Paul Worthington

Follow threads. There are more connections than you think.

I know it’s ancient history to many of you, but it was news to me when I learned that the surviving members of Joy Division had formed New Order after Ian Curtis died. It went something like this: I liked “Love Will Tear Us Apart” but didn’t know who did it. I also liked “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Blue Monday” and a bunch of other songs, and I knew they’re by New Order, but I never drew the connection until some time in 2007. I don’t even know how I first made the connection.

There’s a similar story around Depeche Mode and Erasure. And there’s a similar story around Bauhaus and Love & Rockets. So I started listening to those bands and others from the same period, all a little more closely. I started discovering some music I really liked and some I didn’t really care for. But I never would have found any of it if I hadn’t stumbled onto these little connections.

I had started playing with concept maps a while back, and an early result of that play is my now-famous concept map of “The Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies. I was fascinated by these new musical connections I was learning about, so I decided to keep track of them in a map of their own.

I had started another map that was pretty much the same idea, only it started with the connection of guitarists Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton through the Yardbirds, and grew out from there to encompass The Who and the Faces and the Rolling Stones, and Humble Pie and Bad Company and … well, you get the idea.

I started a new map, beginning with Echo & the Bunnymen. That led me, of course, to Julian Cope and The Teardrop Explodes. And when I added Siouxsie & the Banshees that led me, of course, to the Sex Pistols and Magazine, and Adam & the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow, etc.

Not too far into making the new map, I recognized the scope would be British punk and post-punk, circa approximately 1976 – 1986. As reference sources, I am using Wikipedia and MusicBrainz, among others. The contributors to those sites and databases are driven to include every possible combination, all collaborations, a great deal of trivia. For my band tracing map, I found I have to really zero in on some fairly coarse chunks of data.

To keep the work simple, at least in these early seeding stages, I formed a handful of guidelines that just came about organically as I added names and relationships. Without some operating rules, the map would be immense and complicated, with so many relationships requiring qualifiers.

Rules for the Band Trace map

1. Work with bands, even duos, but not solo artists.
   1. Therefore I included Pet Shop Boys and Yazoo but excluded Gary Numan.
2. Focus on actual named band members who recorded albums as part of the band.
   1. This rule counts out collaborations of: songwriting, singer duets, or other one-off guest appearances, and touring-only members.
   2. Therefore I will ultimately include Robert Smith as a connection for Siouxsie & the Banshees because of the live album Nocturne and his work on Hyæna, but I’m not yet counting the Morrissey/Siouxsie duet on “Interlude”. Bending this rule could be good or bad, so I am still thinking about it.
3. First emphasize individuals who formed bands, and then those who joined bands.
   1. Therefore I will have to focus only on named recording full-fledged band members, and I will be able to trace band genesis as well as growth and progress.

Here’s a tiny excerpt of the map so far. The example here shows how Siouxsie & the Banshees, Ultravox, the Sex Pistols, and Swing Out Sister are all connected. Click this thumbnail to see it larger (and even the larger image is only half the size of the original).

Photos: Paul Worthington and Yves Lorson