Wednesday, August 18, 2021

BCQC August Open Quiz 2021 - Let There Be Rock - Report

 

Quiz: Let There Be Rock, the BCQC Rock Music

Date & Time: 8 August 2021, 10 am

Venue: Held over Zoom

Format: Written Quiz | 40 Qs worth 50 points

QMs: Aditya Gadre & Navin Rajaram

In 1977, AC/DC proclaimed ‘Let There Be Rock’. Cut to 44 years later in pandemic times, our QMs thought it was best to follow the sermon and rock it out at 10 in the morning on a Sunday. Yes, please! Hundred-and-twenty individuals also seemed to be in agreement, as we saw incredible participation of 60 teams. Thank you, everyone!

A written quiz ensures all teams get to have a crack at every question, with no one going home (err, yeah) feeling left out and suffering the wrath of a prelims. And, what better than hearing good music all the way through! And, it’s here where the best bit about the quiz was - the focus was on music listening. The quiz had a high number of audio and videos, as any good music quiz should be. Given this stress on multimedia, the quiz was also conducted glitch-free and at a leisurely Sunday pace, despite there being Dada’s General Quiz to follow.

Full points also for the research put into the quiz, covering a wide gamut of topics, including genres, film soundtracks, album covers, song origins and band name etyms, music videos, cover versions,  guitar techniques, samples and inspirations and a lot more.

The quiz was dotted with a bunch of quirky tidbits – ranging from naming a 60s band from Liverpool (not the Beatles! Hint: Liverpool FC) to identifying Grace Slick from her paintings (question showed images from Alice in Wonderland as drawn by the Jefferson Airplane vocalist) to naming Wish You Were Here based on a clue that the LP sleeve was packed to trap the smell of burning human flesh! However, the unanimous decision on the best question of the quiz was probably Anu Malik sir taking ‘inspiration’ from KISS’ I Was Made For Loving You Baby ft. Sallu bhai.

The bulk of the questions seemed to border around classic and hard rock from the 60s and 70s (perhaps QM bias?). Higher representation from the so-called modern eras and other genres of rock music could have possibly made it a more well-rounded quiz. Music from this century also only made few isolated appearances. To talk about a pet peeve, the count of three questions on Indian rock, a goldmine that it is, could perhaps have been slightly more. Incidentally, two of those were from the post-2000s era!

That said, kudos to the QMs for keeping the quiz accessible and interesting with a heady mix of core funda and workoutables. The quiz mostly concentrated on all the big names and famous songs – from Led Zep to Alanis Morissette to Hendrix to Elvis to RHCP to GnR to Van Halen’s Eruption to Who’s Tommy to Zero’s PSP12 to Heart’s Barracuda, to name a few.

A special mention to #SoccerKils (Udupa & Santosh). Fact that they won the quiz isn’t why we’re writing about them, but the margin by which they pulled it off is astounding. They completely maxed the quiz with a phenomenal score of 49/50. One question had to be cancelled due to a Zoomcommentboxgate. The next best score was 43 and then a bunch of teams clubbed in the 38-37 range.

To reiterate, great music was always at the forefront of this quiz. As a parting gift, our generous QMs actually created a Spotify playlist featuring every song that found its mention in the quiz, resulting in 4 hours of rockgasm. Give it a listen! Playlist follows the report.

I heard it through the grapevine that the QMs are planning further editions of this quiz and if the first one is anything to go by, it’s most noble a decision.

P.S: The lack of any funda on The Beatles in a rock music quiz was taken up by the diarist and amicably settled in an out-of-court settlement with the quiz-setters. Pfft.

Clickhere for the playlist.

Scores:

49   #SoccerKills     Thejaswi Udupa     Santosh J.S.

43   Pebble Fans     Nikhil Sonde     Sumant Srivathsan

38   Definitely Maybe     Arijit Sen     Indranath Mukherjee       
       Corrosion of Conformity     Mihir Jayaraman     Nitish Khadiya

37  Fleetwood Macbeth     Gopal Kidao     Srivats Ram
      Bridge over Roger Waters     Sethu Madhavan     Berty Ashley
      Sultans of Fling     Samyak Chaturvedi     Amrit Visa

35  RajaRam Jam/EyeHateGadre     Varun Rajiv     Ashwin Kumar

34  Masters Hammer     Aswath Venkataraman      Rahul Raguram
      In the Annals of History     Bodhisattva Basu     Annway Ghosh

33  Do It Duet     Akash Gupta     Arun TP
      Eleanor Rigby's Revolver     Kunal Roy     Siddhanth Rao
      Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Quizbois     Anisha Karnail     Nandagopal

31  Van Halen T-Shirt     Jamie David Lee Roth Anderson     Angus Eddie Van Halen Creighton
      North Campus Pop Art Experimental Teamup     Arnuv Joshi     Rupak Jain

30  Vowel movement     Sohan     Adi
      Chowder Mookie     Neel Chaudhari     Dhruv Mookerji
     Fossils Fan Club     Arindam Dutta     Debanjan Bose
     Mostly Ordinary     Troy Cumpsty

29  Inglorious quizzards     Samiran Mondal     Joy Bannerjee
      Abhishek     Abhishek Kapoor
     Potentially Hazardous Objects     Paul Hillman

28  The Ozzy Akhtar project     Suraj Menon

27  Rock N'Rolla     Nikhil Soneja     Sandeepan Chaudhuri
      Mohiner Ghoraguli     Abhiroop Dey     Arijit Malakar

26  Greta On Fleek     Sumo     Vikram Rajan
      Polk Salad Annie     Aniruddha Sen Gupta     Srijit Kumar

25  Cohen Cobain Kalidas     Souhardya Pramanik     Agnidev Bandyopadhyay
      GoVansa     Govind Grewal     Vansa David
     Wu Han Clan     Rushabh Menon     Shashwat Salgaocar
     Coffee and Ebony     Sahil Gupta     Pranav Pawar

23  Fortunate Sons     Adit     Prahlad

Report by: Debanjan Bose

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