Rock Quiz: 1000 Questions Classic Rock Challenge! Book Excerpt

Rick Allmen opened the Café Bizarre in 1957, one of the first Beat Generation clubs in Greenwich Village. Odetta was the opening night headliner. Jazz acts followed and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg had readings there. Larry Love, the Singing Canary, landed his first paid engagement at the Bizarre in 1962. Love later changed his name to Tiny Tim.

Janis Ian was 14 when she wrote her 1967 hit single “Society’s Child,” a controversial song about how social pressure doomed an interracial romance. “I was sitting on a bus in East Orange, NJ, where I was living with my parents, and I saw it happening around me,” Ian told Songwriter Universe.

“Bad Time” was a №4 hit, certified by BMI as radio’s most-played song of 1975. Written by guitarist Mark Farner, the song was a departure from the trio’s hard rock roots. “It was kind of a different song,” Farner told Songfacts.

Rock Quiz: 1000 Questions Classic Rock Challenge! Book Excerpt

“Ariel” was a №26 hit for Dean Friedman in 1977. It opens with the lyric, “Way on the other side of the Hudson / Deep in the bosom of suburbia.”

Nils Lofgren is best known for his solo work as a singer-songwriter and as a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and Neil Young’s band, Crazy Horse. But in 1968, Lofgren was 17, a struggling musician who’d left Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, MD, and headed for New York City.

Bob Seger mixed classic rock with a geography lesson in “Katmandu,” first released on his 1975 LP Beautiful Loser. The single reached №43. The song refers to the capital of Nepal, located in the Himalayan Mountain range. Seger wrote “Katmandu” to poke fun at the music business.

The Eternals were a doo wop group that formed in New York’s South Bronx. “Sometimes when we would sing in theaters they would say, ‘The Eternals, the only Hispanic, all-Puerto Rican group in the history of doo wop.’ And that made us proud,” lead singer Charlie Girona told NBC News.

The members of Looking Glass were students at Rutgers University in New Jersey when the band formed in 1969. Singer-guitarist Elliot Lurie told The College Crowd Digs Me how the band got its name.

It was 1956. Drummer Tom Austin and keyboardist Bob Gaudio were talented New Jersey teenagers who recruited guitarist Billy Dalton and saxophonist Billy Crandall to form a band, the Royals. Austin and Gaudio teamed to write “Short Shorts,” a number three hit in 1958 for the newly named Royal Teens.

The Anderson Theater at 66 Second Avenue was named after theatrical agent Phyllis Anderson. The hall opened in 1957 and presented Yiddish plays through the 1960s. In 1968 Crawdaddy magazine sponsored a series of rock shows that featured the Yardbirds, Traffic, Procol Harum, Moby Grape, and Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.

“Tiny Dancer” was first released on Elton John’s 1971 album Madman Across the Water. When an edited single version was released in 1972, it only reached №41. As more album cuts were played on FM radio in the 1970s, “Tiny Dancer” in its original form became a listener favorite.

1. “Barbara Ann” was first recorded by A. The Regents B. The Beach Boys C. The Cadillacs

As a budding musician, Richard Lloyd, the former guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the band Television attended many Fillmore East shows without buying a ticket. In this excerpt from the book Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever, Lloyd recalls his ploys to get the best seat in the house: backstage at Fillmore East.

The Shangri-Las have been cited as an influence on 1970s punk rockers Blondie and the New York Dolls. The group set itself apart from the girl groups of the 1960s by wearing skin-tight slacks and spike-heeled leather boots to promote a tough-girl image. Their first hit, “(Remember) Walking in the Sand,” reached the Top 5 in 1964. Its follow-up, “Leader of the Pack,” was a №1 hit later that year.

“Some people may not realize it but the Rascals were the first rock band in the world … in the center of the universe, New Jersey, the Rascals were the first band.” – Steven Van Zandt, 1997 Induction of the Rascals into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Fellow record collectors Al Trommers and Robert Plotnik opened Village Oldies in 1967 at 149 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. It was at the record shop that Trommers, known as Broadway Al, gave Plotnik the nickname Bleecker Bob. The partners moved to MacDougal Street in the 1970s.

Enjoy this opening chapter of the mini book, Hendrix: An Illustrated Look at the Life of Jimi Hendrix.

1. Ringo Starr rerecorded “Act Naturally” with A. Chet Atkins B. Buck Owens C. Carl Perkins