From www.allmusic.com “Singer/songwriter Michael Bolton had an extensive, though not very successful, career under his real name, Michael Bolotin, before emerging in the mid-'80s as a major soft-rock balladeer. He turned up on RCA Records in the mid-'70s singing in a gruff, Joe Cocker-like voice both his own blue-eyed soul songs and cover tunes. Neither record buyers nor critics were much interested by the result. He then became the lead singer in Blackjack, a heavy-metal band that made two albums for Polydor at the end of the '70s and the start of the '80s. In 1983, he changed his name to Michael Bolton, signed to Columbia Records as a solo act, and relaunched his career.”
Damn! I was going to take another stab at it this morning! I listened to a few more MIDIs yesterday, and I had recognized Blueberry Hill, I believe in Miracles, and For Your Love. #@##@
Now that I re-read the original, I see that the deadline was yesterday.
Shayna:
You’re right, I don’t mind doing research for answers, actually I kind of enjoy the “scavenger” hunt. My argument for saying that the questions were too difficult:
a) For the Bricker challenges, I usually know half the answers off the top of my head. Here, out of 30 questions, I would have known the answers to 4 (and that’s before trying to match up with the song.)
b) I did try and do some research originally. But the difference is, finding the answers to Bricker’s questions is easier than finding the answers to your questions. e.g. Bricker had a question “What Lola wants, Lola gets”. I plugged that sentence into Google, and after 5 minutes got an answer (not the right one, but at least something related.) Whereas for your question, “This group formed officially on February 15, 1967 in the city from which it eventually would take its name.” I tried searching on the Internet for about 15 minutes and couldn’t find an answer. Maybe that says something about my searching skills, but I’ll give you a related example. In the “imitation Bricker challenge”, I had the question “which function is equal to its derivative and antiderivative?” That information is available on the internet. How long would it take someone to find it?
c) As I mentioned before, another example (for me) that the questions are too hard is that I didn’t know that George Harrison was an electrician, and I have above average knowledge of the Beatles. Did any of the three quiz proposers (Shayna/grace/chocolate) know this before they looked it up?
Your quiz is great, and I enjoy music. But I think that for me to find all the answers would have taken me much longer than to solve a Bricker challenge. Probably 10 times longer. And I wasn’t willing to spend that much time on the quiz, even though the idea was fun, and I like you!
My opinion:
For the casual visitor to the board, which is what most posters are, the questions would have to be easier. e.g. For George Harrison, you could say “he was one of the moptops!”
Or have less questions in the quiz. You had 30 questions, with each question having three answers, which means 180 pieces of information.
Your quiz would be good if you were trying to stump music experts.
I know the vast majority of this post sounds critical, so I’ll soften it by posting a whole line of smilies.
Shayna, thanks for the info. Though I like the game, I’ll make sure to avoid the Blackjack CDs.
Leslie Gore looks evil in a Molly Ringwold sort of way. Those eyes – was she on quaaludes?
Arnold, you won! Quit complaining, and add this victory to your sig line. Agreed, it was challenging, but if it wasn’t, would it be SD-worthy? Yes, I should have guessed Chicago, and was also racking my brains for that answer – Nashville Teens and Detroit Wheels were too early, Detroit was too late, Boston was way too late, and Bay City Rollers weren’t from Bay City.
Shayna/Grace/Chocolate, if you want to generate another music challenge, my only suggestions would be to give people more time to solve it, and post it at the start of the week, so that the working people can also take a shot at it.
Arnold, I posted a reply and your trophy on Monday before the board went down and now it’s gone. And I know it posted because I had chocolate come look at it and she saw it just fine. Oh well, I’ll just try it again. (Stupid hacker! :mad: ) (And there’s something for you at the end, too, John.)
Arnold:
Well that was kindof the point. We didn’t want the questions to be so easy that they could be answered without listening to the midis - otherwise, why include them? We thought identifying the songs was the FUN part.
Maybe because we had played so many similar games that required music searches on the other board, we were familiar with where to search for music answers. However, even before we came back and gave you the allmusic.com clue and told you that’s where we found almost all of our questions, if you had gone to altavista (or ask.com) and asked, “where can I read biographies on musicians?” you would have found that the 2nd result was <a href=“Ready Reference: Artists and Musicians Biographies”>Ready Reference: Artists and Musicians Biographies</a>. At the very top of that page is a link to <a href=“http://www.allmusic.com”>allmusic.com</a>.
That search took only a minute or two at most. Then, to use your example of not being able to find “This group formed officially on February 15, 1967 in the city from which it eventually would take its name,” if you had identified midi #30 as “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” by Chicago, in a search at allmusic.com you would have found the 2nd sentence of their bio to read…
“The group formed officially on February 15, 1967, in the city from which it eventually would take its name.”
