I know the Music round is my chance to score points on University Challenge, but for gods sake!!!

Last night: music round, who is the lead guitarist:

"Whole lotta love" plays. eight blank faces. Suddenly one beeps:

"Um, Jeff Plant?"

(this is going to be a low scoring round)

Haha, yeah - although I got the subsequent ones completely and embarassingly wrong. Loads of music rounds in last night's one - guess the indie record label was choice. Warp Records on Uni Challenge, who'd have thwanked it?

even weirder - the second one was Fierce Panda - wtf? i actually saw the panda logo and thought - "that can't be fierce panda, surely?" and lo...

"Um, Jeff Plant?"

How's the UC rules, is last name sufficient for a correct answer?

(Yesyes I know it would still be wrong, but it would be a less laughable answer)

it was good when they had Derrick May's "Strings of Life" on it and were asked what genre it was associated with. Long pause followed by "....synth"

Sadly Paxman didn't shout exasperatedly "it was TECHNO, exactly what were you doing in the late 80s???"

"No, no, no, no - it's Factory records you clot!"

JPax missed his Roy Walker opportunity there: "Say what you see.."

"um, Panda up a tree?"

So, they played Patti Smith's "Elegia" from Horses, and said "Who's That?"

York buzz in early and say "PJ Harvey". Lose five points, but yeah, I can see that's not an unreasonable wrong answer.

So, the swot team get the whole song excerpt, and one buzzes in and goes" um, Barbra Streisand?"

"BARBARA BLOODY STREISAND???" says some bloke in our house, oh wait that was me.

(at least they got the eventual bonus round more or less OK, although my kids got the same points between them for Blondie and the Ramones)

That's Radio 2 programming policy for you - the only 1975 records they're allowed to play are Bo Rhap, Born To Run and I'm Not In Love.

Paxman seemed amazed that they got the bonus questions right.

I was quite surprised myself, given their team captain's Streisand gaffe. "X-Offender" wasn't an easy one to throw at them, either. (The theme of the round being "acts who started out at CBGBs".) And then they got "Psycho Killer" within seconds, ditto "Blitzkrieg Bop", with what looked like simultaneous recognition from all four team members. That's the power of the canon for you, I guess...

xpost: The last time I tuned into Radio 2, Chris Evans was indeed playing Born To Run! (They're also allowed to play Make Me Smile, of course...)

Well, they'd been clued in by the CBGB's reference by then.

Funnily enough, I'd been playing the Velvets to Voidoids comp in the car on the schoolrun last week.

Last week or the one before, question something like "What controversial record was placed at number 2 on the official singles chart during the 1977 Jubilee week despite widely being reckoned to be that week's number one seller?", blank looks all round and someone says "err... the Bay City Rollers", accompanied by the sound of me smacking my forehead

Mind you, I might've missed some of the ones on this thread already, so...

Need to make the questions harder, e.g. which TV soap opera featured guest appearances in 1993 from Gerry Marsden and Them Two Blokes Out Of Swinging Blue Jeans, The?

The (barely) revived Crossroads? Or Brookside?

Array it were Brookie, Frank Rogers and the Scotty Dogs like.

Haha. Man i miss Brookside. 'The Magic Rabbits' theme was great too.

Yesterday, JPax played "A Hard rain's a gonna fall" Bob Dylan to the two teams, but they failed to recognise it. Although one team member eventualy offered "Bob Dylan, um, Times they are a changing?"

So after some normal starters three cover versions of "Hard Rain", but blank faces all round for Barbara Dixon and Bryan Ferry, and one guess of Karen Carpenter for Joan Baez.

So, no students listen to old Bob anymore.

That Bryan Ferry one was hard to get, though, as it didn't really sound like him until the end of the sound clip when he went to the next verse, and my ears immediately clicked 'Roxy'.

They should have got Joan Baez simply by process of elimination -- it was clearly a '70s folky singer who wasn't Joni Mitchell, so there's only one other person it could have been.

My favourite was: jazz musician, born in Belgium in 1910, famous as the founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Answer given: Adolphe Sax. I suppose at least they knew Adolphe Sax was Belgian.

at trivia last week there was a question about which singer was previously known as Elston Gunnn. Nobody got it.

