My old (and new) writing about music
Years ago I attempted to write a big ol' blog about the history of chart music. Er... twice. Once on Medium and once again on Ghost.
Then I recovered everything from both, and edited into them one blog post for posterity. Up to the end of 1959 was the Ghost version, which was somewhat better edited and had some research errors corrected. 1960-1966 was the (older) Medium version. Both may contain factual inaccuracies, the Medium version most likely more of them.
In the interests of added confusion, I then started to extend it further. Anything after the comment about spinning plates and a virtuoso act from 1966 is new, or at least newer than the other things. Factually inaccurate content thereof as yet to be determined.
Then I got to the 1970s, and things started to get really interesting as I discovered a world I'd never explored in such depth before, one where a single type of rock took over almost everything, and the pop charts accumulated manias like they were filling out a sticker book. By the time I got back to records I knew, I was writing nearly 10,000 words per year of deeply personal observations about collecting and listening to old records.
Which is to say the single blog post got very unwieldy indeed.
So as of now my foolhardy errand to review the entire UK pop charts has a new and somewhat more permanent home:
Timberwolf
I'll try to update the blog when there's something useful bloggy to say about it, like metacommentary or the publication of a new chunk. Otherwise, that link is the new place to go.
And?
Wow. If I'd known quite what an endeavour this would be, how much I would have to slow down and go into detail after the comparitively easy years of the 1950s, I doubt I'd ever have started. Still, I think I am getting through this at a rate where I am writing about charts slightly faster than the charts are creating new charts, and more will continue to appear until I have finally caught up with the present day, or at least that point in 2017 when I started this.
