The Years They Made Music Trivia Quiz

Answer: True

Yep! Believe it or not, the diametrically different Renaissance was spun off of the same blues flavored, neo-psychedelic, legendary group that also spun off: Led Zeppelin, Cream, Blind Faith, The Jeff Beck Group, Derek and the Dominoes and Lord knows who else! Lead singer Keith Relf and his sister Jane formed the group with fellow Yardbird Jim McCarty. Relf, his sister and McCarty left eventually, after bringing Michael Dunford in and auditioning Annie Haslam, and from there, the well known version of Renaissance was formed. Though an excellent group musically, the group never found national fame, being popular mainly in the northeast corner of the U.S. and their native Britain.

Great albums of theirs are their "Live At Carnegie Hall" album and the immediate follow-up, "Novella". "Carnegie" is probably the best live album ever recorded, with the songs sounding exactly like the studio versions, and in one case, "Ashes Are Burning", sometimes improving on them. Isn't it strange that they're so different from their parent group, though?

Answer: The Blues Project and Blood, Sweat and Tears

Though as a solo act, Kooper left a lot to be desired, Kooper was a founding member of both bands; bands that actually had very small outputs considering 1) how popular they were, and 2) how influential they were. "Projections" was The Blues Project's only studio album of note, and most of their discography were live albums, recorded at various coffeehouses and pubs. Blood, Sweat & Tears only had four or five albums, that I know of, on Columbia (now Sony). The Blues Project came first. In fact, Blood, Sweat & Tear's first album was called "The Child Is The Father To Man", obviously playing off the spawning of the new group from the Project.

The Blues Project album, "Projections", was a mainstay of every Woodstock era coffee shop's turntable and counterculture household for as far as the crow could fly. "Flute Thing", "Cheryl's Going Home", "Fly Away" and "Steve's Song" were all immediately catchy songs from "Projections". Blood, Sweat & Tears was responsible for the classics "Spinning Wheel", "And When I Die" and "You Made Me So Very Happy". Blood, Sweat & Tear's fame, however, didn't take off until they hired David Clayton Thomas as lead singer and got rid of Kooper. Ingrates! Steve Katz was another holdover from The Blues Project.

Answer: Traffic

Though they had an unfortunate name, Traffic was a group that had a sound all of its own and two excellent songwriters in Steve Winwood and Dave Mason. Well-known tunes by them were: "Dear Mr. Fantasy", "Berkshire Poppies", "40,000 Headmen", "Pearly Queen", "No Time To Live", "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys", the aforementioned "Vagabond Virgin" and "John Barleycorn Must Die". Flutist/bassist Chris Wood and drummer Jim Capaldi are, alas, no longer with us. Winwood's "Arc Of A Diver" solo album and Mason's "Alone/Together" are two of the best solo albums you may ever hear!

Answer: The Beatles

On March 4, 1966, John Lennon opened his big, cheeky mouth, and started a controversy that just might have kept the Beatles from touring ever again after that year, when he stated that "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity...." This started an uproar that had fundamentalist types burning their albums, pinning Beatles memorabilia to flaming crosses, banning their music from radio stations and John Lennon himself apologizing for the major slip of the tongue.

The Beatles played their last live concert in San Francisco that very same year.

Answer: The Who, Steppenwolf and The Rolling Stones

This is strange...the "nice boy" groups like The Beatles and The Moody Blues come out with tunes, some of which were obvious, that were blantantly drug-influenced and indulgent, but the three "bad boys" of rock at the time, the inimitable Rolling Stones, the raucous Who, and rough and tumble Steppenwolf all had songs warning their fans of the hazards of drug use. Steppenwolf actually pleaded for help to fight something called "The Monster". They also did "The Pusher" but curiously, they preceded these songs with "Magic Carpet Ride", ("...Why dontcha come with me, little girl, on a magic carpet ride? Well...you don't know what...we've been seeing...") which was diametrically opposite to the others in attitude.

