Blog: Quiz Masters

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It was an early start for me on Sunday morning, as I was due at The Lexington for lunchtime, where tradition DICTATES that Mr S Hewitt and I were to co-host the Popfest Popquiz. It's usually dead easy to get to The Lexington from my house, but TfL had decided to close off all TRANES from Leytonstone, so it took TWICE as long to get there as usual. I didn't mind too much tho, it was a LOVELY day and I was listening to the new First Aid Kit album as I travelled, which is ACE.

I arrived at The Lexington to find Mr J Jervis and Rocker in residency, so excitedly told them all about the ADVENTURES IN SCI-FI that had been going on, and then expounded on my new THEORY: The Geekier The Website That Features Your Album, The More Sales Will Accrue. I was quite pleased with this theory, and quoted SALES FIGURES, only for Jerv to say "Or maybe, in a music magazine, it's got LOADS of album reviews, so nobody much notices, but on a sci-fi website an album will really stand out as it's probably the only one."

Well, yes, that would also explain it.

Mr S Hewitt soon arrived and we gathered ourselves to deal out the QUIZ which we had spent a LOT of time working on - last year I'd felt that my rounds had not been as good as years before, so we put EFFORT into it, and I must say I think it rather paid off. We kicked off with a General Indie before Steve's traditional Proper Pop round and ended the first half with a Peel Sessions round, where I read out a YEAR and some song names, and asked people to guess the band that recorded them in session.

Over the interval we asked people to do the Pictures round - Jerv had suggested getting photographs of members of popfest bands as CHILDREN, and we read out a list of all the BANDS featured so people could match them up. It was, I think, RATHER GOOD, tho even BETTER was to come. I did my RHYMES round, which featured POEMS giving clues to different indie bands, and we finished with Steve's TRIUMPHANT Intros Round, which was a selection of songs ALL of which began with the "Be My Baby" drum beat. He's been GIGGLING about it all week, and it worked AMAZINGLY, especially at the end when he did them all in quick succession. It sounded like a MEGA MIX!

I've put all the questions up on this page of the Anorak forum, if you'd like to have a go. Answers later in the week!

It all seemed to go down pretty well, and we had a HUGE pile of Goodie Bags to give away at the weekend, filled with those "special" items that all record companies seem to have plenty of to give away... I managed to clear a goodly pile of old CDs out, and Trev Oddbox and Sean Fortuna Pop! gave even more, it was ACE!

The rest of the day was a flood of BANDS and PALS and general goodtimes. My highlights were THREEFOLD:

Firstly, we went to Indian Veg for lunch. It was BRILL, as ever. Secondly I got to see Haiku Salut for the first time and was MOST impressed - I'd been a bit worried that the lack of vocals would make it BORING, but it was INTERESTING throughout and also FUN. There was still a healthy slice of GIG EXCITEMENT and JOY that used to be such a big part of The Deirdres, and the tunes were GRATE!

And the third and final highlight was getting to see The Just Joans again, who were AMAZING. I always think of them as being about TWELVE (I first saw them a LONG time ago) and a bit ramshackle, but GOODNESS ME they were ACTUALLY FUNKY last night - huge tunes, brilliant playing AND singing, and yet still retaining CHARM and ENJOYMENT in the between song chat. I really was AMAZED by just how good it was, one of the best gigs I've been too for YEARS. I thus RUSHED round to Jerv afterwards to try and BUY and album, only to find they didn't have any to sell. CURSES!

And so RENAISSANCE WEEK ended and I wobbled out and hopped into a TAXI home, full of the joys of INDIEPOP. I'd had an EXCELLENT time on BOTH my nights at London Popfest - goodness knows how those who went all FOUR nights were feeling the next day tho, I was KNACKERED!

posted 28/2/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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