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Consecutive Compendium of Culture – Queue up your quintessentially quixotic quirky quatrains – Qawwali, Quiet storm, Queercore, Quadrille, Quan ho

by 110 Comments

The quest goes on to quarry out more quaint quantities of quality from your cultural quivers. This time, the quiz is on for the letter ‘Q’.

Here is Quentin Blake being surprisingly modern:

And my favourite Q has to be Quicksilver Messenger Service – here playing live – Mona

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Comments

  2. Jean Michel Jarre – Quatrieme Rendez-Vous

    Possibly my first introduction to trance, the buzz I get at the 3rd minute is sublime, even though I think the song is a bit cheesy.

  4. Quakers – Mummy feat. Diverse

    Being a Quaker, I wasn’t sure what to think about the appropriation of the name, even by somebody as hip as Geoff Barrow – but if it’s good enough for oats and parrots, why not, I suppose. Also, this track is pretty good.

  6. Last one from me –
    Two sprawling historical books which raise more questions than they answer.
    http://i1366.photobucket.com/albums/r761/salwarpe1/51edQPm1jeL._SX295_BO1204203200__zpsprqhdqr8.jpg
    Quincunx (Charles Palliser) had me reading the last sentence of the book and questioning everything I had read in this doorstop.
    http://i1366.photobucket.com/albums/r761/salwarpe1/Q_zpst4xv8tgn.jpg
    Q(Luther Blissett) deliberately missteps the reader, but was very informative about the bloody history of the Anabaptists. I will never look at the very comfortable city of Münster in the same light having read this.

    • It quite possibly was. “Dem Na Like Me” (featuring Wiley) was on one of the cover CDs.

      They’re a daft band, but I do like that first album, and Stompbox is the highlight – great pick.

      • “Dem Na Like Me”, yes, that’s the one.

        I saw them live at the (now sadly defunct) “Summer Sundae” festival in Leicester not long afterwards and they were great fun.

        They were another one of those acts where it took me ages to get the pun in the name (“What’s a Kwem-ist?”).

    • I remember seeing Daisy Chainsaw at Southampton Joiners Arms. A fine noise. Their name almost inspired a tribute band – Gorgonzola Bud, first single to be Wiser.

  19. If there is such a thing as Pointless Prog then the band Qango would be at the top of the list. Featuring John Wetton and Carl Palmer, covering tunes by Asia, ELP, etc.
    Better suited to cabaret than concert venues, here is another track where John Wetton says to the camera, “tonight Matthew, I am gong to be Greg Lake…again!”

  24. Quiver: a name that brings back many memories.

    Bastions of the Underground, I saw them many times at Implosion at the Roundhouse back in my Afghaned, joss-sticky, tie-died youth.

    “Those were the days! You could see the Floyd for 50p and the Stones played for free.

    What’s thatNurse? Time for my meds again?”

  27. If you went to Implosion @aging-hippy, you could scarcely have missed them. They were almost like a houseband. Pleasant but not desperately memorable guitar rock. And then the Sutherlands came along with some great songs.

    Most memorable perhaps was Sailing for which I hope made the bros a few bob.

    • I definitely didn’t see them at the Roundhouse (only went there a few times) but they could well have been down the bill on a multi-band line-up somewhere (maybe Midnight Court at the Lyceum).

  41. Carole King has echoed one of the things I have that I hold most dear in life, A Quiet Place to Live (apart from when the gardeners are mowing the communal gardens or leafblowing)

  46. My “tip for the top” in 1988 – Quireboys
    (shows what I know!)

    Debut album didn’t arrive until 1990 – by that time, the rough edges had been smoothed and ultimately the album was something of a disappointment.
    Live they were still rough and ragged – it just never came across that way on record

    • Blimey that takes me back. I saw them live around London a few times, under their old name, almost same name. Supporting Twenty Flight Rockers at the Marquee was a memorable night.

    • Thanks, @sewer-robot! I haven’t seen Quiz Show yet, but Quick Change is a great film. Only when I saw the trailer did I realize I’d already seen it. With two of the best comic movie stars in it (Bill Murray and Geena Davis) and whip smart plot and wisecracks, I loved it – just couldn’t remember the name till now.

  57. Quantum Physics by Can from their Soon Over Babaluma album. An under-referenced LP well worthy of your attention. Youtube says track not available in your country, but maybe where you are. It is very fine.

    • I love Soon Over Babaluna – I’d heard of Can and Tago Mago in particular, but records were to expensive to risk the investment on something as experimental as Krautrock. This CD I picked up in a second hand Our Price in Southampton, along with Strange Angels by Laurie Anderson (swoon – another instant passion) and Son of Albert by Andrew Ridgeley (no, of course not – but it was liked up everywhere you looked…)
      The motoring sound was a joy to somebody who grew up with the three chord monotony of Status Quo and I think the track you mention might be my personal highlight too.
      I never really got into the other Can albums in the same way. Maybe it’s connected to the way I stumbled across it?

  61. View post on imgur.com


    A classic Swedish childrens book – “Why are there so few Qs?” (originally written as a play)
    Of course, in English you have four pages or so of words beginning with the letter Q in your dictionairies, in Swedish we have seven words…so the question is more apt in Sweden!
    In the book the lack of Qs (and soon enough all the letters) is the fault of a nameless villain who hates letters because he has no name, so he invents a vacuum cleaner that can vacuum off letters from anything; signs, newspapers, books, note pads, and he and his only friend, the Q-dog (who loves to eat Qs), go around at night stealing all the letters in town.
    Anyway, it’s very very funny. Written by Hasse Alfredsson, one half of legendary comedy duo HasseåTage.

    • Thanks, @poolhallrichard!
      I used to love Quo, mid to late 70s from Down Down to What You’re Proposing. Quo Live is the album I still like. Somebody asked me once what I wanted for Christmas and I only had 12 Gold Bars, so I said “any Quo album”. I got a cut price version of “Picturesque Matchstickable Messages From The Status Quo”, which, on listening to it, wasn’t bad. Here’s something from that first album

  72. It’s a bit on the long side, but endearingly Quirky.
    As opposed to annoyingly so, which is usually the case with that word.

    (“Superplus” – Quickspace Supersport)

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