About that Music Round . . .

It was Dan's quiz at the club last night. If you're a regular you'll know that Dan resurrected the music round a couple of years ago and it's very much his trademark when he's the QM now. 

Like all good quiz masters Dan is self critical. Dan usually tries to vary the themes of his music rounds, and last night he told me that he thinks that the round which worked least well was the 8-Bit round. You know what I mean, instrumental versions of 10 well known songs, as they would sound being played on an 8 bit computer. I really enjoyed it, but as question master you are in a good position to pick up what different teams are saying and get a feeling for the vibe. Other teams, it seems, didn't enjoy that round. I could hazard a guess as to why. The average age of the players in the other teams means that this generation of computers and early consoles came along too late for them. 

Well, as I say, I love Dan's music rounds, which is a little surprising considering that I did not used to like the music rounds we used to have in the club. When I started going to the club way back in about '95 we had a semi regular QM called Alwyn. Alwyn was a very nice guy. He would only do a quiz once every few months and for most of the time he would have a music quiz. Each would have a theme, like - all of these songs have a colour in the title. My problem was that Alwyn had a fondness for songs from the 50s and early 60s, many of which I'd never heard of. Today, I'm happy to sit back in the film quiz in Neath, and let others who know a lot more than I do take care of a round where my input, like it or not, is going to be minimal. I've mellowed over the years, you see. But back in the day it used to frustrate the original 'this is a life or death struggle' version of me as a quizzer.

Back in the present day - well - yesterpresent day to be precise, last night's music round was 10 well known songs as interpreted by a mariachi band. Good idea. And it produced the very best kind of question, the kind where you wrack your brain, then, just at the last minute your memory says - look, I've dredged this up, it's probably not right but I haven't got anything else so if you want to go for it, it's . . . You write it down and it turns out to be right. It was interesting which songs were instantly recognisable and which songs weren't. 

I hope Dan won't mind me mentioning this now. It was a really good quiz, but there was a little unintentional humour a the end. When Dan came to make the traditional announcement of next week's quiz master, he forgot that next week is his wife Jessica's turn! 

Well done again Dan - it's a strong start in the race for his year's LAMMY for achievement in quiz mastery.