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Rock and Metal Pub Quiz

chris dale

Something I started doing for a bit of fun was a Rock and Metal Pub Quiz. It takes place on the first Wednesday of every month at the Soho Rocks Bar in the centre of London’s West End. I’m doing it there every first Wednesday of the month.

I’ve always liked the fun of a pub quiz. Trying to remember long forgotten facts and figures while drinking beer with a team of friends is a mind strengthening task I believe. Normal pub quizzes usually have questions on general knowledge and current affairs. That’s quite a good laugh but surely there’s more to life?

I’ve taken part in pub quizzes before when a round of music questions has come up. “You’ll be good at this” my team mates have said “you play music”.

True I do play music. Heavy metal music. I know very little about modern pop music and I care even less. And that’s just what’s happened on those rounds in the past. The Quizmaster has asked some questions about Lady Gaga or something and I’ve stared out of the window, much as I did during exams at school.

So I’ve started hosting my own Rock and Metal Pub quiz on the first Wednesday of every month at London’s coolest Rock and Metal pub, Soho Rocks.

intrepid fox

Hella Rock Festival

It was a bit of a gamble as an idea but it’s paid off. It’s been great fun, quite popular and very surprising in how much or how little different people have known about metal.

The idea is that I prepare and read out a bunch of questions about rock and metal history in four or five rounds for the quiz teams to try to fathom out the answers. I tend to start with a round of easy questions, moving onto tougher ones as the evening goes on. We have a picture round, a classic album round and a few drinks in between.

It costs ÂŁ1 for team member to join and at the end of the evening the winning team gets all the collected money in the form of a bar tab. The second team (and sometimes the third team if they’ve done well) get a couple of beers too. Everyone is basically a winner!

Don’t worry if you’re coming down by yourself, you can join a team down there. It’s all about making friends and having a laugh together.

Here’s a few sample questions I’ve asked over the past couple of months (answers are at the bottom of the page)-

1 Which band had a drummer that was allegedly a Cat?
2 What does AC/DC stand for?
3 Which German rock band had a whistling hit single in 1991?

Those were from the easy rounds. Teams tend to get most of those right. There’s a few more middle ground ones, then some really tricky ones like these-

1 What does the J in Yngwie J Malmsteen stand for?
2 Which Rose Tattoo song did Guns and Roses do a cover of?
3 Which song has the lyric- “we put her on the hit list, of a common cunning linguist a master of many tongues”?

A lot of teams are left scratching their heads at this round!

Do you like this game? It’s fun isn’t it?

If you happen to be in London this week, please pop on down to the Intrepid Fox this Wednesday about 8.30pm and let the quizzing begin!

If you’re not in London but still think it’s a fun idea, get in touch with your local rock bar and see if they fancy hosting my quiz night sometime. You or they can contact me on chris (at) sacktrick.com.

So the answers to those questions-

Easy Round
1 Kiss. Yes, drummer Peter Criss was the Catman.
2 Alternating Current / Direct Current. Legend has it that they first read their name off the back of a vacuum cleaner and thought it looked cool.
3 The Scorpions

Tricky Round
1 Johann
2 Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock and Roll)
3 Deep Purple- Knocking at your back door

How many of those did you get right?

Sleeve Notes

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