The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Tiny Quiz – nothing to do with the inkies

Tiny Quiz – nothing to do with the inkies

by 116 Comments

Please be assured: this has nothing to do with the NME, etc.

Below are quotes from two members of a band, about a single track on one of their records.

Can you guess: which band and which record? If you’re feeling really astonishingly wonderful today, maybe even the track (might be a bit trickier)?

Band member A:
“The ultimate destruction of rock ‘n’ roll is to destroy it with itself – and that’s to take out the ‘n’ roll part. Johnny B Goode stands for everything wrong with ’50s rock and roll: the cheerfulness and the neatness of the tune. So the basic idea of (…) was Johnny B Goode with one chord, repeating – and what it needed to go with it was a big, multitracked, fuck-off wall of guitars.”

Band member B:
“It has a sort of majesty, we all felt it was the mission statement. It’s because of its incredible simplicity. Obviously there’s a bit of a chorus going on, but essentially it’s one chord. This is a possible music. Again, it’s this abstract thing: what’s the least you can do and it still be music?”

0

Comments

  17. My guess is Sigue Sigue Sputnik – sounds like the kind of tosh Tony James came out with at the time.
    They’re talking about a very simple song, so I would say it’s their breakthrough single, Love Missile F1-11.

    I actually bought the follow up, 21st Century Boy, which was more of the same but for some reason I liked that one more than the first one.

  19. Strange that dodgers think it always has to be loud. I’ll never quite understand this as all the evidence suggests otherwise.

    The very embodiment of Rock ‘n’ Roll is Gene Vincent, and yet his vocals are invariably low, in some cases barely audible, with a lightness of touch.

  22. I’ll post the answer this evening, on or around 18:00 GMT.
    Don’t want it to drag on too long – and anyway, deramdaze needs the time to rearrange his life, so that he’s doing the opposite of whatever Band Member A does…

  23. Sounds like Buzzcocks or Wire to me. I’d have guessed the Fall but which of the numerous others in the band got a word in (other than Brix Smith obviously).

  26. Has anyone said Roxy Music yet? The Bogus Man is a one chord song and they are the very definition of art school.

    If its not them, I’m going back to The Ramones. As two people have nearly said them (myself included) but then picked someone else.

  29. All that old guff about destroying rock and roll could have come from any number of self-regarding rock and rollers. The key phrase, I think, is that bit about Johnny B Goode standing for everything wrong with ’50s rock and roll. What humourless twit could possibly be cocky and/or silly enough to come out with something like that? And there’s not just one of them in the band but two, with Member B describing their meisterwerk as “a possible music”. That indefinite article speaks volumes to me. And as someone else pointed out, the phrase “fuck-off wall of guitars” dates it to within the past 25 years and most likely a Brit too, I reckon.

    As per @Milkybarnick et al, I’m going for the Manics too: three utterly humourless gobshites plus a drummer whose name I just had to google. Quotes from Richey Edwards as band member A and Nicky Wire as band member B, and they’re talking about You Love Us from Generation Terrorists.

  31. OK: time for the reveal.

    The band was Wire.
    The album was Pink Flag.
    The track was the title track, Pink Flag.
    Band Member A was Colin Newman
    Band Member B was Bruce Gilbert.

    No wonder the contemporaneous punks didn’t know what to make of ‘em…

    Special mention for @Bamber, who chose Wire – then rejected them in favour of Frankie Teardrop by Suicide – so close, so close…

  32. Always going to be male… always going to be dodgers… but I am slightly surprised it was more your Fag-end Frankie variety, which is why I didn’t rise to the bait of the no-hits clash, who, after all, hung around Rock On and did record Brand New Cadillac, a version I’ve never heard. I had my money on more yer Mark IV dodgers c. mid-to-late ho-hum 1990s (U.S. or U.K.).

    I now want to know everything that Wire have ever said/recommended and I’m only going to get it from you guys.
    They are obviously shite, but I do congratulate them for being ten years younger than the Beatles. Those ten years might just as well be 1,000 years. Great timing, chaps!!!

    Ask not what a you can do for a dodger, ask what a dodger can do for you!
    I’m off to listen to Johnny B. Goode on repeat.

  34. Pink Flag is a great album, as are their second and third releases. It’s better than any punk album I know of. It doesn’t matter what crazy ideas musicians have for doing what they do as long as the recordings cut it. They do have a certain droll humour though which comes across in the music and lyrics. What a bunch of iconoclasts they are, which you need to be to do new things. It’s on Harvest though and has a certain feel of early Floyd, a psychedelic inventiveness you could say.

Leave a Reply