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Quiz #6

Quiz #6
Answers, Results & Commentary

The two players who tied with high scores both submitted the theme correctly. Congratulations to Wendy Feikert and Julie McClelland winners of this edition of NMLQOTM with near-perfect scores of 518 points each, and to Bunny Zukowski who came in third, only 4 points behind, with 514.

Several little quirky elements crossed up a few players each; Outlaws were just "Outlaws" and not "The Outlaws", and their song was "(Ghost) Riders In The Sky". A few players missed the "A" on "A Groovy Kind Of Love", and some omitted the "I'm Special" parenthetical subtitle of "Brass In Pocket". Rumors are always tricky to get right - Graham Parker is British and his band was "The Rumour".

Song #7 proved VERY difficult for players to track down. Although it wasn't intentional, the lyrics to "All The King's Horses" are extremely difficult to find on the internet. I found that odd - Aretha Franklin is a much-loved artist with tributes throughout the web - they just don't include this one particular song. "All The King's Horses" appeared on Franklin's critically-acclaimed "Young, Gifted and Black" in 1972, along with top ten hits "Rock Steady" and "Day Dreaming".

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

01> Beatles, The - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) <-->
02> Bow Wow Wow - I Want Candy (1982) <62>
03> Browne, Jackson - Cocaine (1978) <-->
04> Dion - The Wanderer (1961) <2>
05> Drifters, The - Some Kind of Wonderful (1961) <32>
06> Fogerty, John - Centerfield (1985) <44>
07> Franklin, Aretha - All The King's Horses (1972) <26>
08> Georgia Satellites - Keep Your Hands To Yourself (1986) <2>
09> John, Elton - I Feel Like A Bullet (In The Gun Of Robert Ford) (1976) <14>
Two-sided charter with "Grow Some Funk Of Your Own"
10> Journey - Faithfully (1983) <12>
11> Mindbenders, The - A Groovy Kind Of Love (1966) <2>
12> Monkees, The - Valleri (1968) <3>
Two-sided hit with Tapioca Tundra <34>
13> Nilsson - Everybody's Talkin' (1969) <6>
14> Outfield, The - Your Love (1986) <6>
15> Outlaws - (Ghost) Riders In The Sky (1980) <31>
16> Parker, Graham And The Rumour - Heat Treatment (1976) <-->
17> Parsons, Alan, Project - Eye In The Sky (1982) <3>
18> Pretenders, The - Brass In Pocket (I'm Special) (1980) <14>
19> Royal Guardsmen, The - Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron (1966) <2>
20> Showmen, The - It Will Stand (1961) <61> rereleased (1964) <80>
21> Stevens, Ray - Harry The Hairy Ape (1963) <17>
22> Sweet - Ballroom Blitz (1975) <5>
23> Temptations, The - I Wish It Would Rain (1968) <4>
24> Twitty, Conway - It's Only Make Believe (1958) <1>
25> Van Halen - Hot For Teacher (1984) <56>
26> Vanity Fare - Hitchin' A Ride (1970) <5>

THEME:

As promised, the theme was pretty straightforward this time around - I was pretty sure everyone would spot it once they had identified the 26 songs. If you didn't notice - thirteen of the song titles "matched" the artists of the OTHER thirteen songs. Other combinations were possible, like matching Bow Wow Wow with Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron, but that would have left you with an oddball match somewhere else in the list.

TRIVIA:

This particular quiz could have been called "The March of the Almosts", considering the four songs that topped out at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. I've mentioned before that I'm fascinated by #2s - so let's take a look.

"Groovy Kind Of Love" reached #2 in May of 1966, but was held out of the top spot by Percy Sledge's bluesy classic "When A Man Loves A Woman". Twenty-two years later, "Groovy Kind Of Love" finally made it to the top - but this time the artist was Phil Collins. The Mindbenders were part of the British Invasion - but in 1965, it could more properly have been called The Manchester Invasion. "I'm Telling You Now" (Freddie And The Dreamers), "Game Of Love" (Wayne Fontana And The Mindbenders) and "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" (Herman's Hermits) spent 6 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts. A Liverpool band ended the Manchester run when "Ticket To Ride" reached the peak on May 22. "Groovy Kind Of Love" was written by American songwriting superstar Carole Bayer Sager and her partner, Toni Wine, and was first recorded by Patti Labelle And The Blue Belles.

The Georgia Satellites were far removed from the British Invasion - they were a hard-rocking R&B band out of Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1980 as "Keith And The Satellites", the band was already six years down the road (and had broken up for over a year) when they finally got national notice for 1986's "Keep Your Hands To Yourself". Blame Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" for denying the Satellites the top spot. After "Keep Your Hands...", the band released a few more albums, but their 15 minutes were gone forever - only their 1988 cover of The Swinging Blue Jeans' "Hippy Hippy Shake" - featured in the soundtrack of the Tom Cruise film "Cocktail" received any significant airplay, topping out at #45 in early 1989.

Dion DiMucci recorded "The Wanderer" without his early backing band, The Belmonts - he would fare better as a solo artist. Dion and The Belmonts scored only two top 10 hits ("A Teenager In Love" and ""Where Or When"), while Dion reached the top 10 nine times on his own, highlighted by the #1 single that immediately preceded "The Wanderer", "Runaround Sue". Some solo artist - All of Dion's "solo" hits, including "The Wanderer", were backed (uncredited) by a New York doo-wop band known as "The Del-Satins". If you don't recognize their work from Dion's songs, "The Del-Satins" made up one half of the Brooklyn Bridge, the group that hit with 1968's "Worst That Could Happen".

"The Wanderer" and "Runaround Sue" were both written for Dion by Ernie Maresca, the one-hit wonder performer of "Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out"). What song kept "The Wanderer" out of the top spot? "Hey! Baby", by Bruce Channel. By the way, Dion appears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He's between Terry Southern and actor Tony Curtiss. Terry Southern was a controversial American author, whose work you'll know from the screenplays for "Dr. Strangelove", "Barbarella", and "Easy Rider", and his writing for Saturday Night Live. Angela says "yes, that's him", appearing in a cameo in the film "The Man Who Fell To Earth".

The Royal Guardsmen were an Ocala, Florida band with a one-track mind and pretty much a one-hit catalog. "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" was their first release and it shot to #2, kept from the top spot only by the unstoppable Monkees and their hit "I'm A Believer", which had more than 1 million advance orders and stayed at #1 for seven consecutive weeks. With the success of "Snoopy", who can blame The Royal Guardsmen for returning to the well - heck - the follow-up "Return Of The Red Baron" made it to #15. Sadly for them, and probably happily for the rest of us, "Snoopy For President", "Snoopy's Christmas", and "Snoopy Vs. The Black Knight" didn't fare quite as well. Good grief!

Listed below are the points for each player: