Lump­ing millions—billions!—of peo­ple togeth­er arbi­trar­i­ly by their birth­dates sounds ridicu­lous in the abstract. But when we lump togeth­er gen­er­a­tions with clus­ters of pop cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, it always seems to give the con­cept flesh. A cer­tain cohort around the world—ye olde Gen­er­a­tion X (though few­er and few­er peo­ple prob­a­bly know where that comes from)—can mea­sure their com­mon sen­si­bil­i­ties by a con­stel­la­tion of musi­cal ref­er­ences dat­ing back to the late six­ties and for­ward to the ear­ly oughts (where­by the runts of the bunch final­ly got around to hav­ing kids and most­ly stopped leav­ing the house after din­ner).

But instead of a con­stel­la­tion for the web of con­nec­tions that some­how joins Ryan Adams, The Spe­cials, and Sui­cide, the graph­ic above (view it in a larg­er zoomable for­mat here) takes as its source the cir­cuit dia­gram for the first com­mer­cial tran­sis­tor radio from 1954, and well… “Well Done,” is all I can say. Design­er James Quail began “Alter­na­tive Love,” as it’s called, with the Sex Pis­tols, then worked his way back to David Bowie, the MC5, the Stooges, and the Vel­vet Under­ground and for­ward to The Strokes, Radio­head, the Arc­tic Mon­keys, and Arcade Fire.

These lin­eages seem fair­ly obvi­ous, as does the pro­gres­sion from the Ramones through the Smiths in the four large cir­cles in the cen­ter, which dri­ve pow­er­ful cur­rents to the dis­parate likes of Nir­vana, Depeche Mode, Shel­lac, the Human League, and Can. Does it work his­tor­i­cal­ly? Not exact­ly, but that’s hard­ly the point.

Quail’s “chart­ed his­to­ry of counter-cul­ture rock music,” writes Mar­garet Rhodes at Wired, “spills out… not in any kind of lin­ear board game way.” It start­ed with a rumor—that the audi­ence of the Sex Pis­tols’ June 4, 1976 show at the Less­er Free Trade Hall in Man­ches­ter “includ­ed guys who would go on to start bands like The Smiths, Joy Divi­sion, and the Buz­zcocks.” It might as well have jumped off from Bri­an Eno’s famous quote about every­one who bought the Vel­vet Underground’s debut album start­ing their own band. What mat­ters here is that it works: explor­ing the num­ber of intri­cate con­nec­tions between these bands with more breadth and imme­di­a­cy than most alter­na­tive cul­ture his­to­ries.

While Rhodes com­pares it to a stream­ing ser­vice that uses “musi­cal con­nec­tions to iden­ti­fy lis­ten­ing rec­om­men­da­tions,” there’s much more going on here than Pandora’s algo­rithms might man­age. You’ll find the garage rock revival­ism of Thee Oh Sees, The White Stripes, and Ty Segall pop up on your inter­net radio, but most machine intel­li­gences wouldn’t link them so neat­ly, as Quail does, with sem­i­nal, if obscure, acts like Bil­ly Childish’s 90s band Thee Head­coats or 60s garage rock­ers The Son­ics. Dorothy, the design house respon­si­ble for “Alter­na­tive Love,” allows you to zoom in on every part of the dia­gram to find lit­tle clus­ters of jan­gle pop, shoegaze, post-punk, grunge, synth pop, Brit­pop, hard­core, and neo-psych.

The blue­print, Dorothy explains, “cel­e­brates over 300 musi­cians, artists, man­agers and pro­duc­ers who (in our opin­ion) have been piv­otal to the evo­lu­tion of the alter­na­tive and inde­pen­dent music scene.” You can buy the blue­print as a poster ($45), and it will make a bril­liant gift for the mid­dle-aged music nerd in your life, as does an ear­li­er dia­gram, “Elec­tric Love,” which traces the devel­op­ment of elec­tron­ic music from Thomas Edi­son to Nine Inch Nails, using—what else?—the schemat­ic of a Theremin.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The stan­dard sys­tem of musi­cal nota­tion has, through­out its evo­lu­tion, served many dif­fer­ent eras of human­i­ty, and increas­ing­ly many dif­fer­ent cul­tures, quite well indeed. Still, though, when its pure­ly visu­al ele­ments can’t get the com­po­si­tion­al inten­tion ful­ly across, one must resort to incor­po­rat­ing ver­bal instruc­tions, and some­times those instruc­tions can seem… uncon­ven­tion­al. Clas­sic FM’s list of “bizarre, per­plex­ing and dis­tress­ing per­for­mance direc­tions” includes com­mands to play at “tem­po di PBS doc­u­men­tary,” to “con­tin­ue in tem­po, ignor­ing con­duc­tor,” and — these favorites of Erik Satie — to play as if “imbi­bet” (drunk­en) and “cor­pu­len­tus” (cor­pu­lent).

