TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.
PROBLEM: Passage: In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself." Through mutual friend Kathleen O'Brien, Stipe and Buck then met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that "there was never any grand plan behind any of it". Their still-unnamed band spent a few months rehearsing in a deconsecrated Episcopal church in Athens, and played its first show on April 5, 1980, supporting The Side Effects at O'Brien's birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers. After considering Twisted Kites, Cans of Piss, and Negro Eyes, the band settled on "R.E.M." (which is an acronym for rapid eye movement, the dream stage of sleep), which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group. They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene. Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous because a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not then exist. The group toured in an old blue van driven by Holt, and lived on a food allowance of $2 each per day.During April 1981, R.E.M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Initially distributing it as a four-track demo tape to clubs, record labels and magazines, the single was released in July 1981 on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of 1,000 copies600 of which were sent out as promotional copies. The single quickly sold out, and another 6,000 copies were pressed due to popular demand, despite the original pressing leaving off the record label's contact details. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim, and was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times.

SOLUTION: What is the name of the single distributed on the band by a four-track demo at clubs?

PROBLEM: Passage: Despite a political climate that was unfavorable to modern art (often denounced as "formalist" by the communist authorities), post-war Polish composers enjoyed an unprecedented degree of compositional freedom following the establishment of the Warsaw Autumn festival in 1956. Gorecki had won recognition among avant-garde composers for the experimental, dissonant and serialist works of his early career; he became visible on the international scene through such modernist works as Scontri, which was a success at the 1960 Warsaw Autumn, and his First Symphony, which was awarded a prize at the 1961 Paris Youth Bienniale. Throughout the 1960s, he continued to form acquaintanceships with other experimental and serialist composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
During the 1970s, Gorecki began to distance himself from the serialism and extreme dissonance of his earlier work, and his Third Symphony, like the preceding choral pieces Euntes ibant et flebant (Op. 32, 1972) and Amen (Op. 35, 1975), starkly rejects such techniques. The lack of harmonic variation in Gorecki's Third Symphony, and its reliance on repetition, marked a stage in Gorecki's progression towards the harmonic minimalism and the simplified textures of his more recent work. Because of the religious nature of many of his works during this period, critics and musicologists often align him with other modernist composers who began to explore radically simplified musical textures, tonality, and melody, and who also infused many of their works with religious significance. Like-minded composers, such as Arvo Part and John Tavener, are frequently grouped with Gorecki under the term "holy minimalism," although none of the composers classified as such has admitted to common influences.

SOLUTION: What is the last name of the person who continued to form acquaintanceships with other experimental and serialist composers ?

PROBLEM: Passage: Bowie's songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. Bowie was a pioneer of glam rock, according to music historians Schinder and Schwartz, who credited Marc Bolan and Bowie with creating the genre. At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock music movement. When punk musicians were "noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop song in a show of public defiance", biographer David Buckley wrote that "Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation." Bowie's record company promoted his unique status in popular music with the slogan, "There's old wave, there's new wave, and there's David Bowie".Musicologist James Perone credited Bowie with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledged the intellectual depth of his work and influence. The Human League founder Martyn Ware remarked that he had lived his life "as though he were an art installation." The BBC's arts editor Will Gompertz likened Bowie to Pablo Picasso, writing that he was "an innovative, visionary, restless artist who synthesised complex avant garde concepts into beautifully coherent works that touched the hearts and minds of millions". U2 lead singer Bono commented, "I like Bowie when he's evenly pulled in the direction of being a pop star and Picasso, where he's right down the middle. That's usually my favorite, when the songwriting is disciplined but the recording is not. I love when he's pulled equally in the directions of art and populism."Broadcaster John Peel contrasted Bowie with his progressive rock contemporaries, arguing that Bowie was "an interesting kind of fringe figure... on the outskirts of things". Peel said he "liked the idea of him reinventing himself... the one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change". Buckley called the era "bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied"; then Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star".
After Bowie there has been no other pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces these rock gods doesn't exist any more. ... The fierce partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also uniqueits influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom.

SOLUTION:
What is the first name of the person whose songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s?