Tuesday, February 3, 9pm Drinker's Tavern Market St., between Front & 2nd Sts. Subject Round: SPORTS MOVIES Sixth/final week in tournament cycle, the Big Prize is a Philadelphia Eagles tailgating beanbag toss game.
Wednesday, February 4, 7:30pm 12 Steps Down 9th & Christian Sts. Subject Round: NAME'S THE SAME
Wednesday, February 4, ~10 pm Ray's Happy Birthday Bar 1200 E. Passyunk Ave. (near 9th & Federal Sts.) Subject Round: FAMOUS FOURSOMES Note the time change; we're now deliberately making this "the late quiz" as that seems to work better for some odd reason.
Thursday, February 5, 8:30pm The Draught Horse 1431 Cecil B. Moore Ave. (Temple University campus, near Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.) Subject Round: FAMOUS ACCIDENTS
The first sensible article I've seen about those octuplets. How wrong is having octuplets? Wrong enough that when I type the word, the software I'm using to post this underlines it as an error!
This is the first of what I hope will be many semi-regular installments of the Now That's What I Call QuizmasterChris series of music compilations. I hear what they play in the bars these days; you need this. Trust me.
These will feature some commentary on my part on the blog so you get the background on what you're hearing. The method I'll use for posting these will be the method used by most internet bootleggers - a zipped file containing one folder, itself containing a set of properly numbered mp3s, these in turn linked to cover art and track listings also contained in said folder. I'm going to use Microsoft Publisher to make the CD inserts; you can open that via a standard Office suite and print away.
If you unzip the folder on to a hard drive, then burn the mp3s as audio files on to your own blank disc, and print the cover art - voila! - you just downloaded yourself nearly 80 minutes of programmed entertainment. You can of course also do whatever you feel like with the mp3s. If this is too much to follow, get a third grader to help you, they've had a few years' practice with this technology already.
The password to unlock the zip file is QUIZ. It will always be QUIZ.
In almost all cases the copyrights on this stuff ran out years ago, or are otherwise unenforced owing to obscurity and the fact there likely isn't any profit in attempting to enforce it. I like old, obscure music largely made by dead people, and you should, too.
This first compilation spans 1960-1986. It starts psychy/garagey and ends up punky. And you will enjoy it without complaint. Let me know how these work out for you in the Comments. Some track-based comments:
1) The Sex Machine nightclub was real, and really was here in Philadelphia. Track 1 is a WHAT radio ad of theirs from c. 1970. 2) The Rhythm Rockers were one of a bajillion instrumental/surf bands in the US. This track is from 1960, and is better than most. 3) Screaming Lord Sutch was Britain's Screamin' Jay Hawkins copycat/rockabilly pre-Alice Cooper horror rock madman and founder of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Sadly he took his own life, but years after his mid-'60s output such as this. 4) Apparently this British instrumental Austin Powers-type '60s go-go-a-rama wonderfulness by studio "group" Mood Mosaic was used as a BBC radio show theme for a good number of years. 5) This demented Coral Reef version of Neil Diamond's first hit appears to have come out of 1966 or '67; no more can I tell you. I pulled this track off of a website which had no info on the band at all. 6) Los Vidrios Quibrados were a Chilean band who released their heralded psych album Fictions in 1967. This is the first track. How many Chileans were sympathetic to a gay dandy in the '60s? My guess is not many. This track is a minor miracle. 7) The Zombies were one of the most talented British Invasion bands, and somehow ended up attached to Otto Preminger's film Bunny Lake Is Missing, which had a gimmick of not admitting anyone after the film started. What you have here is the audio of the film promo run in theaters in the late '60s. Jay of Philadelphia's Secret Cinema fame has shown this clip a few times; it's a crowd favorite! 8) As I understand it, what we have here is a mid-'60s comedy single recorded in Belgium, in Flemish, about a bathtub. (Flemish sounds like a cross between the Swedish Chef and Klingon.) It happens to also be a thick slice of kick-butt r'n'b rave up. 9) Anyone who collects '60s music has multiple versions of "I Can Only Give You Everything", which I believe was first recorded by Them. This Tommy Scott cover is the best I've heard; dig that wall of layered sound! 10) Max Frost & The Troopers were a studio band who recorded songs for the crazy teensploitation movie Wild in the Streets. This is my preferred cut from the soundtrack. Eastern tonalities, anyone? 