970's.

I also wouldn't mind compiling everything into a PDF or chart at the end. Smile

Whew, this is kind of making me dizzy thinking about it. It would be nice to have threads running in parallel; that is, some people working on the '50s, some on the '60s, and so on, but it seems like it would be difficult to organize in thread form. Certainly it could be organized after the writing is all done, but I wouldn't want to leave things in a mess (or worse, unposted) in the event that we never actually finished the project...

I'll have to think about it a bit... maybe a subforum with dedicated genre/decade threads really is the way to go.

creator

Age: 37

Location: chicago

sp4cetiger wrote:

Whew, this is kind of making me dizzy thinking about it. It would be nice to have threads running in parallel; that is, some people working on the '50s, some on the '60s, and so on, but it seems like it would be difficult to organize in thread form. Certainly it could be organized after the writing is all done, but I wouldn't want to leave things in a mess (or worse, unposted) in the event that we never actually finished the project...

I'll have to think about it a bit... maybe a subforum with dedicated genre/decade threads really is the way to go.

I'm not sure that it's possible to organize it in thread form... I mean, the history of music is a pretty expansive topic. Very Happy

I assumed that members would communicate through PM or set up a document on google docs, which allows multiple people to edit and discuss it in real time. I may be missing the point, though; what was your original intention?

sp4cetiger

creator wrote:

I'm not sure that it's possible to organize it in thread form... I mean, the history of music is a pretty expansive topic. Very Happy

I assumed that members would communicate through PM or set up a document on google docs, which allows multiple people to edit and discuss it in real time. I may be missing the point, though; what was your original intention?

First and foremost, it should be a conversation -- I just want to get people talking about where music comes from rather than simply throwing album recs around. I have personally found that understanding a music's origins can really help me to appreciate it and I don't think that music history and music appreciation should be left completely separate.

The second goal is to provide users with album recs. Suppose a particular user is a big fan of Bob Marley, but wants to know more about Jamaican music. Or suppose a user really enjoys psychedelic rock, but wants to explore past Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane -- they can go to the history thread to learn about the 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola.

While the former goal requires that we preserve the linear thread format (so that the conversation makes sense), the latter is easier if the content of the conversation is consolidated. The question I'm trying to answer right now is how we do that consolidation. Do we put it in chart form? Do we make separate threads with genre/decade summaries? Or something else, like a PDF or Google Doc?