Q1 Name the B-side to Art Nouveau’s 1981 single Fear Machine.
NICK BEGGS: Animal Instincts.
A: Correct.
Q2 You were in 80s pop outfit Kajagoogoo. In how many countries was Too Shy a No.1 single?
NB: Seven… no, wait, five!
A: That’s right – the UK, Germany, Ireland, Japan and Belgium.
Q3 You played Chapman Stick on which two songs from Iona’s 1999 live album Woven Cord?
NB: Matthew – The Man and, er, Healing?
A: Not Healing, but Revelation.
Q4 Fellow Iona graduate Troy Donockley can now be found playing Uilleann pipes with which band?
NB: I’m going to see the band next week and I’ve forgotten the name. Is it Dream… no, wait, Nightwish!
**A: **Correct. Are you a symphonic metal fan?
NB: Well, it’s a genre! I’m looking forward to seeing them. Troy’s fantastic.
Q5 Name the single you co-wrote for pop duo Industrial Salt, who did rather well in Japan…
NB: Sugar Bomb Baby. I was in the video for that, wearing a kilt.
A: Course you were.
Q6 You played bass and Stick on Steve Hackett’s Out Of The Tunnel’s Mouth, but can you name one of the two tracks Chris Squire played on?
NB: Fire On The Moon.
A: Correct. Nomads was the other.
Q7 And who played bass with Steve Hackett at the Royal Albert Hall date of the Genesis Revisited II tour, in October 2013?
NB: That was my friend Lee Pomeroy.
A: It was indeed.
Q8 Besides Guthrie Govan, can you name two people who’ve played guitar on Steven Wilson’s solo albums?
NB: Okay, let’s think here. Hackett played on one. Alan Parsons did a small bit on The Raven… but I’m struggling for more.
A: There was also Dave Gregory, Mike Outram, Trey Gunn, Sand Snowman… There were a few guys who did small bits.
Q9 You once said that Steven Wilson doesn’t like the term ‘progressive rock’ because he prefers which term?
NB: EPIJ, or ‘Experimental Progressive Industrial Jazz’.
A: Brilliantly, that’s completely true.
Q10 In 2006 you played bass on Emma ‘Baby Spice’ Bunton’s album Life In Mono. Aside from the title track, name any song from that record.
NB: I’ve still got the manuscript at home, so I’ve just got to go back to my drawer, rifle through them… [imagines]… no, I can’t see the titles, sorry!
A: You could’ve had Mischievous, Perfect Strangers… I could go on, but what for?!
General Prog
Q11 Before they formed Yes, Peter Banks, Chris Squire and Jon Anderson were all in which band?
NB: Mabel Greer’s Toyshop.
A: Correct.
Q12 The artwork for ELP’s 1971 LP Tarkus features which animal?
NB: An armadillo. And a lion and a scorpion amalgamated. And there’s also a grasshopper, with an armour-plated horseshoe crab and sidewinding missiles!
**A: **You had us at ‘armadillo’, but yes!
Q13 When Pink Floyd signed to EMI in 1967, what was their first single, and why did several radio stations ban it?
NB: It was Arnold Layne, and it was about a man who steals women’s underwear from washing lines.
A: You’d think they’d have been more lenient, given the times.
NB: But it would’ve been Radio 1, wouldn’t it? They have a great lineage of banning things.
Q14 Lyrics from which Pink Floyd classic? ‘F_orward he cried from the rear_ and the front rank died.’
NB: Us And Them.
A: Correct.
Q15 Which Russian writer did Rush drummer Neil Peart credit with inspiring the lyrics for the 2112 album?
NB: Isaac Asimov?
**A: **Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead.
Q16 In what year was Camel’s album The Snow Goose released, and whose novella inspired it?
NB: I was listening to a programme on that album the other day. I can’t remember the author, but it would have been ’76?
A: Close! It was ’75, and it was Paul Gallico.
Q17 For which song on Trick Of The Tail was Phil Collins inspired by the role he once played in _Oliver_! on stage?
NB: Robbery, Assault And Battery?
A: Very good.
NB: That was a punt!
Q18 And what was the first Genesis album to feature Collins?
NB: Hmm… Foxtrot?
A: Nursery Cryme.
Q19 Which of the following artists has not covered or sampled _21st Century Schizoid Ma_n: Ozzy Osbourne, Kanye West, Arthur Brown or Voivod?
NB: Ozzy Osbourne I’d have thought!
A: He covered it on 2005’s Under Cover. It’s actually Arthur Brown.
Q20 For Jethro Tull’s 2012 album Thick As A Brick 2, Ian Anderson presented five unrelated ‘possibilities’ for fictional character Gerald Bostock’s adulthood. Can you name any of them?
NB: No.
A: Gerald The Banker, Homeless, Military Man, Chorister or A Most Ordinary Man.
TOTAL: 13½/20
That was fun! My brain feels muscly – haemorrhaging a bit, but muscly…
