The music world gets broken down in graphic form

Every now and then a book comes across the desk here and I wonder how I ever got along without it for all of these years. The "Infographic Guide to Music," as well as its companion guides to literature, sports and life, the universe and everything, is not one of those books, but it's close.

Filled with page after page of lists, charts and graphs of all types - in fact, you could probably put together a graphic detailing the many types of graphs in the books - the real value is the kinds of information contained in the boxes. Some are simply fun trivia, and some are more factual, like the one showing music sales by genre in the U.S. and Europe.

Did you know The Beach Boys have released 412 songs on 77 albums and several have appeared on multiple albums? They released 29 studio albums, five live albums and 43 compilations. "Good Vibrations" appears on 37 albums, while "God Only Knows" has appeared on 33 Beach Boys releases. That's mining the same vein over and over.

There is also a helpful four-quadrant grid detailing how you should file all of your Radiohead songs by genre on your MP3 player. It breaks down each album by color code and then song by number and places them in either the "indie," "alt-rock," "electronic" or "ambient" quadrant.

And did you know that "Saturday Night Fever" is essentially tied with "The Bodyguard" at 40 million copies sold as the best-selling soundtrack of all time. Or that James Brown's "Funky Drummer" is the most sampled song of all time, with part of the groove having been used by 184 other artists. Sly Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" is next at 127 times.

As to the artist or artists who have been sampled the most, Parliament and its sister ship Funkadelic are Nos. 1 and 3. Kool & the Gang is second.

There are several sections detailing an artist's various degrees of separation from other celebrities. John Hiatt can be linked to Doris Day, for example, Rihanna is six degrees of separation from Princess Diana, Leonard Cohen, Indiana Jones and Alfred Hitchcock.

Another graphic details the twisted career of David Bowie and his many incarnations.

We learn what drummers Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, John Bonham and Keith Moon had in their kits, including the brand and size of each piece in a section titled "Does Size Matter?" The first two played four-piece kits, while the Led Zeppelin drummer used five pieces and Moon beat on a nine-piece Premier Custom kit.

Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.

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