Songs About Natural Disasters & Accidents (Pt 4) Quiz

Answer: Headless Cross

"Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague" was a song on Frank Zappa's 1969 album "Uncle Meat". "The Middle Ages" is a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter from her 2016 album, "The Things That We Are Made Of", and "The Black Angel's Death Song" is a track from the 1967 eponymously named album by The Velvet Underground & Nico.

The lead singer on this Black Sabbath song, "Headless Cross", was Tony Martin, as Ozzy Osbourne was no longer a member of the band. This album featured some impressive talent including Cozy Powell on drums and Brian May on guitar for one track. The song "Headless Cross" was about the true incident of people from a small village called Headless Cross, praying at the top of hill for God's help.

Answer: Mail train

The Southern Railway train disaster in North Carolina on September 27, 1903, saw the "Fast Mail" train (nicknamed "Old '97" because it was Train # 97), plunge into a ravine after traveling at dangerously high speeds. The conductor was trying to follow orders to get the train on time from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina, despite it being an hour behind schedule.

The famous railroad ballad was recorded by countless musicians, and was the focus of a copyright lawsuit between Victor Talking Machine Company and one of the first people on the scene of the wreckage, David Graves George. Mr. George won the first two court rulings, lost the third ruling, and after going all the way to the United States Supreme Court, lost when the court ruled that he filed too late.

Answer: Typhoid Mary

Mary Mallon was born September 23, 1869, in Northern Ireland. She came to America in 1884, and worked as a cook in the New York area. By 1900, wherever she worked, typhoid outbreaks followed, and by 1907 she was identified as the probable agent of the outbreaks, when links were drawn to her history of employment.

"She wears the sign of the reaper.
Typhoid runs in her blood.
Her hands touch you so gently.
A toxic touch and a virus you'll get.
Typhoid Mary.
Bringer of disease. Good riddance of the weak.
Typhoid Mary."

Answer: The Unsinkable Polly Frown

Right away the title of this 13-minute folk song parodying social mores and the Titanic gives away the humor, because it was the RMS Titanic, not the USS Titanic. It was after all a British ship, RMS being a Royal Main Ship not a USS (United States Ship).

The lengthy song follows the format of the ultra-long folk song parody classic "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie. The song is mostly about a fictitious account of real-life heavyweight champ Jack Johnson being denied embarkation on the Titanic. Also mentioned throughout the song is the band playing "Nearer My God To Thee" as the 1997 film depicted and also as survivors of the real Titanic recalled.

Other characters abound in the story including "this fella, his sideburns they're just a little too long / He giving away, see / He ... he been down in Mexico he been down in Mexico / He been workin' in this rope factory down in Mexico now / Down in Mexico they make rope outta this funny little hemp plant that grows wild in the ground."

There is no mention of the "Unsinkable Polly Frown", nor any mention of the real-life Molly Brown for that matter.

Answer: Gresford, Wales

The Gresford coal mine disaster was one of the worst in Great Britain's history, killing 266 men, and occurring in Gresford, Wales. Robert Saint had worked as a youngster with his father in the coal mines, before later becoming a composer/musician.

He wrote "The Miner's Hymn" aka "Gresford" shortly after the disaster, but it was not performed until 1938. Before even that hymn came out there was an anonymously written folk song called "The Gresford Disaster" that has since been performed by several artists including Ewan MacColl in the 1950s (he had written Roberta Flack's hit record "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"). Other artists who covered the traditional song were Alex Campbell in 1964, the Albion Band in 1978, and the Hennessys in 1993.

Answer: Peter, Paul and Mary

While the other bands were formed after 1965, Peter, Paul and Mary started their group in 1961 in New York City, as an important part of the American folk music revival period. They recorded "Ballad of Spring Hill" for their 4th studio album, "A Song Will Rise" in 1965. The disaster occurred on October 23, 1958, when an underground earthquake led to 174 miners becoming trapped underground, with only about 100 survivors.

Answer: Landslide

On October 21, 1966, an avalanche of coal waste slid down an incline in Aberfan, Wales, killing 144 people, most of them children who were inside their classrooms. The hillside was rain-soaked, making the black mucky sediment easier to cascade down. Mining coal produced waste along with the product, and that waste was what amassed on the huge heap.

Dulahan's songwriter Kyle Aughe tends to write songs based in historical events on the British Isles. The song came out in 2003, on the band's second CD called "Not Against My Own", but they rarely perform it in concert:

"On Aberfan, a hundred sixteen children, Aberfan
So cruel a fate to will them
There'll be no consolation for the coal board's washed their hands
Of the blood of those young children in the town
Of Aberfan"

Answer: Montreux, Switzerland

The song features one of the most famous four-note riffs in rock and roll. Deep Purple had been playing a concert in a casino's theatre in Montreux, "on the Lake Geneva shoreline". "Frank Zappa and the Mothers were" onstage when "some stupid with a flare gun" fired it into the ceiling and "burned down the gambling house."

Miraculously, there were no major injuries, but the casino was completely destroyed as was all the equipment on the stage. Deep Purple relocated to the Grand Hotel and commenced recording their tracks for the album "Machine Head" which was supposed to have been recorded at the now destroyed casino. "Smoke on the Water" hit number four on the Billboard Pop Singles chart, and became their signature song.

Answer: Arcade Fire

The song is from Arcade Fire's 2005 album, called "Funeral." Arcade Fire is the only Canadian group in that list; the other groups are from Australia. The song mostly focused on the situation in Montreal, Canada, which suffered a total blackout for over a week. Overall damage in Canada and the U.S. resulted in over $4 billion and about 40 deaths. One member her at funtrivia who lived through it described it so vividly: "Blades of grass covered in ice as big as your thumb, cattle freezing to death in the fields and barns. Gov't intervened and killed them. Had to be off the roads by 4pm because telephone poles were falling down on all the roads under the weight of the ice. Military police stood in the aisles of the commissary while patrons paid cash for necessities during the blackouts."

"I went out into the night
I went out to find some light
Kids are dyin' out in the snow
Look at them go, look at them go"

Answer: Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine

"Supergroup" Audioslave's members are lead singer and rhythm guitarist Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, and lead guitarist Tome Morello, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk, all from Rage Against the Machine. Rage Against the Machine had been a metal band that played a lot of anti-authoritarian themed music, while members also participated in political protests.

When forming the band, Chris Cornell had said he didn't want it to be a political band, so "Wide Awake" is the relatively rare political output from Audioslave.

The song criticized the government for its ineffective and slow reaction to the Katrina disaster of 2005.