Not too hard to figure out which question it goes with, and it took about the same 5 minutes you alotted for your Bricker searches (again, allowing for the fact that identifying the midis was a key part of playing this game).
I never did. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of any of the sites that came up as a result of my search, and math is not my strong suit. You’ll notice that that was one of the only 2 questions we left blank.
True confession? Neither Grace nor I knew that without looking it up. But I can attest to the fact that it IS findable, since (and this is the confession part) we were actually PLAYERS in this game when it was originally posted by <b>chocolate</b> who is the one that created it and came up with all the questions. When Grace and I played it, we found the answers to everything by identifying the songs and artists and then looking up the artists on line. And we had a blast! That’s why we decided to repost it here - we thought everyone would have as much fun with it as we did when we played.
I like you, too, Arnold (and I can’t wait to meet you at the gathering tomorrow!) :). And yes, it was probably more time consuming than a Bricker challenge - we’ll give you that. If we ever do another one (which isn’t highly likely) we’ll definitely give more time to play. It’s just that I just started a new job and didn’t think I’d have time to do any scoring throughout the week, so I wanted to have Monday to do so (which turned out to be moot anyway since only you and John played and the board was down, besides - LOL).
But we DO appreciate that you gave it a shot - and a winning shot at that. So in light of our promise to provide the winner with a cyber-trophy, here is yours, Arnold…
And a big thanks goes out to John as well, for being such a good sport, especially given the fact that he couldn’t even hear the midis. John, we have a prize ribbon for you, too…
Arnold, I posted a reply and your trophy on Monday before the board went down and now it’s gone. And I know it posted because I had chocolate come look at it and she saw it just fine. Oh well, I’ll just try it again. (Stupid hacker! :mad: ) (And there’s something for you at the end, too, John.)
Arnold:
Well that was kindof the point. We didn’t want the questions to be so easy that they could be answered without listening to the midis - otherwise, why include them? We thought identifying the songs was the FUN part.
Maybe because we had played so many similar games that required music searches on the other board, we were familiar with where to search for music answers. However, even before we came back and gave you the allmusic.com clue and told you that’s where we found almost all of our questions, if you had gone to altavista (or ask.com) and asked, “where can I read biographies on musicians?” you would have found that the 2nd result was <a href=http://itcompany.com/inforetriever/biog_art.htm>Ready Reference: Artists and Musicians Biographies</a>. At the very top of that page is a link to <a href=http://www.allmusic.com>allmusic.com</a>.
That search took only a minute or two at most. Then, to use your example of not being able to find “This group formed officially on February 15, 1967 in the city from which it eventually would take its name,” if you had identified midi #30 as “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” by Chicago, in a search at allmusic.com you would have found the 2nd sentence of their bio to read…
“The group formed officially on February 15, 1967, in the city from which it eventually would take its name.”
Not too hard to figure out which question it goes with, and it took about the same 5 minutes you alotted for your Bricker searches (again, allowing for the fact that identifying the midis was a key part of playing this game).
I never did. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of any of the sites that came up as a result of my search, and math is not my strong suit. You’ll notice that that was one of the only 2 questions we left blank.
True confession? Neither Grace nor I knew that without looking it up. But I can attest to the fact that it IS findable, since (and this is the confession part) we were actually PLAYERS in this game when it was originally posted by <b>chocolate</b> who is the one that created it and came up with all the questions. When Grace and I played it, we found the answers to everything by identifying the songs and artists and then looking up the artists on line. And we had a blast! That’s why we decided to repost it here - we thought everyone would have as much fun with it as we did when we played.
I like you, too, Arnold (and I can’t wait to meet you at the gathering tomorrow!) :). And yes, it was probably more time consuming than a Bricker challenge - we’ll give you that. If we ever do another one (which isn’t highly likely) we’ll definitely give more time to play. It’s just that I just started a new job and didn’t think I’d have time to do any scoring throughout the week, so I wanted to have Monday to do so (which turned out to be moot anyway since only you and John played and the board was down, besides - LOL).
Thank you, and you’re welcome. We DO appreciate that you gave it a shot - and a winning shot at that. So in light of our promise to provide the winner with a cyber-trophy, here is yours, Arnold…
And a big thanks goes out to John as well, for being such a good sport, especially given the fact that he couldn’t even hear the midis. John, we have a prize ribbon for you, too…
DUH!!! I just realized that they turned the html off. I’ll try the awards with ubb so you can see them without having to paste the urls into your browser…
Done and done. Thank you for the trophy Shayna! I saved the picture at home. Maybe I should print it out and put it up in my cubicle, so when people ask me “what does a database administrator do all day?” I can proudly indicate to them my first-place prize.
And I know it posted because I had chocolate come look at it and she saw it just fine. Oh well, I’ll just try it again. (Stupid hacker! :mad: ) (And there’s something for you at the end, too, John.)
