I wanted to make a really fun introductory video using iMindMap 10 – YEP, the brand new version as I type in January 2017 – which WASN’T all about mind mapping!
Over the months I’ve come to realise that I’m spending too much time on the technical side of mapping and not enough on the creative aspect. I’ve often drawn the parallel with photography: you can be interested in the buttons and gee-whizz specifications, but in the end, if you don’t actually point your camera at anything interesting, or interpret something uninteresting in an interesting way, well… what is the point!
I’m genuinely interested in both sides – the technical and the creative – but for me the latter often suffers at the hands of the former. Computers, for example, are a wonderful invention, no-one would deny that. But what I really like is that I can take an original picture in the streets of Paris one minute, and share it with thousands of people (or even just one) in Australia the next.
Artistically, this isn’t a mind map I’m ‘proud’ of, as I may be with some of the others I’ve published on this site. It is, though, probably the one which is the most ‘honest’ in that it’s me just talking about something I love – music – without getting hung up on complicated design elements and existential life choices!
It’s just music, man, and you should let it flow over you as nature intended. I strongly urge you to go forth and seek out the complete tracks, albums and back catalogues of the groups featured in this video.
Infinitely more pleasing to me than a comment on the mind map would be someone saying that they didn’t know such and such a track before and they absolutely love it. That would be the best, most satisfying reaction of all. Rock on!
?This mind map was created using the iMindMap 10 software, which we love here at Mind Map Mad! Try a full working version free for a week and get 10% off if you buy through us by clicking one of the pretty buttons below!
JPG Image 800 px ~ JPG Image 1920 px ~ JPG Image 3500 px
PDF Doc 1.3MB ~ PDF Doc 3MB ~ Sab on Biggerplate!
Feel free to use my ‘Magical Musical Mind Map Tour’ mind map as follows:
1) For any NON-commercial use
2) Leave it EXACTLY as it is
3) Don’t change ANYTHING
4) Make sure the © Copyright text is included and intact
5) See 2) and 3) (you get the idea!)
You CAN reproduce it online or embed it in your blog or website as long as you…
6) Respect 1-5 above
7) Include a credit to ‘Sab Will / Mind Map Mad’ AND include a clickable link to this page ( http://www.mindmapmad.com/magical-musical-mind-map-tour/ ) on the web page next to or near the image – thanks!
Anyway, it’s a place absolutely crammed with cool mind maps, including mine – he he! You can download the actual original iMindMap file (the mind mapping software I use) and play around with it yourself. Nice!
My first EVER live gig, Hammy Odeon on Boxing Day 1979, and wow. Mind well and truly blown.
This was a little while before Queen did some seriously crap stuff like Radio Gaga and they were still churning out brain-curdling pieces like Mustapha and Fun It from the year-before album Jazz, although neither appear on the Live Killers unfortunately.
Queen Live Killers came out in 1979 too and what you see on the cover was basically what I got, legendary levitating light rig and all.
It’s probably impossible to overestimate the effect this experience had on an impressionable 14-year-old obsessed with music, girls, still running (but not for long) and soon-to-come rock pubs (far too long)!
As mentioned elsewhere on this page, I’d already discovered what heavy music was like through Slade and even the Beatles – check out Helter Skelter for probably the first ever heavy metal song! This live experience really did it for me though, and from then on there was no looking back.
I must admit that strangely I never really liked much they did after that concert with the odd exception and the poignant return to form (for me) that was Innuendo.
I maintain, like many boring old farts probably, that many people will actually have remained tragically unaware of some of the true Queen greats from those pre-Live Killer days, especially those who discovered them later.
Well, never mind, that’s life and Freddie and Co. will always have a precious place in my heart for many moments of pleasure spent in their company over the years.
Now then. Hmm. This is a tricky one. Well, to cut a long story short, when I came to France, over 20 years ago now, I was changing a lot. I was going through changes, if you will…
In coming to France I was, in effect, changing my country, my language, my job, my friends and my entire future. So I thought I’d change my name too.
I changed it to Sab. My first name that is, and I didn’t do it officially or anything. I just told people that my name was Sab and that’s it. The reactions were interesting, from indifferent acceptance to almost obsessional attempts to get me to tell them my ‘real’ name. I amused myself sometimes by holding out on those who insisted the most.
