One Liners & Couplets, Parto Kvar Quiz

Answer: Bob Dylan - "Positively 4th Street"

'Positively 4th Street'. I could go on and on about why Dylan is my favorite living musician. Or I could keep things simple and just point to this song as a major reason. Originally released as a single in September of 1965. Even as a six year old I could completely relate to the attitude of the lyrics. Which is not all that difficult when you are an anti-social little creep like I was.

Eventually the song was added to the Bob Dylan's 'Greatest Hits' LP that was released one day after my seventh birthday in 1967 (That'd be the 'Greatest Hits' album with the great Milton Glaser poster in it - and I take great pride in being able to say I was probably the only seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven year old kid who had that poster very prominently hung in my bedrooms before moving to Germany when I was 12. The LP peaked at number ten on the charts and the single at number seven (should'a went to number one imo, EASILY one of his best ever single releases!)

Answer: Led Zeppelin - "The Lemon Song"

Personally speaking I LOVED the FIRST Led Zeppelin album (then again 'LZ1', '3' and 'Presence' have always been my Zep go-to's). What a glorious and heavy noise that album was! However many a Zep fan would probably disagree with me and side with 'Led Zeppelin 2'. Fair enough. I'm just not much of a fan for the most part with how that album sounds and was mixed. 'The Lemon Song' is probably one of the more notorious tracks on the album. 'LZ2' was issued near the end of October in 1969. It was their first album to go to number one on the charts. By 1996 the album had sold over 12 million copies. On a side note: I never knew that the lyric I quoted above was a part of this song. Robert Plant you filthy, filthy man! ;-)

pointless personal side note: When I was a wee lad and heard 'Whole Lotta Love' on the radio for the first few dozen times I had never heard (or heard of) Led Zeppelin. I, for some bizarre reason, was absolutely convinced that the person singing it was Isaac Hayes (whose 'Hot Buttered Soul' LP kept drawing me into eventually buying it because every single track on it appeared to be more than ten minutes long - it did not take all that much to intrigue and impress this gullible kid). It was not until some kid at school who had brought his record player and a few albums played 'Whole Lotta Love"' that I finally knew who played the song and what they sounded like.

Answer: Black Randy & The Metrosquad - "Idi Amin"

I think I already made my love for the Black one clear in the previous part of this quiz. THIS song, in its original version that was released as a single, is what started that love affair. Released in 1978 by Black Randy & his Elite Metrosquad and eventually included in a completely re-recorded version on his classic 'Pass The Dust I Think I'm Bowie' LP in 1979, 'Idi Amin' was one of the releases on his Dangerhouse label that everybody at the time seemed to love. Or at least everybody who was into the early punk scene and had a sense of humor. Did this hit the charts? Oh you kidder you!

Answer: The Strawberry Alarm Clock - "Incense And Peppermints"

The great 'Incense & Peppermints'. released in May of 1967 by the HUGELY underrated Strawberry Alarm Clock. The song is officially credited as being written by John S. Carter and Tim Gilbert, but it was based on an instrumental idea by band members Mark Weitz and Ed King. Yes. THAT Ed King.

As in Lynyrd Skynyrd. You did not know that, did you? As a kid I used to have a made up "drum kit" in my closet that was made out of laundry drums and seven inch singles I had bought that I did not like that were used as the cymbals.

The Beatles 'Yesterday' worked almost perfectly for the two cymbal hits right after the guitar solo. Proving, if nothing else, that even 'Yesterday' had some kind of value in life!

Answer: Rolling Stones - "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"

'Sticky Fingers', 1971. The first album I bought after moving to Germany in 1971 ('Brown Sugar' was the big hit right as we were leaving the USA and I loved that song). Personally I have always preferred 'Sticky Fingers' to the over rated 'Exile On Main Street' double album. Why? Simple: 'Sticky Fingers' works as a full length single LP, whereas 'Exile...' would have been a GREAT single LP but as it stands it is a bloated two lp set that wears out its welcome a little over halfway through. The only other double album of the first half of the seventies that is in such dire need of some serious editing for me is Led Zeppelin's 'Physical Graffiti'.

Be that as it may... 'Can't You Hear Me Knocking' is one of the clear top three highlights of the great 'Sticky Fingers' album. Released in April of 1971, it pretty much went to number one on the charts everywhere. The Spanish issue had a completely different cover and lost the track 'Sister Morphine' (which was replaced with what was previously a b-side-only release of 'Let It Rock' recorded at Leeds University as a substitute). If you have a chance to google the different cover, do so. I actually like BOTH covers equally.

Answer: Cream - "Those Were The Days"

As a little kid Cream were one of the more normal bands that I absolutely worshipped. As a kid, I wanted to BE Jack Bruce when I grew up! 'Wheels Of Fire' was my all time favorite Cream (double) LP. And "Those Were The Days" was my favorite track on the album (Along with the live versions of 'NSU' and 'Sweet Wine', 'As You Said' also from 'Wheels Of Fire' and 'Dance The Night Away' from 'Disraeli Gears' it is one of my all time top five favorite Cream tracks). Listen to Ginger's drumming on it. Absolute heaven for a nine year old music nut.

So whaddaya wanna know? The album came out in July of 1968 and it eventually went to number ONE in the USA. For a change we got things right over here. "Those Were The Days" was never issued as a single here or anywhere else. Oh yeah. And in case you were wondering: Wheelchair Wheelchair Wheelchair Wheelchair is a real band and 'I Hate Iceland' is a real song of theirs. Now you can rest peacefully tonight and not have that question racing through your head and keeping you awake. You are welcome.

