In Which I Am Lame and Old
31 points out of 58 on Rolling Stone’s “Almost Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz,” which makes me a “Whiz,” proving they grade on a curve.
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Comment by John O —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:13 pm
26, though I guess on at least half.
I’ve always been good at this stuff, though.
Comment by AC —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
38. Obsessively reading the All Music Guide is apparently worth something.
Comment by Happy Jack —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:33 pm
37, but once I hit the ’90’s I could have called it a day.
Comment by Minipundit —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
40. Same reason as AC.
Comment by Brett Peters —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:48 pm
34 for me, which came as quite a surprise. Definite curve.
I especially liked the Tupac/Seagal section; reminded me of classic Brunching Shuttlecocks quizzes like “Porn Star or My Little Pony?” and “Christian Heavy Metal Band or Star Trek: Next Generation Episode?”
Comment by Craig Richardson —
November 3, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
9, proving that I’m under 40 – except that I just turned 41. When did Rolling Stone get more un-hip than me?
Comment by Kieran —
November 4, 2007 @ 12:06 am
This is a bad test instrument, because I got 32, and to be quite honest I know fuck all about music. I was just trying to intelligently guess pretty much the whole way.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 4, 2007 @ 1:22 am
24, myself. Weak, and I don’t see much of a pattern to the ones I got or missed, beyond that I got a couple of very trivial ones in the 80s and 90s.
(I purely guessed the Zeppelin runes, though I should have gotten the “Sloop John B” match-up.)
Comment by Eric the .5b —
November 4, 2007 @ 1:25 am
Yup, that was clever.
Anyone know whether Rolling Stone is worth reading, anymore? I got sick of it in the mid 90s (after getting into it in the early 90s, to be fair).
Comment by dHerblay —
November 4, 2007 @ 3:11 am
42. I feasted on the sixties, and then picked up what I could where I could. But, goddamnit, there were more Isley Brothers than that.
Comment by Sean —
November 4, 2007 @ 8:17 am
I myself am sitting pretty on 43.
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 4, 2007 @ 9:43 am
From you, I’d have epected no less, Sean!
Comment by Chris —
November 4, 2007 @ 10:33 am
They definitely grade on a curve. I answered two questions correctly, got bored and skipped to the end, and was given a score of 7. DON’T Y’ALL GET COCKY.
Comment by matthew hogan —
November 4, 2007 @ 11:26 am
32 –but age closer to Henley.
Mostly educated guesses but did know a few.
Comment by Mary —
November 4, 2007 @ 11:34 am
Holy crap, how did I get 35? I had to guess a hell of a lot.
Comment by Nell —
November 4, 2007 @ 12:56 pm
there were more Isley Brothers than that.
Got that right. A well-designed test would have had checkboxes rather than radio buttons, with a bonus for getting all of them and no non-Isleys:
Only gospel devotees over 60 would be able to name Vernon, so a fair test would leave him off. But the Isleys who performed the early hits were O’Kelly, Rudolph, and Ronald. Ernie and Marvin were Phase 2 (in the rock-test framework).
That question is one of the five or six I didn’t guess the answers to; got an unearned 26.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
November 4, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
29. That’s what I get for not listening to anything made after the year of my birth.
Comment by Anna in PDX was Cairo —
November 4, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
26, which also is a “whiz” – and I was not even expecting to get that as I guessed on the vast majority of the questions. And I am 39, so I should have at least got all the 80s ones but did not.
Comment by Matt Schiavenza —
November 4, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
36, at age 26, which proves all those dorky teenage years obsessively reading liner notes paid off for something. Or not.
Comment by cleek —
November 5, 2007 @ 9:56 am
31 here.
damn, that was some obscure shit.
Comment by Eric Martin —
November 5, 2007 @ 11:21 am
43, but I must have gotten lucky with some guess work somewhere.
But apparently I know my Bowie from my Bambaataa.