Bit busy to do this properly yesterday, but better late than never. Here are the exciting results!
1. The Airborne Toxic Event…are real.
This is one of their best-known songs and very good it is too.
2. Base Pusher…are not real. I’m afraid I made this one up, although I couldn’t believe that nobody had used it before, it seems a pretty obvious choice. Maybe that’s why?
3. David Cronenberg’s Wife…are real.
Here’s the excellently-creepy video for “My Best Friend’s Going Out With A Girl I Like”. Check out the surf guitar stylings!
4. The Don’t Fucking Cares…are also real. As they don’t seem to have anything on youtube,
here’s a link to their myspace page.
5. Fury Of The Headteachers…are another real one. Here’s
Not What It Used To Be], which is quite old now, but I can’t find anything newer.
6. Gandhi’s Summer Commandos…are totally made up. I’m so pleased with this one that I’m definitely going to use it myself in the future, although I’m currently unsure what sort of direction they should pursue. Any suggestions welcomed!
7. Inscrutable Skeleton…are not real. It’s a pretty crappy name for a band, which is probably why.
8. Kings Have Long Arms…are real. It’s pretty much just one guy with a bunch of cheap keyboards (although he has collaborated with none other than Ray Dorset from Mungo Jerry).
This is a quite frankly bizarre video for his 2006 nearly-hit “Lisa Riley”.
9. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart…are real and have released one of my favourite albums of the year so far. This is
Come Saturday. No video to speak of, but a damn fine song.
10. Prinzhorn Dance School…are real. They’re a bit like The Fall (this is a Good Thing) and surprised a lot of people (well, OK, me) by signing to DFA Records, better-known for more dance-oriented stuff like LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and Hercules & Love Affair. Here is
Space Invader – “it’s a bloke and a bird – shouting in a shed” says one of the comments, and what higher recommendation can there be?
11. Queer Girls…are made up, but again I’m quite surprised no militant lesbian riot grrl act have used it yet. Possibly it’s only a matter of time.
12. Rotating Leslie…are real, unlikely as it may seem (this is the one that caught most people out). I can’t find a video of their killer double-A side from last year, “Radio/Stop”, so here’s
Fire! Fire! instead.
13. Sad Day For Puppets…are real, excellently. If anyone’s old enough to remember back to the early nineties, they sound very like Lush.
This is them performing "Marble Gods" in a record shop.
14. Slab Panther…are not real. I got it from a random band name generator. They would be a spandex-clad ironically retro metal band if they did exist, however.
15. Soft Toy Emergency…are totally real.
Here they are doing “Circles” at some club or other in Liverpool.
16. South Enema Trust…are blatantly made up. This caught no-one out, unsurprisingly.
17. Svartbag…however, are real. I’d never heard of them until a couple of months ago when I bought their album for a couple of quid on ebay, just because I liked the name. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be totally amazing in a Suicide/Mogwai kind of amazing way. All their songs go on for about ten minutes, which is presumably why there’s only very
truncated versions on their myspace page. I guess the full versions wouldn’t fit.
18. Teen Challenge Choir…are (or were) also real, but I know next to nothing about them. In fact, I’ve only ever heard
one track by them, which is…erm, “interesting”. I think it came from some sort of “outsider music” compilation, but to be honest I can’t really remember. Further Googling reveals that there may be multiple Teen Challenge Choirs on the loose, which is questionably a good thing.
19. This Town Needs Guns…are real as well. They’re from Oxford! Here is
26 Is Dancier Than 4 which if nothing else is an intriguing name for a song.
20. Trampoline Workshop…are invented. Again, this caught no-one out, you clever people.
And the results:
1. Matt Bayfield with an excellent 16/20. Matt wins the princely sum of TEN ACTUAL QUID, which, in keeping with the spirit of the competition, should really be spent on some super-obscure music that nobody’s ever heard of.
2. Charlie Reams with 14/20
3. Dinos Sfyris, also with 14/20
4. Matt Morrison, also also with 14/20
5. Chris Philpot, not with 14/20. He got 12/20!
Cheers to everyone who entered, it was fun. But I must go for now, those Gandhi’s Summer Commandos singles won’t write themselves.