The Rolling Stones came out with a rather jugband-like song called "Mother's Little Helper", a song which initially almost sounds sympathetic to the use of tranquilizers or hormone pills to ease nerves, but at the end warns they will "...help you on your way, to your busy dying day". Odd for them, considering that they were the poster boys for drug induced hedonism. Shows there was at least a spark of decency in Mssrs. Jagger and...(ahem)...well, Mick at least.

The Who entry was "The Music Must Change": "When I hear the cold lies of the pushers, know it exists! I can see it in the eyes of the kids emphasized with their fists! But the high has to rise from the low...the volcano's exploding the snow....the mosquito sting brings a dream, but the poison's deranged! The Music must change!" Very poignant lyrics from a group that, for all we know, just drank.

Meanwhile....good old, harmless JPGandR come out with "Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds"; there's "Dawn Is A Feeling" by the Moody Blues: "Dawn is a feeling...a beautiful ceiling! The smell of grass just makes you pass into a dream..."! And then there's the truly offensive "Legend Of A Mind", a song lionizing renegade Harvard professor Timothy Leary, high priest of LSD! Not to mention Renaissance's "Can You Understand": "Open up your eyes and make your lifeline sunshine now...open up your ways and make your lifeline sunshine now...Can you understand, do you understand? Can you understand, do you understand?"

The Beatles, Moody Blues and Renaissance all had amiable, storybook public images, but apparently there was another agenda afoot besides family entertainment. I don't want to even go into Joni Mitchell!

Subtle, eh wot?

Answer: The Chocolate Watch Band

The Chocolate Watchband was a group that maybe ten people have heard of, though they had a major label debut release in 1967 on the Tower imprint of Capitol Records. They've been described as Rolling Stones wannabes, but I remember the trippy, science-fiction-y sound of the two songs mentioned above.

These songs are on the re-issued album "No Way Out" and are almost worth the price of the CD itself. The album was produced by Ed Cobb, a former member of the 50's group The Four Preps.

Answer: The Moby Grape

The Moby Grape produced three very good albums, their first and second, that earned them a permanent place among the great flash-in-the-pans of the Woodstock era. "Naked" was the tune that appeared on most of the albums the group released on Columbia and other labels.

Their songs: "Omaha", "Motorcycle Irene" and "Funky Tunk" are considered classics. The albums were: their first, eponymous one and their second, "Wow" and "Grape Jam", which was a double album of some very funny music. One tune just might offend you, from both points of view. "Jam" was just what it was called, a bluesy jam session with some very good players involved.

Their third album for Columbia (r) was called "A Truly Fine Citizen", and the album cover was apparently an apology for the "possibly offensive song" mentioned earlier.

Answer: Heart

Heart was formed in 1970 by Ann and Nancy Wilson, of Seattle, and before grunge and alternative took over that town, they helped add to the image of Seattle as being a truly rocking town that turned out legends. The Wilson Sisters took up the escutcheon Grace Slick laid down, (or lost, due to abject insanity,) and made truly incredible music! Their first two albums, "Dreamboat Annie" and "Little Queen" are their best, producing the songs they are best known for: "Magic Man", "Kick It Out", "Dreamboat Annie", "Crazy On You", "Little Queen", "Barracuda" and "Sing, Child, Sing".

In the 80s, they produced still more tunes, like "Never" and "What About Love". Ann and Nancy are two of the truest muses of rock and went ol', sick Gracie two or three better at least!

Answer: Country and Western

Don't believe me? Just listen to "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby?", "Sittin' On A Fence", "Get Off Of My Cloud", "Mother's Little Helper" and "Satisfaction" and tell me you can't see Charlie Daniels or Conway Twitty doing the same tunes. "Get Off Of My Cloud" could be called "Git Off'n Mah Land!"

"Under My Thumb", "Yesterday's Papers" and "My Confession", in fact, are three of the few songs I've heard of the pre-"Their Satanic Majesties Request" Stones that sound even remotely rhythm and blues influenced! At least of their original compositions.

Answer: Peter Knight

On what will probably always be considered their finest album, Peter Knight took a lush sound and fleshed out this album with interludes between tracks that set the mood for this ambitious piece. Unfortunately, The Moodies tried to extend this to a string of seven or eight albums, and it got tiresome on the very next album after "Days".

