Songs in the Footsteps of Artworks Quiz

Answer: All of them

ELP performed "Jerusalem" in their LP "Brain Salad Surgery" (1973) with Keith Emerson happy as ever to utilize his Moog synthesizer which at the time cost more than a Mercedes-Benz.

Billy Bragg performed "Blake's Jerusalem" in his EP "The Internationale" (1991).

The Fall's quirky adaptation "Dog Is Life/Jerusalem" is taken from their LP "I Am Kurious Oranj" (1988).
With respect to the subject of this quiz, this rendition deserves a further look: the album's name is borrowed from the movies "I Am Curious (Yellow)" (1967) and "I Am Curious (Blue)" (1968) directed by Vilgot Sjöman. The album served as the soundtrack for the ballet "I am Curious, Orange" by the Michael Clark contemporary dance group, with which The Fall have toured.
The song itself is Mark E. Smith at his very best. Interleaving the original lyrics and composition of "Jerusalem" with a story of a man who tripped on a discarded banana skin and blames the government for the cause and effect of the incident (lyrics: http://fall.byethost13.com/lyrics.html?http%3A//fall.byethost13.com/iako.html).

A short and concise article on the original poem: http://www.progressiveliving.org/william_blake_poetry_jerusalem.htm

Answer: "Debaser" - The Pixies

"Got me a movie / I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs / I want you to know
Girlie so groovy / I want you to know
Don't know about you / but I am un chien andalusia
Wanna grow / Up to be / Be a debaser"

Don't know about you, but I love it! "Debaser" is a very aggressive song from "Doolittle" (1989). Frank Black actually shouts, rather than sings it (video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mCoOlUjhlc). The lyrics above describe the extreme movie scene where the dreaming woman's eye is being sliced as if to allow the viewer entry to her innermost thoughts. Some interpreters of the song see it as criticism on art forms which cross the line between the civilized and uncivilized.

More on the movie at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/

"Alec Eiffel" from "Trompe le Monde" (1991) is a salute of sorts to the French architect ("he thought big / they called it a phallic").

"Gigantic" from "Surfer Rosa" (1988) was inspired by Bruce Beresford's movie "Crimes Of The Heart" (1986) which tells the story of an interracial relationship between a black teenager and a white married woman.

The Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" was inspired by a dialogue from the musical "Guys & Dolls".

Answer: King Crimson

King Crimson's lyricist Richard Palmer-James excelled in his portrayal of "The Night Watch". I can only recommend you to listen to the song while looking at the painting.

Lyrics: http://lyrics.rockmagic.net/lyrics/king_crimson/starless_and_bible_black_1974.html#04
Audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiIIo9nKBSA
Painting and description from the website of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/SK-C-5?lang=en (click to enlarge)

The song is from "Starless and Bible Black" (1974). The album name is a quotation from Dylan Thomas' play "Under Milk Wood" (1953).

Answer: Roy Harper

Roy Harper on "McGoohan's Blues": "The big problem that you've got with writing things like that is that you don't want them to be true, but increasingly they are... Well maybe the next time I can write something that fantasises instead and then I won't have to look back and say, You were right Roy... It's terrible just to think about a little man like me, a little boy as I was, writing a song like that - and it still being a valid thing to say now. And I can't actually see a time when it won't be, it's sort of... it's fairly timeless. I didn't think it was going to be. I didn't think about things like that then, it was almost stream-of-consciousness and you sort of have withdrawal symptoms from it... you don't want it to be there, and at the same time it's like a hollow victory. It's a very hollow victory." (ref: http://www.terrascope.org/harper.html).

More on "The prisoner": http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/prisonerthe/prisonerthe.htm

Roy Harper himself could have been a subject to a question in this quiz, as Led Zeppelin's song "Hats Off To (Roy) Harper" is dedicated to him.

