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Quiz #1

Quiz #1
Answers, Results & Commentary


Nine people participated in the first-ever NMLQOTM. Congratulations to our winner, Jill Shields, who scored 498 of a possible 500 points!! K. Krycia and L. Hoover ran a close second, just 10 points back.

A few players resorted entirely to memory in solving the quiz - others approached this as a treasure hunt. I'd recommend a combination of the two - but, hey, your strategies are entirely up to you. I strongly suspect that the different approaches explain the disparity in scores - we all know what a strong competitor our last place finisher has proven to be in past competition.

Here are the correct titles and artists with year of release and highest charting position on the Billboard Hot 100:

1. Beatles, The - Sun King (1969) <-->
2. Berry, Chuck - Little Queenie (1959) <80>
3. Bowie, David - Heroes (1977) <-->
4. Brown, Julie - The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun (1985) <-->
5. Cash, Johnny And The Tennessee Two - Ballad Of A Teenage Queen (1958) <14>
6. Cole, Nat "King" - (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons (1946) <#1 for 6 weeks prior to the Rock Era>
7. Counting Crows - Rain King (1994) <not released as commercial single, but appeared on Billboard "Airplay" list>
8. Dixie Cups, The - Iko Iko (1965) <20>
9. Dylan, Bob - Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) (1971) <-->
10. Hendrix, Jimi - The Wind Cries Mary (1967) <-->
11. Hollywood Argyles - Alley-Oop (1960) <1>
12. Joel, Billy - Scenes From An Italian Restaurant (1978) <-->
13. King, Carole - A Natural Woman (You Make Me Feel Like) (1971) <-->
14. King, Evelyn "Champagne" - Shame (1978) <14>
15. King, Jonathan - Everyone's Gone To The Moon (1965) <17>
16. King Harvest - Dancing In The Moonlight (1972) <13>
17. Martin, Steve and the Toot Uncommons - King Tut (1978) <17>
18. Martindale, Wink - Deck Of Cards (1959) <7>
19. McLean - Don - American Pie - Parts I & II (1971) <1>
20. Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood (1989) <6>
21. Mountain - Mississippi Queen (1970) <21>
22. Queensryche - Silent Lucidity (1991) <9>
23. Seger, Bob - Against The Wind (1980) <5>
24. Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger (1979) <15>
25. Tone Loc - Wild Thing (1988) <2>

T1. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young or Hollies, The: King Midas In Reverse (Hollies' version charted #51 in 1967)
T2. King Crimson - The Court Of The Crimson King - Part 1 (Including The Return of the Fire Witch and The Dance of the Puppets)(1970) <80>

THEME:

Obviously, every song in this quiz was linked by a King or Queen (and sometimes both) reference in either the lyric, title or artist.

TRIVIA:

Not a single song in the quiz was exactly identified by every contestant. The closest we came were with songs 19 and 23. American Pie - Parts I & II was correctly identified by every player, but many of you identified it only as "American Pie". Three players correctly included the "Parts I & II". Song #23, "Against the Wind" was correctly attributed to "Bob Seger", but four of you erroneously gave "The Silver Bullet Band" credit as well. This one was an oddball - the album "Against the Wind" was listed as "Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band", but the single (which was, of course, the song included in this quiz) was released - as is frequently the case for Bob Seger - as simply "Against the Wind" - Bob Seger. My reference shows 32 Seger records in the Hot 100, with 3 listed as "Bob Seger System", 14 listed just as "Bob Seger", and 15 listed as "Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band".

Records #6, #15, #18 and #20 gave the players the most trouble. Nat "King" Cole's "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" was far and away the oldest song in the quiz - it was a huge hit for Cole, but won't appear in rock n' roll era chart books because the rock era is commonly pegged as beginning in 1955. The question wasn't entirely unfair; first of all, Cole remains a much-cherished performer whose hits are well-known and memorable, and more importantly, perhaps, Sam Cooke took his own version of this song into the Top 20 in 1958.

Song 15 was "Everyone's Gone to the Moon" by Jonathan King. King scored hits as a singer, songwriter and producer - he wrote "In The Summertime", the hit for Mungo Jerry.

Song 18 was "Deck of Cards", Wink "Tic Tac Dough" Martindale's only Top 40 hit. Martindale was a radio DJ long before he became a TV game show host. "Deck of Cards" tells the tale of a World War II soldier brought before his commanding officer for spreading out playing cards during a church service. The soldier explains that he uses his cards as a substitute for his prayer book, because the various cards and suits remind him of religious messages. It was a hokey song, but not original to Martindale - Country and Western star T. Texas Tyler had a #2 country hit with the song in 1948.

Song 20 was one of the two most recent songs included in the quiz - Mötley Crüe's "Dr. Feelgood", from the band's #1 album of the same name in 1989.

Other songs that gave some players difficulty included #1 (The Beatle's "Sun King" from Abbey Road), #5 ("Ballad of a Teenage Queen" by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two), #8 ("Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups), #14 ("Shame", the disco hit by Evelyn "Champagne" King), #17 ("King Tut", recorded by Steve Martin (the famous comedian) and the Toot Uncommons - the Toot Uncommons were really The Dirt Band (of Mr. Bojangles fame)), and #25 ("Wild Thing", the raunchy Tone Loc rap hit from 1988 that would never be confused with the Troggs garage band hit of the same name).

The bizarre lyrics from the end of "Sun King" mixed Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and English. In an interview, John Lennon explained that they were joking around at the end of the recording singing "Quando para mucho", and then began stringing together any Spanish words they could think of. Apparently "chicka ferdy" was some sort of Liverpool taunt at the time.

Listed below are the points for each player:

J. Shields 498
K. Krycia 488
L. Hoover 488
B. Zukowski 474
J. McClelland 416
W. Feikert 376
M. Major 315
R. Morgan 216
M. Goetting 126