I’m ashamed. I’m just an average, run of the mill musicologist. That score represents my final tally at Rhino Records’ Rhino Musical Aptitude Test; 300 questions encompassing the full gamut of musical shit brought to my attention by someone that’s too punk to comment here.And to that person, I will confess that I did not know Darby Crash’s Christian name.
Embarrassingly enough, I did get the one that identified Vanilla Fudge as the band to cover Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On.” To be fair, only a band as shitty as Vanilla Fudge would even consider covering a Sonny & Cher song.
Three hundred questions that you only have an hour to answer (that’s less than 12 seconds per question) it tough enough; it’s even harder when you’re feeding the baby with one hand while clicking on the multiple-choice answers with the other.
But that’s exactly what I was doing, occasionally using the internet to search for jazz bass players that weren’t Jaco Pastorius before realizing that I didn’t have time for such nonsense.
Fuck it: ignore the jazz questions.
I’d get on a roll before stumbling over something like “Who Sang ‘Run Joey Run’?” or “Which songwriter isn’t one of the composers of ‘Mack The Knife’?”
Holy shit.
Calli spits up her pears.
Ethan wants me to put in Hercules.
I feel an urge to defecate.
Thank God it’s multiple choice.
The battery on my laptop is dying.
So it goes without saying that I didn’t get through all the questions, which is probably not impossible if you pace yourself appropriately. I didn’t, and I knew about a half hour into the test that I wasn’t going to finish it. Particularly when, towards the end, when you really need to boogie for time, the creators of the test start throwing matching questions in. Like “Match the lesser known siblings with their more famous ones.”
I never even knew Prince had a brother.
When it was over, I had gone through 241 questions and missed 69 of them, posting an unremarkable 71% or C- average.
I’d be content with that test score in college, but in rock ‘n roll, I always wanted straight A’s.
3 comments:
Yr dum. Darby' real name was Bobby Pyn
For me ya still get an A in rocknroll, I didn't know Darby's real name either. I might know a few more jazz bassists than you but Vanilla Fudge, no clue. Their "test" seems a little too wide ranging to me. We all have favorite styles that we obsess and know as much as we can about and even if we like lots of other genres, no one is likely to be so obsessively knowledgeable about everything. You still must try the Ism.
I tried them. The keyboards on "John Hinckley Jr" and a lot of their songs just totally makes them sound weak.
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