11) Hi-Revving Tongues: New Zealand, late '60s, lovely pop track that makes all the Kiwi '60s psych comps. 12) I don't know much about Five by Five. They had a couple of awkward tracks on the Turds on a Bum Ride series of bootleg compilations, and I think they were Americans. This track rocks though... 13) The Cool Stove, from then-West Germany, apparently recorded this in 1969, although it sounds more '66/'67. 14) Hamilton Streetcar named themselves as a play on Jefferson Airplane. This track is better than all but a handful of Airplane songs. What happened to the band?! 15) Jimmy Curtiss was, or so I have read, James Curtis, a New York ad man who usually wrote commercial jingles. This 1967 single is poppy and silly in arrangement, but listen to that dark lyric! "I touch death... and it's soft and warm / It calls to me, come out of the storm..." This is a decade before "Don't Fear the Reaper." 16) One of the few albums you'll run into a lot in used bins and at flea markets that's worth your 25 cents both for kitsch value and actual moments of non-kitshcy enjoyment (although neither for more than 30 seconds at a time) is The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds - Celestial Counterpoint with Words and Music. It's as if someone forced Rod McKuen and Iron Butterfly into a studio at gunpoint, and no one was allowed to leave, even to pee, until they recorded an album's worth of astrology material. 17) Melanie wails on a Rolling Stones cover. And you thought she was only fit for roller skate songs! 18) The Bugs - American garage band c.'65/ '66, this sounds like the song in their live act that got the kids on the dance floor. 19) Opus 1 was a strange band name in that era for a band that straddled the Beach Boys/ garage band line, and the result is better than that description. 20) Now, we hit the '70s, and the hard stuff. This lacivious track is an early Cock Sparrer effort. More "rock" than almost all the rest of their catalog. 21) The claim is that this 1978 "Ode to Johnny Rotten" was the first or second punk record ever recorded in Sweden. Could the vocalist, who reportedly became obsessed after Sex Pistols show, sound any more like him?! I give you Zeppo & the Zepp-Zepps. 22) This Softies track is from a British 7" from the tail end of the '70s. 23) "Nova Lust" - The Shades - 1980, catchy U.S. punk rock out the wazoo. 24) The Feederz were out of Phoenix and ended up in San Francisco. Singer Frank Discussion stole Jello Biafra's wife, and the band suggested stealing everything else on their records. The first LP has a piece of sandpaper glued to both sides of the cover so you'll ruin the ones filed next to it. Their second album, from 1986, from which this Lewis Carroll poem set to calamity hails, bears a photo of the Space Shuttle blowing up. 25) Plastic Idols: Brilliant doggerel from the USA, 1980. Clocks in at less than 1:20! 26) The Inserts were a great Texas band from the early '80s. This track is from their 1981 7", a punk collector's dream. 27) Fearless Iranians from Hell were another Texas band. All of their songs - we're talking three albums and a 7" EP that I'm aware of at minimum - were about Muslim extremism. The vocalist was apparently an actual child of Iranian immigrants living in San Antonio. This track is from 1986. 28) The next time Dr. Cosby goes off on the loose morals of African-American youth these days, be sure to play him this track from his 1977 disco-comedy album Disco Bill.
Tuesday, January 27, 9pm Drinker's Tavern Market St., between Front & 2nd Sts. Subject Round: MIXED DRINKS Fifth week in tournament cycle, the Big Prize is a Philadelphia Eagles tailgating beanbag toss game. Said prize was more appealing a week ago.
Wednesday, January 28, 7:30pm 12 Steps Down 9th & Christian Sts. Subject Round: WINTER
Wednesday, January 28, 10 pm Ray's Happy Birthday Bar 1200 E. Passyunk Ave. (near 9th & Federal Sts.) Subject Round: FAMOUS FOURSOMES Note the time change; we're now deliberately making this "the late quiz" as that seems to work better for some odd reason.
Thursday, January 29, 8:30pm The Draught Horse 1431 Cecil B. Moore Ave. (Temple University campus, near Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore Ave.) Subject Round: LIQUIDS It's the post-Winter Break return!
Tuesday, January 20, 9pm Drinker's Tavern Market St., between Front & 2nd Sts. Subject Round: DESSERTS Fourth week in tournament cycle, the Big Prize is a Philadelphia Eagles tailgating beanbag toss game.
Wednesday, January 21, 7:30pm 12 Steps Down 9th & Christian Sts. Subject Round: INSECTS
Wednesday, January 21, 10 pm Ray's Happy Birthday Bar 1200 E. Passyunk Ave. (near 9th & Federal Sts.) Subject Round: FAMOUS TRIOS Note the time change; we're now deliberately making this "the late quiz" as that seems to work better for some odd reason.