"In Search Of The Lost Chord" had to be the most pretentious album known to man, before, during or after the time it was released! Remember me pointing out how certain lyrics in "Dawn Is A Feeling" were suspicious? Well, you'll also remember me mentioning "Legend Of A Mind"...the paean to the dubious Timothy Leary. That track is on this very album! Songs by Justin Hayward and John Lodge, however, almost rescue it. The FCC must have been asleep when "Chord" was up for review.

Answer: Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun

Paul Kantner and Grace Slick's output between the Jefferson Airplane and Starship was spotty at best. "Sunfighter", in fact, never should have been released! The very first song on the first side should have been Grace's one-way ticket to the funny farm. "Blows Against The Empire", the very first non-Airplane album, made no sense whatsoever, but "Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun" was actually musically rewarding to some degree. Aside from the eerie "Fishman", there was the equally eerie and haunting "Harp Tree Lament" and "White Boy", a song where Kantner wonders just where white people come from. Same place as everybody else, Paulie...Earth!

As with other former Airplane/West Coast hippie musician collaborations from these people, a little too much attention is paid to casual drug use and Gracie's obsession with sex. When the Airplane started out, specifically after Grace joined them, RCA Records laughingly tried to market them as "the aristocrats of rock". They eventually turned out to be the purest examples of trailer trash in American music! One listen to "Across The Board" from this album would confirm that.

Answer: "Tomorrow Never Knows"

Perhaps the trippiest song the Beatles ever produced, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was the very last tune on their landmark "Revolver" album. "Revolver" was the album where they broke completely from the "Moon/June"-"Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't" school of pop song writing they had subscribed to before, instead, relying on tableau exposition and mulling over "the great questions" out loud. George's interest in eastern mysticism that had taken hold of the group had apparently affected Lennon the most, and this song was the result.

It is a very "science-fiction-y" sounding tune, described by one rock reviewer as sounding like "God through a megaphone". There was extensive use of synthesizers and backward taping involved and a mild alteration of Lennon's voice.

This is one song that you never hear DJs play on the radio, though I've heard the Max Weinberg 7 play it on Conan O'Brien's late night television show occasionally.

Answer: "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"

"Piper" was the very first Pink Floyd album, released in the US on the Tower label, an imprint of Capitol Records. Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd was a far spacier animal than Water's and Gilmour's. While Waters' & Gilmour's Floyd was depressing, dystopic and rebellious, Barrett's was ethereal, somewhat comic and truly psychedelic, more so than any other rock group at the time. Only "New Music" or pure electronic music was more spacey. This aesthetic lasted about three years for the Floyd, until Barrett apparently became totally incoherent from the abuse of psychotropic drugs. Syd left the group in 1968 and Waters and Gilmour wasted no time in changing the focus and bent of the group as we know it now.

I'm an old Barrett Floyd fan, and have yet to purchase a Waters/Gilmour album. Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Answer: The Witch's Promise

Jethro Tull, along with the Moody Blues and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, was one of the few groups to continue to put out albums all through the 70s. Their output in the early part of the decade is their best, however, consisting of excellent albums like "Living In The Past", which "Witch's Promise" is from, "Aqualung", "Stand Up" and "Minstrel In The Gallery".

These albums could be mined for singles for a good three years before the supply came close to dwindling noticeably.

Answer: Revelation! - Revolution '69!

This was one of the most embarrassing attempts to appear hip by any rock group outside of the Moody Blues' "In Search of the Lost Chord". The cover featured Joe Butler, a man who has since saught protection from his own daughter due to physical abuse, racing across a jungle landscape against a lion, naked as a jaybird, along with an equally nude young lady. Butler looks as frightened as blazes, too! I haven't heard one song from this album, and I'm sure I don't want to, either! It was released in, believe it or not, 1969, and aside from lacking Sebastian, also was without silly Zal Yanovsky. Needless to say, this was the last Lovin' Spoonful album.

"Rain On The Roof" was a single the group came out with a year or two earlier, (extremely saccharine, too!) "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" was the soundtrack to a Woody Allen parody of a Japanese spy film that they did the music for. And "Full Circle" was the very last Doors album, sans Morrison.