Before My Time

If you listen to Popmaster on Radio 2 then you may notice from time to time that a contestant will get asked a question about a 60s record for example, have no idea of the answer and say "that's before my time" and Ken Bruce will say "that's not an excuse". I'm going to be hosting a quiz myself next week and know there will be participants who are probably too young to remember the 20th century, but my questions go as far back as 1958.

The first time I hosted a quiz I did have somebody complain that I asked questions to do with music from before they were born. I made no apologies, it's not like I'm going to get everybody's date of birth and ensure all questions are about music that was made after the youngest contestant was born.

What I will concede though is that nothing beats living through the era of music you've been asked questions about. For example, despite having no interest in the Spice Girls I could quite effortlessly tell you all their singles in chronological order. I was there, they couldn't be avoided at the time and I could tell you what else I was doing in my life when each Spice Girls single was in the charts. In fact recently I was looking through a list of 90s number ones and could remember most of them actually being number one and could almost give you my life story via these songs.

That said, I have lived through the entire career of Little Mix but whilst I could tell you what their first hit was, I couldn't tell you their second or third, or their latest hit for that matter. Even though I check the charts each week and do my Top of the Pops features on this blog, the truth is I know pretty much sod all about the music in the charts at the moment. When you have the Popmaster questions "who's recently been singing..." it's almost inevitable I'll get it wrong bar the odd lucky guess.

One thing I've been discovering though when researching for my yearly chart reviews are songs which never made the charts. A recent example that I discovered that never charted was "Who's the Better Man?" by Robbie Craig. This was one of the big UK Garage anthems from when UK Garage was everywhere. I remember it being on a UK Garage compilation advert and appearing on the music channels all the time, but it wasn't a hit. There was also "Oh No (Sentimental Things)" by the So Solid Crew which I assumed to be their debut hit, it was even on Top of the Pops, but turns out that wasn't a hit either. Even with actual Pop music, back in 2001/2002 every cheesy bar or nightclub you'd go to would have "When You're Looking Like That" by Westlife playing there, Westlife who were getting to number one with pretty much every single, but turns out this particular song wasn't a hit.

It's songs like these that could be tricky to know if you weren't there at the time, but if you were then you probably won't have too much trouble with them. When you get the Popmaster question "Here's an American top ten from 1967 that failed to chart in the UK......" I often have no idea and sometimes the song in question is by someone who's never had a hit in this country.

But whilst I might struggle with that, someone who was around in 1967 may be able to identify that song as easily as I can identify Robbie Craig, but ask them the Robbie Craig question then they may struggle in the same way I'd struggle with a Little Mix question.

A number of years ago there was a music quiz on TV, I think it was "Test the Nation", where the idea was everybody played along at home. At the end of the quiz you were given a category based on your final score, but it was also based on your age. My category was "Music Genius" which was the best category you could get, but if I was 50 I wouldn't have been in that category. I had a conversation recently with someone who was talking about putting on a quiz that had a similar criteria so if a young person had the same score as an old person, the young person would win.

At the end of the day though nobody is going to know everything about music, there is far too much of it for that to be possible. Everybody will have their era that they know more about than any other time, but if a quiz spans the history of pop music then everybody is in the same boat really.

On a final note, when I've been to see an older music act in concert such as the Temptations I've had people say "Aren't you too young to listen to them?", but last time I checked a Temptations album wasn't age restricted. Then I would be asked whether I got into them from my parents listening to them, which I didn't, so they would ask how I knew their music. Ironically in the case of the Temptations that question came from someone who himself was born after their 60s heyday. The thing is though, thousands of people will go and watch a Mozart symphony in concert but none of them were born when Mozart was around, but would these people who question why I listen to the Temptations also question why anybody would listen to Mozart for the same reason?