The Draught Horse shuts down for Winter Break at Temple, and we'll be back to normal quizzing beginning January 29.
That's a photo from the Phils' parade. I have a few better ones that I might post together at some point in the future.
Allow me to rant about a source of some irritation for a bit. I'm pretty much a two-sport guy, what you call in your slippery English tongue of the baseball and of the football americano. As a native of this city and a localist/loyalist, this translated at a very young age to being fated with a Phillies/Eagles loyalty, one that certainly tests one's patience at times. (I'm something of a fraud in the other two sports and perk up largely out of city loyalty only when someone's in the playoffs.)
In the mid-'90s I moved into Center City and its adjacent neighborhoods as most Philadelphia residents who manage to buck the odds and get a college education do. That means that my friend and co-worker base shifted largely to people in the 10% of the city's population near the big buildings - that percentage of the city's population who get almost all of city government's attentions and almost all of the press coverage. That population of largely transient (a trend slowing as it becomes cool to live in the city again) college-educated folks are now most of the people you find at a Center City-ish sports bar or a party when the Phils or (more likely) Eagles are making a playoff run.
And frankly I find some of this intercoastal bandwagon jumping irritating and at times even a little creepy. By all means, cheer, that's cool, but it's when people get (or pretend to get) emotional about things... and I know you just got here... weird!
I mean, in the 1970s (and '90s) I had running arguments with Cowboys fans at school, always having the lack of a ring thrown in my face. I once trashed and discarded a Roger Staubach card fresh out of the pack in front of another kid just to piss him off (fan wise, financially foolish). I remember Wilbert Montgomery's NFC Championship Game TD run, and I was watching every game I could (once upon a time they held World Series games during school days) of the '80, '83 and '93 series. I was at a lot of home losses at the Vet to the stinkin' Expos and Padres. Every year, somehow, it was Expos and Padres tix.
I was at the New Year's Eve playoff win against Tampa that started the whole Eagles post-season kinda-sorta-successful run, I was miserable, cold and downhearted at the last game at the Vet, suddenly realizing how cold I was as the clock ticked away the season and the stadium. I was at the 4th-and-26 game, and from our angle you couldn't tell the first down was made for a good minute or so. You get the idea. Some of you have been around longer than me.
So these days I see people from Idatucky who moved to the city (or more usually to the domed city-within-a-city that is CC and its environs) less than the gestation period of a large mammal ago all decked out in Phils or Birds gear and I just think "What the dick?!" It gets especially creepy when the word "we" comes out. "What do you mean, we, paleface?", I think to myself...
"We ended the drought!" Eh? You've been here less time than the length of the Zapruder film, what drought... what we? I was 12 when the Sixers won last and was disappointed one hundred consecutive seasons since then. That, my friends, is a drought.
But, yeah, those past 14 months of recent, semi-interested fandom have been tough on you.
I've watched - literally watched - Brian Dawkins play about 200 games. One gets some attachment to a player over that period, and it's a little bizarre when you see the Dawkins jerseys on recent arrivals. I am reminded of that scene in Gangs of New York when the Irish dads are separated out at the immigrant intake area and handed a Union Army uniform.
It just rings hollow to me and it's all so... icky. I wonder, watching the Recent Philadelphia Sports Enthusiast, "OK, so did you just transfer your allegiance to Philadelphia teams from another... er, metro area (probably not "city" per se 'cause you're white)... on a dime, or did you just not care about pro sports until 15 minutes ago?" Either way, remind me not to trust you should the Soviets or Nazis take over. Creepy. I mean, when the robot-zombie-monkey-slaves revolt, I shoot you first and worry about them down the line. At least I know where the robot-zombie-monkey-slaves stand on the issue of my well-being as a free human. I don't need a second front to open up during the Unspeakable Revolt of 2023.
I couldn't imagine moving to San Diego (picked randomly) for a job and becoming a Chargers fan in two months. Wouldn't people in San Diego think I was, at best, kinda fickle? And most likely a nursing students-as-victims ax murder cannibal..? No..?
I'd be an Eagles/Phils fan who happens to live in San Diego. (Oddly enough, this scenario still has me watching the stinkin' Padres live when the Phils come to town!) And if you're from San Diego and you remain a Chargers fan while here, I respect that. It probably means you don't kick kittens and do rewind VHS tapes before returning them.
This is part of how I know Hil Clinton is a cold blooded harpy, that whole fraud of this (supposed lifelong) Cubs fan claiming she was Yankees fan all along when the people of New York were instructed that she would "represent" their state after a life spent in DC, Illinois and Arkansas. You can't trust that. Decent people have a squad and stick with it.