Not long ago, jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia, a man who’s seen a more than a few scores in his time, tweet­ed out a set of images of what he called “blunt musi­cal direc­tions.” These instruct their per­form­ers to “play with­out bitch­ing about the key” — G‑flat major not, I gath­er, being the most enjoy­able of them all — to make a “soft moan through instru­ment if pos­si­ble,” to “STAND; TURN AROUND; BEND OVER AND PLAY OBOE BETWEEN LEGS,” to “play with­out tak­ing a pic­ture and upload­ing to Face­book,” and — per­haps most impor­tant of all — to “lay that shit down!”

To those who can’t read a score, the abil­i­ty to turn a bunch of lines, dots, and oth­er even less intu­itive­ly deci­pher­able sym­bols into full-bod­ied music on the fly looks like a super­pow­er. But those who can read a score know that the real musi­cian­ship all hap­pens between what some com­pos­er wrote on the page and what the audi­ence hears, bal­anc­ing loy­al­ty to the com­poser’s inten­tion with the degree of per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion that makes the piece come alive. All the dis­ci­pline cul­ti­vat­ed through musi­cal train­ing no doubt ensures that most of them can resist the temp­ta­tion of Face­book while actu­al­ly play­ing, but when a com­poser’s direc­tions get real­ly ambigu­ous, cranky, or sim­ply strange — well, that’s where their pro­fes­sion­al judg­ment comes in. And so live music remains inter­est­ing, even this deep into the age of the record­ed stuff.

via @Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

“Hum­ming­bird,” A New Form of Music Nota­tion That’s Eas­i­er to Learn and Faster to Read

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“The last peo­ple any­one expect­ed to come out of that gig as being the mem­o­rable ones was Queen,” said Bob Geld­of in an inter­view, look­ing back at the band’s stun­ning 24 minute set at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. In front of 72,000 peo­ple in Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um and mil­lions watch­ing world­wide, Queen resus­ci­tat­ed their career with a selec­tion of hits and new mate­r­i­al.

The band, as Roger Tay­lor says in the mini doc below, was “bored” and “in a bit of a trough.” They also had been crit­i­cized for play­ing Sun City in South Africa dur­ing the reign of Apartheid.

Going into Live Aid, a lot of the artists didn’t know what to expect of the entire event. Many, includ­ing Bob Geld­of him­self, won­dered if the event would flop. But Queen more than any of them seemed to intu­it right from the start the impor­tance of the day, though they were very ner­vous back­stage. But once onstage they com­plete­ly own it, even more so Fred­die Mer­cury who ris­es to the occa­sion as a front man and as a singer, giv­ing one of his best per­for­mances.

In that short set, Queen gives a full con­cert worth of ener­gy and the audi­ence responds. Not all were Queen fans, but by the end every­body had become one, singing along to “We Are the Cham­pi­ons” and “We Will Rock You.” Across the Atlantic, the 90,000 strong Philadel­phia audi­ence fol­lowed suit, watch­ing the jum­botron simul­cast.

“Do you now how hard it is to get someone’s atten­tion who’s on the oth­er side of the room?” asks Dave Grohl of Foo Fight­ers in this oth­er short doc on the set. “Imag­ine a sta­di­um and mak­ing them sing along with you.”

This hot sum­mer con­cert would turn out to be the zenith of Queen’s career. There would be more albums and sin­gles, but Fred­die Mer­cury would slow­ly suc­cumb to AIDS, and dis­ap­pear from pub­lic view, until pass­ing in 1991. The Live Aid set stands as one of the band’s final, icon­ic, and major achieve­ments. Watch it, in all of its glo­ry, above. You can find this, and oth­er Live Aid per­for­mances, on this 4 disc DVD.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.