Nov 042015
Please assign each band member the most appropriate activity based on what you assume their skill set to be:
1. Be your guest at a dinner party
2. Babysit/pet sit/house sit for a week
3. Help remodel the kitchen/assist with home repairs
4. Pick out a wardrobe that you will then wear exclusively for the next year
John, Paul, George, Ringo
Mick, Keith, Charlie, Brian/Bill
Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young
Mercury, May, Deacon, Taylor
Just to clarify, each band member has a different role?
As in:
Pete — kitchen/home repairs, helpful ripping out the old kitchen, good with the electrical, could wind up with a really cool home studio. Keep him busy, keep the chatter to a minimum.
Entwistle — wardrobe, I’m sorry, I’m not wearing the skeleton bodysock (except on Halloween), but I’m good with the Union Jack jacket and such.
Daltrey — The only one I’d consider letting near my child/pet/house for a day, let alone a week. Good chance the place is cleaner when when you get home than when how you left it. Thanks Roger!
Moon — Dinner party guest, can’t remotely be trusted with anything else, but he’s showing up way late and hammered. Should be fun when he gets there, though — until he passes out. Can someone stick him in their car and drop him off?
I’m assuming that the rules are the same as what BabaOLewie used, so here goes…
David Crosby as dinner guest – he probably is quite the raconteur with lots of stories to tell. No wine for him, though. I don’t want to take responsibility for any backsliding on his part.
Neil Young as fixit-man – Hell, he has owned his own ranch so he must have learned something in all those years.
Graham Nash as housesitter – He seems to be the gentlest soul of the bunch. Probably easiest to trust.
Steven Stills as wardrobe advisor? Er, I think not, and I can’t think of anything else for him to do except be a jam partner. Even then, he would try to take over the proceedings.
Based on the picture above, I will not be letting Mr. May anywhere near my closet.
Here’s how I’ve sorted out the bands in question.
1. Be your guest at a dinner party
John – One of my top 2 personal heroes; I’ll keep him fed and refill his drinks for as long as I can hear him talk shit.
Mick – Watching him charm the pants off a dinner table of widely varying guests would be highly instructive.
Crosby – He got laid a lot for an overweight, bald, long-haired drug wreck who contributed the least amount of songs I can enjoy in any band he was in; he must have had an amazing personality.
May – Since I don’t know who’s who among the rhythm section of Queen, I’ll at least have the other member who’s name I can sort out. I could see May being an addition to the dinner party in an unintentionally funny way: he’s the guest mostly likely to be so pompous my wife and I can get a laugh over him while cleaning up late that night.
2. Babysit/pet sit/house sit for a week
Ringo – Definitely a dog guy, but I think he’d do well to hang with our cat, Cornbread, watch TV, glace through our personal items around the house, and run the faucets every couple of days.
Charlie – Another likely dog guy. My fear would be that I’d return home and mistake him for one of our pets.
Nash – He’d be very gentle and caring for my menagerie, if I had one to care for. As it is, I’m sure he’s more of a cat guy, so he and Cornbread, would hit it off. He’s also the rocker most likely to properly water our plants.
Deacon – Provided he’s the guy with the curly blond perm.
3. Help remodel the kitchen/assist with home repairs
George – My first impulse would be to assign him garden duty, but I see him coning over in one of his all-denim outfits, like One Day at a Time‘s Schneider, and being a surprisingly adept handyman.
Keith – He can handle a switchblade, so he can surely take care of a few simple jobs, like lubricating the door hinges.
Young – He is likely to install a toy train set running along the top of the kitchen walls, which could be kind of charming.
Taylor – Provided he’s NOT the guy with the curly blond perm.
4. Pick out a wardrobe that you will then wear exclusively for the next year
Paul – who even managed to look good crossing Abbey Road
Brian/Bill – Brian’s got me covered; Bill usually stayed out of trouble, except for that sailor’s suit I recall him wearing in the mid-’70s
Stills – no-brainer, based on his taste in ponchos
Mercury – considering the importance of Look among the qualities cdm has up for consideration, I’ve got to use my one and only meaningful Queen coin here.
I’ll have to think about how the members of the Who sort out. How about Topper Headon-era Clash?
I don’t agree with all of your choices but these are some very well thought out responses, Mod, except for the last one. Freddie would be a blast at a dinner party. Would you really want to wear one of his court jester uni-tards for a year?