Some of the opinions and conversation out of the new arrival, narrative-lacking Philadelphia fan just come off as forced and patronizing. And I just wonder how much is self-aware show for the benefit of others and how much is actual, new, context-free interest. Worse: I can't decide which option creeps me out more. It's like showing up at a new school the first week in a Twisted Sister shirt when everyone else has Ramones gear, and then showing up the second week in a Ramones shirt. You are so still sitting alone at the lunch table it's not even funny.
You just wanted to grab some people at the Phils celebration during the parade by the lapels and yell "Our joys are inequal!"
So for the first time in months, I'm posting a poll at right. What do you think? Let's establish an Anthony Gargano-style Sports Rule here.
The full text of most options ends with "the gear & using 'we'".
For the second consecutive year I beseech you to read The Buffalo Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People in America. This is the most spot-on, most intelligent and funniest thing written annually by anyone anywhere in America. If The Onion were smarter and you mated that with an Al Franken whose brilliant invective didn't suddenly turn to mush when discussing Democrats who do the same things Republicans do... if Bill Hicks were still alive and was limited to one print-only rant a year... this perfection would result.
This gets so many hits this time of year you might have to reload several times, try during an off hour or try the Google cache once that's available.
Every now and again I get email from folks who stumble across the site and say hello from their corner of the quiz world. I've been generally behind on keeping up with link reciprocity, but here goes...
QuizzoDetroit added me to their links section for wandering Michiganders looking for some out of town action. Much obliged. Obviously if you find yourself there and are looking for a quiz, this is where to find it.
I have a thrift store-bought mug I keep pens in that reads "Detroit, n. - a city in SE Michigan where the weak are killed and eaten." Not making that up.
Mikki V. in Houston, Texas wrote in to say that she hosts a trivia game at Big John's Sports Bar on Wednesday's at 6:30. No quiz-specific link. She sent me some sample questions - quite tough, and mostly non-sports! Given the size of Houston I'm sure if you're visiting that the bar wouldn't be more than 2-3 days' journey on foot from your hotel.
Brandon in Norfolk, VA wrote in months ago to thank me for the trivia, apparently he works in radio down there. So you guys have radio and internet now? You go, Norther Carolina!
Paul from the U.K. sent along a link to his quiz blog, Nik Nak's Old Peculiar Blog. How British sounding is that? It makes you want to knife a magistrate, it does.
This unhelpful movie review spotted (pun intended) in... L.A.? Thanks to Liz R. and Rob A. for the photo, and to Kathy B. for pointing out the words "LOS ANGELES" in above the poster in big block letters that I inexplicably missed.
The confusing bit is that the same friend who forwarded this to me reported seeing the same phenomenon here.
Slowly but surely this has become a great quiz, with multiple great competitors. Thanks to all of the participants.These guys had a French citizen on their team but still managed to win.
Scores:
Beautiful Gold: Wee Single Cakes147 So-So Silver: Awesome Super Incredible Sexy Cool 138 Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Amanita 130
Also-rans:
Cosine of Four 125 Hermaphrodite Babies 124 Max Foner & Busty St. Clair 119 Sofa King Good* 80 Team Denmark 2009 74
Tuesday, January 13, 9pm Drinker's Tavern Market St., between Front & 2nd Sts. Subject Round: VOCALISTS Third week in tournament cycle, the Big Prize is a Philadelphia Eagles tailgating beanbag toss game.
Wednesday, January 14, 7:30pm 12 Steps Down 9th & Christian Sts. Subject Round: 2009 YEAR IN REVIEW
Wednesday, January 14, 10 pm Ray's Happy Birthday Bar 1200 E. Passyunk Ave. (near 9th & Federal Sts.) Subject Round: COMEDY FILMS Note the time change; we're now deliberately making this "the late quiz" as that seems to work better for some odd reason.
The Draught Horse shuts down for Winter Break at Temple, and we'll be back to normal quizzing beginning January 29.
Tuesday, January 6, 9pm Drinker's Tavern Market St., between Front & 2nd Sts. Subject Round: MONSTERS Second week in tournament cycle, not sure what the Big Prize is yet.
Wednesday, January 7, 7:30pm 12 Steps Down 9th & Christian Sts. Subject Round: 2008 YEAR IN REVIEW
Wednesday, January 7, 9:30pm Ray's Happy Birthday Bar 1200 E. Passyunk Ave. (near 9th & Federal Sts.) Subject Round: POVERTY
Tuesday, February 3, 9pm