Answer: Peter Hammill

A powerful song. The last thing we did when visiting Rome for the first time was rush to the Santa Maria della Vittoria with a walkman and marvel at the statue while listening to the song. Nowadays, you can do the same from the comfort of your chair:

Song audio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbSdUwzTGU
Song lyrics: http://www.sofasound.com/phcds/sclyrics.htm#3
Image of the statue: http://www.library.ubc.ca/finearts/BaroqueImages/st_therese2.jpg

Well, almost the same.

Answer: In all of them

Three examples of composed poems chosen out of hundreds of possibilities.

In the case of Majakovski's "Untitled", Dutch band Mecano took a Russian-English translation of this fine poem.

Billy Bragg used a Majakovski poem to name his 1986 album "Talking With the Taxman About Poetry". The inner sleeve of the LP contains a translation of the poem.

Answer: True

In this example "Oliver Twist" has made a voyage from the grim, black London of Dickens to the somewhat cheerful musical stages of the world, then with Patrik's help back to what seems to be its natural place.

Patrik Fitzgerald on "The Little Dippers": "Both the music and the lyrics are inspired by the film/musical "Oliver!" which in turn was based on "Oliver Twist". The music is a jaunty little cockney singalong. I always liked the songs in the sixties musicals. Basically the people in the song are just like a little gang led or owned by Fagin, and are drifting around places like Petticoat Lane, which is obviously from real life, or, transposed to punk, it might be Kings Road or Portobello Road."

Other Patrik Fitzgerald songs in the footsteps of artworks are the rendition of Oscar Wilde's poem "Impression Du Matin", the song "Waiting for the Final Cue" where the speaker identifies with the hero of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum", and the song "Island of Lost Souls" which is named after the horror movie of the same name (1932).

Answer: Cemetery Gates

"Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine".

Lyrics: http://compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/lyrics/thequeen/cemetryg.htm
Home-made music video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=TbBdWNqxkR0

Morrissey often admitted his admiration of Wilde and it is Wilde's quote "talent borrows, genius steals" that earns him the seat as Moz' lawyer in the song.

"William, It Was Really Nothing" does not deal with William Shakespeare, and is loosely based on the novel "Billy Liar" (1959) by Keith Waterhouse. It borrows a few lines from it, in the manner that gained Morrissey the reputation of a plagiarist. To this reputation "Cemetry Gates" serves as a statement of defense, and simultaneous attack.

Much has been discussed about the misspell in the song's name - "cemetry" instead of "cemetery" - but the common belief is that it is an innocent mistake (Morrissey? Innocent?! Oh well...).

"Oscillate Wildly" is an instrumental track whose title is a wordplay on Oscar Wilde.

"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" is said to be influenced by Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar".

Answer: The Velvet Underground - "The Velvet Underground and Nico" (1967)

Andy Warhol was the patron of The Velvet Underground. "The Velvet Underground and Nico" is known more as "The Banana Record" due to Warhol's dominant cover artwork. Considered as the album that put the concept of "sex and drugs and rock'n'roll" on the table as its highlight songs deal with either of the trinity members.

The song "Venus in Furs" takes its name from the novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who put the "M" in S&M (the Marquis de Sade put the "S").

Answer: Silent Hedges

Bauhaus took their name from the German architecture school and art movement. Their interpretation of "art for art's sake" led them to include a lot of references to artists and artworks in their songs.

The book title "Brave New World" is taken from Miranda's speech in act 5 of Shakespeare's "The Tempest".

It so happened that I coincidentally purchased my copy of the Bauhaus LP "The Sky's Gone Out" (1982) and my English copy of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". Reading the book and listening to the album's second track, I noticed the beautiful collage woven therein.

Lyrics: http://www.waste.org/bauhaus/l/silenthedges.html
Online book with a search feature: http://www.classicreader.com/booktoc.php/sid.1/bookid.1279/

Time for a nice closure to this quiz - The Doors took their name from Aldous Huxley's book "The Doors of Perception". In turn, Huxley borrowed this name from a quote by a poet: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite". And this infinite loop brings us right back to the first question of this quiz - the poet to whom the quote belongs is William Blake.

Hope you enjoyed to test your knowledge and/or to learn from this humble effort of mine, and hope to see you playing my other quizzes.