Topper – Remodel the kitchen. A drum kit is essentially a giant erector set so I figure he’s probably pretty good with his hand. At the very least, he’d be accurate with a hammer.
Paul – Since he’s an artist and the most fashion conscious, I’d probably let him pick the wardrobe but I’m not wearing a goddamn fedora.
Mick always seemed like a gentle soul dressed up as a rocker/punk. I’d let him watch the house/kids etc.
Joe would be my first choice for the dinner guest but he also gets there by default.
There’s no way I’m letting Moon in my house, and I don’t even have nice stuff there.
1. Be your guest at a dinner party
Mercury – Holy shit, he would be entertaining. Exhausting eventually, but very entertaining.
I’d love to see what Charlie’s like at a dinner party but I think Mick would be a much better conversationalist so I’m going with him. As much as I love Keith, and as cool as it would be to be able to say I had dinner with him, I can’t understand a word he says anymore,
I think Neil Young would be pretty interesting as long as he didn’t feel like he had to play the part of the eccentric contrarian.
2. Babysit/pet sit/house sit for a week
Brian May – He’s got an advanced degree in astrophysics so I don’t think he’ll trash the place. My only concern is that he might forget that he put the tea kettle on while he’s working out a particularly thorny scientific equation and the house could burn down as a result.
Believe it or not, I’m going with Keith here. Not 1970’s Keith, but the guy who still tries to keep up a front but who I suspect is mellowing into a nice grandpa when he’s not on the road and the camera’s aren’t on him.
Nash, although he’d probably sing to the houseplants to help stimulate their growth, and then he’d write a song about the houseplants, and the song would be so twee that I would end up throwing the plants away out of spite.
3. Help remodel the kitchen/assist with home repairs
Roger Taylor – Drummers are my default here but I think he’s also really into racing and he wrote that love song to his car so I figure he’s got to know a thing or two about the Manly Arts.
Bill not Brian. I expect he’d make a bunch of unhelpful suggestions at first until I ignored them long enough and then he’d just start doing what he was told.
Stills – He ‘s the most capable person in that band from a technical perspective.
4. Pick out a wardrobe that you will then wear exclusively for the next year
Deacon – The most low-key guy in Queen. I’m hoping that he’ll pull together something tasteful but nondescript.
Charlie. He’s a dapper motherfucker.
Crosby by default, but I don’t think he’s been out of control with his wardrobe choices since that fringe buckskin jacket and I used to have the exact same jacket (granted I was 5, but still.)
As for the Beatles, I would gladly put any of them in any of the slots (Paul would be my last choice for dinner guest but I still think he’d be charming even while giving me some side-eye for the lack of vegan choices.)
Freddy could indeed by a trip at a dinner party, if he didn’t hog all the attention and spoil things by doing bumps of coke off the crown roast. My point was, in a band that only includes 2 people that interest me in any way, I had to delegate them to the best of my ability to cover the 2 most important areas in my life: talking shit over great food and having a good Look. I wouldn’t want to wear one of his court jester uni-tards for a year any more than you, but at least he’s not going to lead me to wear light gray pleated trousers with a yellow tennis shirt – collar popped – as either guy in that rhythm section would lead me to do. And as geo pointed out, he’s not going to dress me in shorts, dark socks, and a vest, like Brian May. Whatever Freddie chooses for me will make me sexually appealing to somebody.
I agree with your choices, but Joe would not be there by default. Joe on one side and John Lennon on the other would make for a seriously loaded dinner table, in my estimation.
A fair point about the grey pants/yellow tennis shirt combo, but, and I say this as a friend, nobody wants to see you dressed as the leather man from the Village People.
I recently learned that Stills played electric on Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” (barely audible) and “Grandma’s Hands” – which totally sounds like him not that I realize it. I am not much of a fan of his style of soloing, but I think this does show that he doesn’t always have to take over.
As a gal who used to have a misguided but heartfelt poster of Queen above my bed growing up, I would like to commend you, cdm, for your knowledge of Queen member activities, strengths and weaknesses, and for using that info in a thoughtful manner.
“NOW that I realize it.” oh well.
I wonder if Neil can fix things – or if he figures he owns a hammer, so that should be the tool used for every situation.