Once upon a time I did this Brisbane band (“brisband”) family tree. It started as “something to do” over the forced Christmas vacation in 2004. The idea came from the first article in Rolling Stone about Custard (which wasn’t actually about Custard) and how they were in and related to so many other bands in Spring Hill. So thus inspired I realised I could do my own little network — all visually displayed like spaghetti and meatballs.
Initially it was purely narcissistic. I just wanted to prove my band was related (and thus perhaps on a par) to a whole lot of much more awesome bands. But then it just kept growing.
EVERYONE in a Brisbane band seemed interested. But, just quietly, more than interested. When they saw it they were like, “Holy shit!”. And then EVERYONE wanted to help.
So, apart from reaching out to bands via the internet, I printed this bad-boy out on A3 paper and took it to all the shows I went to and thrust it into people’s faces (and shoved a pen in there too) and said, “Can you add to this or clean up any mistakes?”
Without exception, everyone was happy to help and it really did give me a great opportunity to meet a lot of people. In those days I was much younger and shyer and just generally a dickhead. So the “tree” was such a facilitator.
It got so nuts I just had to stop. It just couldn’t be displayed in a LINEAR/2D fashion anymore. Plus I got bored so above is a snap-shot in time. It has lots of mistakes apparently, but it is the best I could do. My friend Mongoloid Dave has posted it on his website ever since 2004 and he tells me it gets downloaded the most out of all the other awesome stuff he makes available. Weird!
And I am acutely reminded of it tonight because the only reason I know of “Clag” – see the previous blog — is because I discovered them through the tree. They had broken up by the time I was ‘around’ and I only knew their songs through the magic of MP3s on the internet.
So enjoy!
HI RES VERSION:
DJ GLAD RAPPA 