Anyway, Sab came from Black Sabbath, in case you hadn’t guessed. There was just something unbelievably cool about this group to a kid (even a 27-year-old one) in search of his own identity. It wasn’t that I was a uniquely die-hard Sabbath fan to the exclusion of all other brands. But the contraction of Sabbath pleased me on a number of counts – short, easy to remember, unusual, pronouncable by most, somewhat intriguing for many.
But before all the name-changing malarkey – many years before – came the music. It spoke to me profoundly: deliciously heavy, irreverent, original and dangerous. Headbanging heaven in other words!
I was a bit late coming onto the bandwagon, but luckily for me they were about to release a superb comeback album, albeit without Ozzy for the moment – Heaven & Hell – and that was well good enough for me; I was hooked.
My first ever ‘proper’ album by an actual, honest-to-goodness rock band and boy did they rock my world.
Before I ventured into the world of buying LPs (!) by the original groups I’d dabbled in some dodgy Top of the Pops cover version efforts, mainly for the big posters of semi-clad chicks that come with them. Sigh.
Slayed? (oops, just spotted the question mark too late for the mind map) moved me over into another reality though. This was something else and I wanted more and more of it.
It’s funny, coz most people will look back on Slade, if they ever do, and possibly think of a good-time rock ‘n’ roll band as part of the glam rock period along with Gary Glitter and The Sweet and T-Rex and that’s true. But.
BUT. They could play and they could rock. Really rock. The production on this album blew your brains out and then there’s Noddy’s voice. Now That. Is. A. Voice.
Their melodies were fantastic too, and it’s not many groups that could combine all those factors. My favs were probably Look At Last Night, Move Over, I Don’ Mind and of course the huge – HUGE – Gudbuy Gudbuy. And there were so many other great songs outside of this album too.
Unfortunately, my beloved album collection has slumbered in boxes in attics and storerooms and garages for many years now with only YouTube to bring the memories slamming back and a wickedly nostalgic smile to my face with memories of ridiculously loud headphone heaven in my unsuspecting parents’ living room of yesteryear.
Kate was with me throughout my teenage years, and unlike some metalheads, I was quite happy to appreciate the mental and the mystically melodic side by side. There was something about what Kate did – she was a true original, from the very start.
Stunningly beautiful, starkly different, daringly groundbreaking, what didn’t she have?
At first quite a few people just thought she was nuts or too quirky to last. They were at least half wrong. Or right. She went on to produce wonderfully idiosyncratic masterpieces and the only arguments I have is which is the most brilliant.
OK, I don’t listen to them much – there’s not enough time in this life – but like many of may absolutely favourite artists, it’s just comforting to know she’s there when I want and need her.
The albums I’ve chosen to show here, and the songs mentioned in the titles, don’t really have any significance; I just enjoyed typing them out. Although, of all her albums, it may be that The Dreaming was the one that surprised me the most, and that’s saying something!
Army Dreamers blew me away. When Hounds of Love came out it did the same and accompanied my student years, along with many millions of other people who felt the same. The Sensual World was amazing with The Fog killing me. The Red Shoes was great with Lily… killing me.
Her later stuff is interesting and I’m quite happy to let her do her thing and wander off where she wants to with the occasional gem popping up from time to time. Thanks Kate.
Led Zep came ready packaged as a ‘must-know’ group for anyone getting into the rock scene although I’d quickly learn that they were anything but ‘just’ heavy rock.
Stairway To Heaven was forever at No.1 in the Best Rock Songs Ever charts every year at the time, and although I loved it, I loved others even more. When I discovered Since I’ve Been Loving You and Kashmir I discovered myself too in a way I’d never known before.
Again, the list would be long, but The Immigrant Song, Achilies Last Stand, Tea For One and Whole Lotta Love all spent many hours monopolising the turntable.
There was something mythical about this group more than almost any others. They didn’t release singles. All their albums went inevitably to number 1. They were incredible musician. And I was too late to enjoy them live in their heyday, which was unfortunate but not a real problem; I had plenty of other groups who were still going strong to experience.
In fact, strangely, my live concert-going was like a brightly burning star which fizzled and faded after a few short years. Even by the time The Smiths came along, at a time I could easily have seen them a few times, I’d lost the desire to spend my money on such things.
