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Jan 252011
Dec 212010
Here’s an obsessive task we might be suited to complete for the rock nerd community at large: Can we complete a rock ‘n roll timeline in song titles, beginning from 1954 (ie, the release of Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right” b/w “Blue Moon of Kentucky”)? In other words, how many song titles including a specific year from 1954 to now can we list?
We’re talking songs with a year from 1954 to the present right in the title, not buried in the lyrics. There’s no credit for song titles with years already cited, but you can feel good about yourself for providing an additional option for whatever use future rock nerds might have.
Partial credit will be given to song titles specifying a particular decade from the 1950s to our present decade.
Townspeople will be welcome to revisit this thread in the year 2525 to gain credit for a song title that is not eligible today.
Filling in rock ‘n roll songs with titles involving dates from 1954 to even 2000 is likely an impossible task, but how many times have you heard that before?
Dec 022010
One of these guys is not like the other
A simple challenge: Name another pair of popular musicians—with the same last name—more *un*-alike than Joe Perry and Lee “Scratch” Perry.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Nov 102010
My deodorant ran out this morning. As I woefully pondered the empty plastic tube, Boyz 2 Men‘s “We’ve Come to the End Of the Road” started going through my head—which struck me as pretty funny, if I do say so myself. Thank you, subconscious!
The question is: Can you do any better? What should have been the soundtrack to my deodorant running out? Note: “That Smell” is taken.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Dramatic Re-enactment
Nov 082010
Building a bomb has never looked so enticing, has it? Why don’t we work together to build a bomb of an album, a hyped-up, ambitious work of art and commerce that is intended to soar like Led Zeppelin but, rather, goes down like a lead zeppelin. (Pants or tights optional.)
What makes for a bomb of an album? Do we have what it takes?
Nov 052010
Greetings, fellow Townspeople!
As many of you know, I’ve been out of the country for the last few weeks, enjoying my, uh, well — my honeymoon!
Yes, I finally found a woman foolish enough to hitch her wagon to my sputtering star, and a happier man I could not be. She’s great, and I thank you in advance for all your kind thoughts and congratulations.
Anyhow: the missus and I actually spent our honeymoon in old blighty, traveling through the United Kingdom, from the Southwest to the far north — and in the course of the journey, I couldn’t help but get a few Olde Englande-related tunes running through my head. Your job is to READ MY MIND, and tell me what you think was on my mental soundtrack during our journey.
Here are the places and things we visited where a specific song got stuck in my head. Can you guess what songs they were?
- While riding the train through the English countryside
- Changing trains in Slough
- Seeing the train platform sign for Swindon
- Waterloo station
- Piccadilly Circus
- Driving around the traffic fixtures the English use instead of stoplights
- London, broadly
I warn you: some of these are less obvious than you might think. In fact, I was kind of surprised by the un-obviousness of my mental soundtrack as we made our way through the country.
Lastly, however, a real stumper: in Glasgow, we visited a great museum which, in the interest of keeping this challenging, I won’t name. Upon exiting, I looked across the green and saw the following building. Out came the camera, in a photographic move of exceptional rock nerdiness. Can you identify this building, and tell us why I felt it was worth capturing on film?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
The great Glasgow rock pictographic mystery!
Nov 012010
This is a concept that’s been bouncing around in my head for a few months, ever since an old discussion we had concerning the sometimes obtrusive use of rock songs in movie soundtracks. The degree of difficulty is high, but I have faith in us. What if a movie was composed solely around a soundtrack selected by members of Rock Town Hall?
Perhaps some movies have been developed on the bare bones of a soundtrack, such as that Beatles-based movie from a couple of years ago, Across the Universe, which I still haven’t had the nerve to see. But that’s just a movie pieced together around a soundtrack from a single band. Similarly, that old Ralph Bakshi animated turd, Heavy Metal, may have been developed according to as suspect a plan as I propose, but that was an animated film. I think we could put together a cinematic masterpiece (or disaster, if that’s what the job calls for) by using a rock soundtrack to construct the guts of a film.
Can we work together to develop the feature-length film Soundtrack: The Movie, using a 3-act structure, as described here, by the legendary and recently deceased television screenwriter and producer Stephen J. Cannell (The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street, Silk Stalkings, The Commish)?
- In Act 1 we should be introduced to the main characters and learn what the problem of the story is.
- In Act 2 we introduce the complication, that point in the plot that makes the problem even trickier than expected. By the end of Act 2 the protagonist should be nearly defeated in his or her plight.
- In Act 3 the protagonist rises from the ashes and achieves a resolution, or what you may be more familiar with as The Healing, in Rock Town Hall terms.
Think about this. See if we can’t piece together a coherent film that is told almost entirely through a rock soundtrack.