I don't what singer was previously known as Elston Gunn

had to wiki it

I didn't know that either!

There was once one were they had to identify different genres of dance music, made deeply unfair by the fact that Paxman didn't have the faintest clue about any of it, but acted as if he did. Contestant: "That's jungle" Paxo: "No, it's obviously drum n bass" (withering stare).

Recently, they had a round where they played brief snips of the intro for all the tracks off an album. Kinda easy, and the team got them all except for:

"tinklytinkly/BAMBAMBAMBAM/skirrrrskirrrr"

Stude: "Um, The Velvet Underground?"
Paxo: "No, that's the third album, this was the Velvet Underground and Nico.."

that's totally unfair.

Well that depends on whether the question was to name the artist or the title. If he was after the title then I think Paxo was within his rights.

It was for the title, yes.

Suggests that Paxo is familiar with the VU oeuvre

The question was to name the album title and the dick was wrong and I was yelling him the right answer at the telly.

It was a "kooky" female art/design student who got it wrong

Was that the London College of Art or whatever? Pretty knowledgeable team on the whole in that episode.

Stude: "Um, The Velvet Underground?"
Paxo: "No, that's the third album, this was the Velvet Underground and Nico.."

I never really pay much heed to who's actually playing on the telly.

Tonight's resident indie dude recognised Strokes, Arcade Fire and Yeah Yeah Yeahs but mistook Radiohead, of all people, for Jose Gonzalez. You could see him wracking his brains for the name of the Gonzalez album. Tsk.

That made me laugh a bit.

Haha, oh God, none of them recognised John Lennon.

Or Otis Redding

Or Eva Cassidy (ok I can let them off that one).

I figured then most likely to have recognised Eva Cassidy given Lennon fail, tbh.

Times change:

Recently, the music round featured "bands/acts that Jack White has featured prominently in"

and the one guy on the Uni team got them all right.

I guessed at all but the last "White Stripes" one, in hope.

yeah the last few pop music rounds have been tough!

This weeks music round is a "Pazz and Jop" themed round.

I got none but the starter, the team guessed more obscure bands than the correct answers, and Jeremy clearly knew none of them.

I guess the days of "ummmm, The Who?" are well and truly over.

I somehow got TV on the Radio right even though I don't think I've ever heard them.

This week, music round was based on the momentous "Sex pistols 1st gig at the Lesser free trade hall" gig.

Specifically, the bands that had members that were there. As opposed to the 2nd etc.

(Mark E Smith wasn't at the first one, it has now been established)

I know the Music round is my chance to score points on University Challenge, but for gods sake!!! even my gran knows that Cole Porter sounds bugger all like Bo Diddley!!

Well, I laffed. So did paxo..

First time for a long time, a music round with rock bands that want naming.

So, they got U2, missed Bruce in favour of Jeff Beck, and thought the 'not the best band in the world, they're better than that' review referred to Oasis.

But, hey.

Oh and they did get AC/DC to be fair

"Outkast! Correct. Four more examples of Alabama based rap, name the artist...."

I’ll be honest I got OutKast and Ludo but couldn’t name the other two...

And today, The Who get a play-on.

Team gets it plus all the bonus round thanks to the Rob Newman lookalike.

At which, Paxo goes "not such a wasted youth then!"

I guess he is a Who fan, like Pete s said, upthread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi5SJKI6RpU

I think Jeremy Seller deserves better than being written off as a Rob Newman lookalike. Amongst other things he's the guy behind acid brass - https://www.jeremydeller.org/AcidBrass/AcidBrassMusic.php - and got Leftfield like a shot in the last round so he's not just a Who fan either.

Deller, thx autocorrect.

Oh I didn't realise it was he.

Still, though...

(wasn't dismissing him, just noting his stylistic difference)

Ok, so “Stiff Records” I could probably pick as my specialist subject on Mastermind..

I’ll allow the Dead Kennedys as a decent guess..

But, The Overtones is about as far away from “New Rose” by The Damned as you could get!

Plummet Airlines would have foxed me, but probably nothing else.

Nah, no bother even there