In fact, I was an obsessional record, and then CD buyer, forever enlarging my collection, and then enjoying the fruits of my Saturday morning record shop rummaging on as state-of-the-art a hi-fi system a skint student could manage, and it wasn’t bad I can tell you. Deep joy would probably best describe my appreciation of this particular art form and that’s never gonna change.
This Canadian trio first came to my attention, I believe, through seeing cloth patches on denim jackets at rock gigs (sewn on by a million devoted mums) as was the custom in those days, and I was no exception. Except that I didn’t have a Rush patch. Heck, I didn’t even have a Rush album or know a single Rush song. That was about to change.
I remember grabbing a tattered copy of A Farewell To Kings after my customary Saturday pilgrimage down the hill to my local HMV record store where I’d take up residence for the morning. I used to try and subtly impress the people next to me as I nonchalantly flicked through the album covers at eye-watering speed which could only come from someone with an enormous musical knowledge and record collection to match.
A Farewell To Kings. Xanado. No, not the Olivia Newton John version. Cygnus X-1. Cinderella Man. No, not the Eminem version. To be quickly followed by Hemispheres, 2112, the early stuff and then the later stuff as and when eagerly awaited new discs were released.
Grace Under Pressure was a particular highlight for me, with Red Sector A remaining a seminal moment for me. Those chugging, churning chord changes, well, no-one could do them like Rush. Bastille Day, The Trees, The Fountain of Lamneth, A Passage To Bangkok, Tom Sawyer, Afterimage, Mystic Rhythms (I own mysticrhythms.com, for my poetry, seriously!), Open Secrets… the list goes on.
I admit that later albums tended to be a bit samey, but there’s still a reassuring pleasure to put one on, knowing that you’ll be bathed in Rush rhythms for the next 40 minutes or so.
John Peel was probably the one who helped me get into The Smiths. At the time there was Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now on the radio which was being treated as some sort of joke song because of its unconventionally depressive theme.
Unfortunately, many folks got stuck at that point and labelled The Smiths as a silly miserable group with a strange front man and that was the end of their investigative activities.
Hatful Of Hollow was the first album I bought, even before the proper first album The Smiths, strangely, and in some ways much richer. That so many of the songs on Hatful could have been layed down even before their official outing is still difficult to comprehend. This Charming Man, This Night Has Opened My Eyes, Back To The Old House, How Soon Is Now?, Reel Around The Fountain, Still Ill, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want…
Hey! Hang on a moment, am I just listing every track on the album, or what?
And when you thought you knew them, they surprised and got better and richer and deeper and darkly funnier and more heart-wrenchingly sad and on and on.
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me sums up for me their apotheosis and that album is a masterpiece even if everyone goes on about The Queen Is Dead. I love the second album too, Meat Is Murder, which showed that there was no way we were going to pigeonhole this group and that musically, thematically and lyrically they were really just getting going.
The beauty and inventiveness of the music linked to Morrissey‘s powerfully expressive voice and the essential rock solid bass and drums place them right up there in my book. And just in passing, a supremely honourable mention goes to Panic, where by having a hit, The Smiths obliged DJs up and down the country to play a song with the words ‘Hang the blessed DJ, Because the music that they constantly play; It says nothing to me about my life…’, not to mention the fantastically catchy chorus of Hang the DJ, hang the DJ; Hang the DJ, hang the DJ;…
Priceless. And Morrissey on his own has been responsible for many moments of delicious delirium too. Like Suedehead or Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself or Irish Blood, English Heart or… but I’m not going to go there – I get tears in my eyes every time see the expressions on the faces of the people with outstretched hands at his concerts on YouTube wanting to touch him, he who is SO important to so many… – or we’ll never finish this thing, enough said!
I’m proud to say that for me The Beatles are the greatest group ever. Now I know that’s not particularly original, and I’m a big fan of original, but then again, who was more original than The Beatles?
It always bewildered me that it seemed to be I who had to introduce my parents to the fab four from maybe 1977 onwards, they having been young 25-year-olds in 1995 when I came along. Amazing, as the Gruffalo would say. They must have been aware of them, but to be honest as a kid I grew up in a house bathed in the soporific strains of Bach and Mozart with the odd bit of Gilbert & Sullivan thrown in for good measure.
