You may have noticed it's been a bit quiet lately on this blog, which is partly because the time I would devote to it has been spent revising for Popmaster Live which happened last night.
I went to the first one last year thinking I stood a chance of winning given I usually do quite well when I play along on the radio and beat the contestant more often than not. However it soon became apparent that it was more Champions League standard and the room was full of people who really knew their stuff. Despite having a very knowledgeable team last year it was only enough to finish 11th, not bad but nowhere near the top.
So this year I knew what to expect and given the difficulty and the fact the top two teams only got 5 questions wrong last year, I knew it was unlikely I would win it.
Unlike last year there was no Owen Paul or any artist playing before the quiz or at the interval, the goody bags were just for VIP ticket holders and there were no sweets on the table. The number of teams had also increased from 32 to something like 40.
So to the quiz, there were 11 rounds and we could pick one joker round. The first round was Intros & Outros, we decided not to play the joker as outros can be quite tricky. We got full marks though and Ken Bruce said we should have picked this round as our joker as it's the easiest. Just one team did though and they were out in the lead.
Second round was Double A-Sides. I was expecting this round to appear and did look at double a-sides beforehand. One I dreaded appearing was a UB40 one. Their first four singles were all double a-sides and are all quite similar in style making it difficult to distinguish between each one from a 15 second clip. Sure enough UB40 did appear and all the options were in their double a-sides, it took till near the end of the clip for me to identify it as "The Earth Dies Screaming" and had already picked the wrong answer. I won't say what the double a-side is with it in case you want to guess yourself. Fortunately we got the rest of the questions right.
Third round was Guess the Year. I'm normally good at these questions on regular Popmaster but that's helped by it often being the Top 3 of that particular week. This was guess the year of one song and I thought it would be inevitable we'd be one year out on at least one of them. We weren't though and got a full house on that round.
This was a sponsored round that the winners won prizes for but as there were several of us with full marks there was a tie break. Another team member went up for the tie break question which was a first hand up situation which another team won. The question was "Who had a Top 5 hit in 1995 with When Love and Hate Collide?".
Fourth round was the dreaded Hits From Movies round. I don't agree with these type of questions in music quizzes as they are more to do with knowledge of films rather than music and my knowledge of films is pretty much non existent. Thanks to my team though we managed a full house, though there was a technical error giving the answer to "Kokomo" by Beach Boys as being in "Buster" rather than "Cocktail" so our score was showing as 9 rather than 10, but this was rectified later.
Fifth round was 60s in the 80s which was a clip of a song from the 60s and we had to say who covered it in the 80s. We got a full house on that round and by this point we were the leading team yet to play our joker having dropped just one point so far.
It was inevitable we'd drop points in the sixth round, Turntable Hits. These were records which never made the UK Top 40 where we had to name the artist. There was a lot of guess work here, there was a Survivor song which we got on the basis the question pointed out the act in question had two UK Top 10 hits. There were also songs by Hall & Oates and Phil Collins which sounded just like them, but we were caught out by a song by an Australian band that sounded like INXS and INXS was an option but I think the answer was The Church, not someone I'd heard of. We got 8 out of 10 that round which was good given the difficulty. It was another sponsored round but I've forgot the tie break question to this, but I knew the answer.
After the interval the seventh round was "Missing Words". We had to get what was in the brackets of the song title. It helped that the question gave the song title without the brackets of the song in the clip and we managed a full house.
Eighth round was Going Solo which was clips of songs of artists who used to be in bands and we had to say which band they used to be in. We played our joker on this round and managed a full house. So with just three questions dropped we were in third place.
Ninth round was Albums i.e. name what album the song in the clip was from. We looked on course for a full house but fell at the final question where we incorrectly chose "Joyride" for the album "How Do You Do" by Roxette was on instead of "Tourism". Still just four questions dropped and we remained third.
Tenth round was the most difficult of all, Remixes. We were played a remix of a tune and had to say who remixed it. None of them were well known remixes and it was mostly, if not all guess work. We got just 5 on that round so dropped more points on that round alone than we had the rest of the quiz so far. However everyone seemed to struggle on that and we were in joint second place at the end of this round.
It was another sponsored round and the first tie break question which was answered incorrectly was "What was Robbie Williams first album of the 21st century that contained the singles Rock DJ, Kids and Supreme?". The second question which was answered correctly was "Which Australian soap star had a UK Top 20 hit in 1989 with Don't It Make You Feel Good?".
Despite being in second place, the leading team had only dropped 4 questions the whole quiz and we'd dropped 9 so we knew realistically we weren't going to catch them. The final round was Guilty Pleasures which speaks for itself. We managed 9 on that round, we failed to get "Arthur Daley" as being by The Firm as a team mate incorrectly identified it as being a Dennis Waterman hit early on but realised the error of his way before the end of the clip but it was too late.
So we ended the quiz in 3rd place with the top two teams both getting a full house on the final round. Ken got each of the top 3 teams to stand up, when I saw the second place team stand up I recognised the runner up tie break contestant from last year and when the winners stood up I recognised the winning tie break contestant from last year.
Given the difficulty of last years tie break questions that were being answered correctly, those two men really know their stuff so I think we can be proud of the fact we were simply beaten by their teams.
If there's another one next year I'd love to go back, but can't help but think this is as good as it will get and maybe I should quit whilst I'm ahead. Saying that I'll always be a former bronze medallist at Popmaster Live now so even if I finish last next year it can't be taken away from me.
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