From: wietske@kub.nl (W. Sijtsma)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: "Authors in Popsongs" quiz
Date: 17 Nov 92 07:33:28 GMT
Reply-To: wietske@kub.nl
Organization: KUB, The Netherlands




WHAT ARE WORDS WORTH?

A musical quiz featuring some of the greatest names in art,
literature, entertainment, sour cream and rock & roll!

Motto: "We are Shakespeare, and the Simple Minds are shit!"
(said Ian McCullouch, former singer of Echo & the Bunnymen)

RULES AND REGULATIONS
* Requested are the title of the song from which the quote is
     taken, plus the name of the act. Do not give any book
     titles!
* The acts are listed alphabetically.
* An act can occur only once (although of course Phil Collins
     and Genesis are two different acts!).
* Every answer may score two points: one for the title of the
     song, and one for the name of the act. (Which gives you
     a maximum 50 points if you have correctly answered all
     25 questions.)
* Closing date: 15 December 1992
* Composed by Casper Oliemans (with a little help from
     W.O.W.)

                    =========================

 1.  I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn
          French or something in that style

 2.  Kerouac, you're on the top of my shelf
     Up there with nobody else

 3.  I opened up the book
     And Thomas Hardy jumped out
     I was too stunned to be frightened
     As he raged and leapt about

 4.  Dead tongues, said the poet to the daughter of burlesque
     Cocteau, Van Gogh and Geronimo, they used up what was
          left

 5.  Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
     Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe

 6.  You're having tea with Graham Greene
     In the coloured costume of your choice
     And you'll be thought in high esteem
     If you're seen in between

 7.  You were the sensitive woman
     I was the very reverend Freud
     You were the manual orgasm
     I was the dirty little boy

 8.  She looks like Eve Marie Saint in "On the waterfront"  
     She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American
          circumstance

 9.  Dante's famed Inferno was a trip to Hell and back
     But you and a bottle and a cheap hotel, screams
          "pyromaniac!"
     The bandages come off today, really feeling sick
     The hardest part explaining: all those blisters on my...
          nose

10.  Funny, it's just like a scene out of Voltaire twisting
          out of sight

11.  Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's
          tower
     While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold
          flowers

12.  John Webster was one of the best there was
     He was the author of two major tragedies:
     "The white devil" and "The duchess of Malfi"

13.  I looked up in the sky, there was a phantom plane a-
          comin'
     Shinin' in the dead of night, I heard the pilot saying
     Poems that were written by John Keats and Robert
          Browning
     But he didn't know the words so I suppose that it was
          nothing

14.  Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', head buried in the
          sand

15.  I feel like Kojak sitting in a Cadillac
     I gotta eat, I gotta eat a Flapjack
     A stack, a rack, a six-pack, Jack,
     Just call me Jack Kerouac

16.  Some guys are born to Rimbaud, some guys breathe
          Baudelaire

17.  John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary, Tommy Smothers,
          Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper, Derek Taylor, Norman
          Mailer, Allan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna...

18.  While Lenin read a book on Marx
     The quartet practised in the park

19.  Everybody say God is a good man
     Everybody say 1, 2, 3
     Set up those gunsights in H.G. Wells' backyard

20.  William Blake and the Eternals
     Standing with the Sisters of Mercy
     Looking for the Veedon fleeces

21.  So you quote her Omar Khayyam
     But she says "What d'you think I am?"
     You're a big man now, shine on

22.  Keats and Yeats are on your side
     But you lose, 'cause Wilde is on mine

23.  A Hitler wearing heels, a soft Simon Legree
     A Hun with honey skin, De Sade who makes good tea

24.  Whatever happened to all of the heroes, all the
          Shakespearo's?

25.  Norman Mailer
     Waits to nail her
     He's under the bed
     And he's waiting for her to be dead

                    =========================

NOTE: a few of the acts may be a bit obscure. This is of
course due to the rarity of literary figures being mentioned
in rock & roll lyrics.
     Now for those who grumble about this, consider the
following lyrics:

     (1) "You know I love you, I'll always be true."
     (2) "The nice thing about true hopelessness is that you
          don't have to try again."

     Recognize them? You probably don't. Which is
understandable in the case of the second lyric, since it was
written by the late seventies Californian band Jules & the
Polar Bears. Quite obscure, you will say, in fact you've
probably never heard of them; but then again, if you have,
and if you own their first album, you will recognize this
line at once, because it is (a) memorable, (b) brilliant, and
(c) quite different from the usual style of rock & roll lyric
writing.
     Now how about the first line? You didn't recognize it
either? Well, you really should be ashamed of yourself, since
it is from the Beatles' first single "Love me do". How about
that? But of course the reason why you didn't recognize it is
because it does not contain any memorable words: turn on the
radio and you are bound to hear twenty or thirty lines more
or less (or exactly) the same within the next half hour.
     The moral of this story: a memorable line from a rather
obscure band may be preferable (quiz-wise) to a line from the
totally forgettable lyrics to a million-selling song.
     So what this little digression comes down to is a plea
for more memorable lines in quizzes. For instance, most of
the quizzes dealing with the fifties and sixties are full of
lines that are so bland that I for one have never even been
tempted to listen to them. I suggest we try and put a stop to
all those lines featuring dead words like "love", "moon",
"pain", "dance", "tight" and "baby", and use only words with
an edge, phrases that really stick in the mind. (How many
lyrics do you know that feature Omar Khayyam?)
     And by the way, the writer and lead singer of the Polar
Bears was Jules Shear, of current MTV Unplugged presenter
fame (the guy who plays every chord in slide guitar fashion
and can't sing but does try). So I guess obscurity isn't what
it used to be.



-- 
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			Wietske Sijtsma    
			I.T.K., SPIN MMC Programme
			P.O. Box 90153
			5000 LE Tilburg
			The Netherlands
                	email:  wietske@kub.nl
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