Good grief. Anyway, that both sewed a grudging appreciation for classical music later, but above all a world-shattering epiphany of my own when I discovered ‘real’ music for myself (and thanks to a couple of trendy new neighbours) around the time I started listening to the Top 20 on the radio on Sunday nights, with the aforementioned Slade album just around the corner.
The first album I ever bought by The Beatles, I’m also pleased to say, was Live At The Hollywood Bowl. I was almost more impressed by the screaming fervour witnessed by thousands of screaming girls every time the boys opened their mouths than the music itself. But that made me hungry for more, for much more. For everything.
There are no words to express the importance of The Beatles in my life, a bit like The Smiths and Black Sabbath and many others as you now know, but The Beatles probably top them all. OK, they’re just a group, and if you prefer Beethoven or Bob Marley or Louis Armstrong or Bruce Springsteen or pan pipes from the Andes or didgeridoos I totally get it, I do too! (I was joking about Bruce Springsteen.)
But nothing can ever equal the pure innocent perfection of those early Beatles melodies on their first few albums: Things We Said Today; A Taste Of Honey; All My Loving…
The huge hits period of A Hard Day’s Night and Help at the height of Beatlemania speaks for itself.
As they moved into uncharted waters with Revolver things started to get seriously eye-opening. And then Sergeant Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour came along and the musical melosphere shapeshifted once more.
If anything, the creative maturity, if there can be such a thing, of The White Album and Abbey Road, whether or not the group was starting to fall apart, is beyond reproach and has never been equalled. Listing tracks is fairly pointless but I’ll mention a couple anyway just because by doing so allows me to spend a few seconds with the melody in my head and possibly pop off to YouTube or Spotify to see what they’ve done with it: Cry Baby Cry; I Want You; Hey Bulldog; Don’t Let Me Down; Julia; Golden Slumbers; Helter Skelter; I Me Mine.
You see? Pointless. Unless it’s made you want to scuttle off to some octopus’s garden somewhere and investigate, in which case it won’t have been pointless at all.
*And the Rolling Stones in all that? Yep, the Rolling Stones, they were there too, and they were great, but they weren’t The Beatles. Paint It Black is from another place, and Mother’s Little Helper is profound and Miss You wiped me out and Angie is my daughter’s name. I’ve never understood people who are great fans of one group and hate another who are actually super too. They’re not football teams where such behaviour is to be expected. Music is music, and if I want to listen to American Witch by Rob Zombie followed by Younger Than Spring Time from South Pacific then I will and that’s just fine.
There are quite a few stand out moments – songs, videos, performances, one-hit-wonders even, which although they don’t have a huge number of great songs, they produced something that will remain an undisputed classic forever.
First Aid Kit aren’t one-hit-wonders and they are a wonderful group crafting a legacy, but when I think of them I tend to always come back to Wolf and its powerful video, although I like to think of it as Wolf Mother but I think that’s wrong.
So let this final section be a dedication to all the one-offs that in their way also changed things forever in my life at least.
Songs like Where Do You Go To My Lovely by Peter Sarstedt and Quantum Jump’s Lone Ranger and Terry Jacks’ Seasons In The Sun and J-Five’s Modern Times and Underpass by Jon Foxx and Shaggy’s Hey Sexy Lady and Sean Paul’s Get Busy and Modern Talking’s Atlantis Is Calling and Sandra’s Maria Magdalena and Styx’ Boat On The River and Mayer Hawthorne’s Green Eyed Love and Robbie Williams’ Tripping and Adele’s Rolling In The Deep and Shriekback’s This Big Hush and UB 40’s Tyler and Inna’s Cola Song and Take That (Yesss!!!!!)’s Kidz and Prince’s When Doves Cry and Eric Clapton’s I Shot The Sheriff and Lykke Li’s I Follow Rivers and You Belong by The Avener and Editors’ Papillon and Lana Del Rey’s Off To The Races and The Auteurs’ Showgirl and Vanessa Paradis singing Mistral Gagnant with Maxime Le Forestier and… well, you get the idea.
But to just give due credit to First Aid Kit… two Swedish sisters, Klara and Johanna Söderberg, whose voices produce sublime harmonies, they are here for a reason, because this song is magical – there’s no other word for it.
