Songs About Natural Disasters & Accidents (Pt 3) Quiz

Answer: "Pompeii", by Bastille

Bastille's "Pompeii" is easily the highest charting song of all the songs with that single word title, including others by the likes of Archie Bronson Outfit, Bear's Den, Gatsby's American Dream, Glassjaw, JSX, Legend, Mr. Lambo, Peter Hammill, Scarlet Pleasure, Timeflies, and Timeless Void. British pop band Bastille's "Pompeii" (2013) reached number five on the U.S. Hot 100 Billboard chart, and it was nominated for British Single of the Year at the 2014 Brit Awards. Internationally, it hit number one in Scotland and Ireland, and number two in the United Kingdom and Italy.

Answer: No one knows

Both Nanci Griffith and Tom Rush recorded covers of the song: Nanci on her 1998 album "Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful)", and Tom Rush in the 1960s. The song was about the 1900 hurricane that laid waste to Galveston, Texas, killing between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

"Wasn't that a mighty storm
That blew all the people all away.
You know, the year of 1900, children,
Many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go."

The song originally was a traditional hymn, sung in African-American churches in the early 1900s after the hurricane occurred. No person(s) has been attributed as the writer of that original song.

Answer: Smoky Mountain Boys

While all those "boy" bands in the answer choices are real, it was the "Smoky Mountain Boys" who played with Roy Acuff, the frontman singer and fiddler. The song "The Great Titanic" is on his 1955 album titled "Songs of the Smoky Mountains."

"It was on one Monday morning
About one o'clock
When that great Titanic
Began to reel and rock
People began to scream and cry
Saying, oh, Lord, we're going to die
It was sad when that great ship went down."

Answer: Led Zeppelin

The Led Zeppelin version involved a tremendous amount of studio production effects, and was a very complicated recording to sound mix. Jimmy Page used a technique in which he put the echo of the harmonica ahead of the sound, and the distinctive sound of John Bonham's Ludwig drums was achieved by his playing them in a stairwell in the former warehouse that became a recording studio known as Headley Grange.

The microphones used to capture the drum sound were positioned three stair flights above, and produced a unique echo. For these reasons and several other unusual recording techniques, the band rarely played the song in their concerts as it would be nearly impossible to replicate the studio recording.

Answer: 1924 explosion: "Springhill Mining Tragedy" by Jacques St. Germain

The 1891 mine explosion in Springhill killed 125 miners including children less than 13-years-old. Originally a traditional song, the song "La Mine" was recorded by a French-Canadian folk group La Vent du Nord in 2009.
The 1956 explosion killed 39 miners, and in addition to "Springhill Mine Explosion" by Jack Kingston, Roy Rudolph wrote and sang "Miracle at Springhill" inspired by the fact that other 88 miners underground at the scene were indeed saved by improvements made in equipment.

Seventy-five miners died in the 1958 explosion, memorialized in the Dubliners' song "Springhill Mining Disaster" with Luke Kelly singing lead.
There was no Springhill mining disaster in 1924, nor a song called "Springhill Mining Tragedy", and Jacques St. Germain was not a singer but a vampire of lore in New Orleans.

Answer: (Have You Seen My Wife Mr. Jones?)

R.E.M. recorded the song "Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)". (Don't Fear) is the parenthetical that comes before "The Reaper", by Blue Oyster Cult. (Cold Down Here in the Dark) is no subtitle of any song I've ever heard about.
There was no mining disaster in New York in 1941, but the Bee Gees were inspired by the October 21, 1966 tragedy in Aberfan, South Wales when 144 people died (116 children) after a garbage dump slid down mountainside. Their song tells a narrative in which a miner trapped in a mine shows others a photo of his wife to the others.

"In the event of something happening to me
There is something I would like you all to see
It's just a photograph of someone that I knew
Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?"

Answer: "Roulette", by Bruce Springsteen

"Energy Follows Thought" by Willie Nelson is as the title suggests, about thinking, imagination, and focus, and the possibilities that can then ensue. "Island of Souls" is about father and son shipbuilders. "Power" is about knowing how to use it wisely-when to reveal your power and when not to attract attention.

Bruce Springsteen's "Roulette" reflects the distrust he had about how officials were handling the Three Mile Island incident, in effect, taking chances-playing roulette with the safety and lives of the residents.

"We left the toys out in the yard / I took my wife and kids and left my home unguarded
We packed what we could into the car / No one here knows how it started
Suddenly everything was just so out of control
....
I grew up here on this street / Where nothin' moves, just a strange breeze
In a town full of worthless memories / There's a shadow in my backyard
I've got a house full of things that I can't touch.
Now I want some answers, mister, I need to know
I hear all the talk but I don't know what you're sayin'
But I think I got a good idea of the game that you're playin'"

Answer: a lifeboat

The Penlee lifeboat disaster involved hurricane-force weather off of Cornwall's south coast, that made rescue attempts hazardous and ultimately lethal, as 16 people lost their lives on December 19, 1981. A life boat called the Solomon Browne of the Penlee Lifeboat Station was dispatched to aid a cargo ship called the Union Star whose engines failed.

At first a tugboat assisted but waves proved too high, and then a sea helicopter tried but the winds were too much. Eight brave men of the 47-foot wooden Solomon Browne then sailed into action, and tried valiantly to save the Union Star's crew.

Unfortunately, all crew members of both ships perished, 16 in all.

Answer: Hip hop

The 2006 record was by rapper Jerome Cosey, aka 5th Ward Weebie whose style has been known a "bounce", a New Orleans-style of hip-hop. The song was dedicated to all the people who were devastated by the flood waters of Katrina, and was later used in 2010 on the first season of the HBO series "Treme" which was set in New Orleans.

Answer: The 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan

The musical pieces were all aimed at telling the story of Tōhoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Japanese singer Bonnie Pink said that she hoped her album "Chasing Hope" would "deliver hope to Japanese people through music after the earthquake." In Patti Smith's liner notes for the album that had "Fuji-san" on it she wrote, "The concern for our friends and all of the Japanese people led Lenny [Kaye] and I to write 'Fuji-san'". "Side by Side" was written in support of the victims, as was "Never Go Back" according to Evanescence's Amy Lee in an MTV News interview. And Imogen Heap told Billboard that, "I wanted to write a song about it but I was only going to write a song about these seeds that they put into this wordcloud."