Answer: The Kinks - "Love Me Till The Sun Shines"

As with my previous quiz: somebody else here used my Kinks lyrical go-to so I have to make some other choices. But lucky for me that the Kinks make that so very easy to do :-)

Mere words cannot express how much I love this song. It was one of the three Dave Davies' sung and written track on the 1967 'Something Else' album. The yearning and despair in his voice on this can often damn near bring tears to my eyes. Not that this is a ballad or anything like that. It rocks like heck. But there is a deep, deep sadness to it. As well as one of my all time favorite bass lines (If you can find it try and hear the EP mix, which accentuates the bass and rhythm guitar somewhat). In my opinion Dave's best ever song (many will disagree with me on that). The album itself was released in September of 1967 in the UK and January of 1968 in the USA but it did not have much chart action at all as the band had just been banned from touring the USA as well as banned from appearing on TV, so the album was not able to be promoted properly when it was issued. Which is a great shame as this album, 'Village Green Preservation Society' and 'Arthur' are amongst the three greatest albums ever released during that time.

Answer: The Creation - "How Does It Feel To Feel"

You mean you have never heard of The Creation? Considering that they were British band who only saw something resembling popularity on the European continent (mostly in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway where they apparently had good taste in music) and whose records were pretty much only released in Germany at the time (and in the seventies and eighties, prior to them being reissued, were records you could never hope to own unless you were willing to pay around $100 per single (and that for a copy that would not be anywhere close to mint), I can see why they might be an unknown quantity to many. Yes their singles were mostly released in the USA as well but they bombed over here and I personally have never seen a copy of any US single by them (and I collected the band). Prior to their stuff finally getting reissued around 1984 this was one of the most collectable (and highly priced, if you could actually find any of their stuff to begin with) bands on the planet.

'How Does It Feel To Feel' is one of my three favorites by them. If you are at all familiar with them prior to 1984 and lived outside of continental Europe chances are the only way you might have heard something resembling them would have been via 'Boney M's' cover of their most well known song 'Painter Man'. They barely made a blip in their home country, Britain! I won't bore you with endless trivia about the band (Google them. There is a Wikipedia page). The most interesting bits of trivia pertaining to them for most people would be that Ron Wood was briefly a member of the band and that their guitar player Eddie Phillips was the first performer to use a violin bow on his electric guitar (Now you know where Jimmy Page got it from).

Answer: Kate Bush & Rowan Atkinson - "Do Bears...?"

Admit it: you think I'm funnin' you. This is a REAL song and those are the REAL lyrics. Look for it on YouTube. It's there. For years this was one of THEE hardest to find Kate Bush rarities. The it became available via a nineties Bootleg cd entitled 'Collaborations' and officially via a preposterously difficult to find album 'Various - Comic Relief Presents Utterly Utterly Live'. It was never released as a single or otherwise.

Rowan Atkinson you all know as "Mr Bean". Well YEARS before that character he was a VERY popular comedian in the UK. And Kate... well Kate was quite simply the greatest thing to ever come out of the UK since the Beatles when she exploded onto the European music scene in 1978. You have got to give her some real credit here. This song was done at just about the height of her fame, as a duet with Rowan. The fact that she actually DID it straight-faced and gave it her all just made me love her all the more. MOST musicians of her stature would have taken themselves way too seriously to be involved in a song such as this. I have also heard that she was actually considering a song that was a parody of her done by 'Not The Nine O'clock News' the name of which I cannot remember as I sold the album it was on for around $500 back in the nineties -NOT 'Oh England My Leotard' - yeah: it's the other thing that was considered a major KB rarity - the song of which was only a 30 second or so snippet but she liked it enough that she was toying with completing it to full song length and performing it on her next tour (that never happened). I know I know: it is an unsubstantiated rumor like the widely rumored EMI demo tape of her with Pink Floyd backing her playing about 2/3 of what eventually became her 'Kick Inside' album (something that many a Kate fan would probably commit mass murder to hear in their lifetimes. Myself included) and a rumor which has never been denied by Kate, Pink Floyd, David Gilmore (the guy who discovered her) or EMI Records. How likely is it that this tape actually exists? I dunno. Do bears sha la la la la la la la la la la laaaa?

Answer: The Zombies - "Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914)"

'Odessey and Oracle' was released in April of 1968 in the UK and in June of 1968 in the USA (Thank you Al Kooper for making that US release happen). For some utterly bizarre reason CBS decided that 'Butchers Tale (Western Front 1914)' had 'Number One With A Bullet' written all over it and they released it as the first single off of the album. To yawning and silent success. Personally it's my favorite track on the album, but what do I know? Eventually somebody at CBS grew a brain (fyi that'd be the legendary Al Kooper again) and 'Time of the Season' was released as a single and became a surprise hit in early 1969, eventually reaching number three is the USA and number ONE in good old Canada. Nowadays re-evaluation has given this album 'legendary status' as one of the very greatest and most important albums released during the sixties (as eventually happened with Love's 'Forever Changes' album around the same time).

At the time I am writing this the Zombies have just finished a rather successful US tour that featured them playing 'Odessey and Oracle' in its entirety. Colin Blunstone is one of rock music's most undervalued singers ever.

He does not so much as sing a song as he breathes it. And Rod Argent you all know as the leader of the seventies band Argent who had some big hits with 'Hold Your Head Up' and 'God Gave Rock & Roll To You'.