Music is a vast subject, considering an average fanatic will have listened to a large number of tracks most days of his or her life for many of the years he or she has been on the planet, a lot in other words.
So to attempt to synthesise my favourites into a nine or even ninety nine (or possibly nine hundred and ninety nine) branch mind map is a bit of a joke.
What about Pink Floyd and Richard Thompson and Cat Stevens and Black Uhuru and Ministry and Bjork and The Corries and Jacques Brel and Momus and Nick Cave and Eminem and The Clash and XTC and Judas Priest and Misty In Roots and Neil Young and Remedios Silva Pisa and Bebe and Charles Aznavour and The Pet Shop Boys and The
Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem and Abba and Leonard Cohen and Ralph McTell and Simon & Garfunkel and Dodgy and The Gypsy Kings and Killing Joke and Peter Green and Elvis and Pavarotti and The Scorpions and Janis Joplin and Yello and The Stranglers and Deep Purple and Silvio Rodrigues and Jethro Tull and Barrington Levy and Rainbow and The Sisters of Mercy and Metallica and Shaka Ponk and Don McLean and Body Count and Nick Drake and Y&T and Blondie and David Bowie and Ruth Copeland and Chris de Burgh The Spear of Destiny and Eartha Kitt and The Moody Blues and Jack White and America and Depeche Mode and Santana and The Pixies and Screaming Jay Hawkins and Captain Beefheart and The Manic Street Preachers and Genesis and Tenacious D and Eartha Kitt and The Beloved and Mike Oldfield and Joni Mitchell and Devendra Banhart and Yes and Blue Oyster Cult and Michael Jackson and The Cocteau Twins and Sabaton and The Goodies and… Rolf Harris?!
Many hundreds of other groups, singers, styles, eras and approaches could easily have replaced what you see here. That’s fine. I’ll live with that and this disclaimer.
If I hadn’t chosen a few I wouldn’t have made the map, shared a few great tracks and got on with something else. That’s life. Life is music. Sing Your Life.
As Morrissey said,
But don’t forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you’re older now
And you’re a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you
© 2017 Sab Will / Mind Map Mad
If you’d like to join our friendly mind map discussion groups on Facebook to learn more about mind mapping and submit your own creations, then you’re welcome!
Just click one or more of the buttons below and join up straight away – I look forward to meeting you there 😀
Here are those download links again, and don’t forget to let me know what you think here. What do you reckon about my ‘Magical Musical Mind Map Tour’ mind map? Did you enjoy hearing a few snippets of some cool songs as I circumnavigated a mind map? Where there any songs or groups you didn’t know? Which are you favourites?
Feel free to share and tell ’em the Mad Mapper sent ya! Success 🙂
JPG Image 800 px ~ JPG Image 1920 px ~ JPG Image 3500 px
PDF Doc 1.3MB ~ PDF Doc 3MB ~ Sab on Biggerplate!
Feel free to use my ‘Magical Musical Mind Map Tour’ mind map as follows:
1) For any NON-commercial use
2) Leave it EXACTLY as it is
3) Don’t change ANYTHING
4) Make sure the © Copyright text is included and intact
5) See 2) and 3) (you get the idea!)
You CAN reproduce it online or embed it in your blog or website as long as you…
6) Respect 1-5 above
7) Include a credit to ‘Sab Will / Mind Map Mad’ AND include a clickable link to this page ( http://www.mindmapmad.com/magical-musical-mind-map-tour/ ) on the web page next to or near the image – thanks!
Anyway, it’s a place absolutely crammed with cool mind maps, including mine – he he! You can download the actual original iMindMap file (the mind mapping software I use) and play around with it yourself. Nice!
Sab Will enjoys creating fun and helpful mind maps and articles on a wide range of topics.
As well as Mind Map Mad (this site!) Sab runs
Sab is available for training in innovative thinking, creative problem solving, mind mapping and teacher training in modern ‘learning to learn’ techniques. Please get in touch here to find out how increased creativity and innovation can help boost your business, or how modern approaches to learning can revolutionise your teaching or training.
P.S. Keep up to date will ALL Sab’s latest creative output over on his newest home on the web, the Sab Lab!
© 2017 Sab Will / Mind Map Mad
