This Tournament Has Eleven Thousand Writers
Packet by Mike Bentley
Theme: Music That I Like
Tossups:
1. Mike Bentley considers the second best song he ever recorded as part of his novelty punk act to be a song about a wasteland of this type. Mike’s second favorite song with the title “Modern Man” appears on a record titled for this place, which also contains tracks like “City with No Children” and “Rococo”. Ben Folds declares that he wants to “rock” this place like Michael Jackson did on the title track of one of his solo albums. An album of this name was the follow-up to Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. For 10 points, name this place, where a certain Jesus hails from according to a track from American Idiot.
ANSWER: The Suburbs [or Suburbia or Suburban Wasteland]
2. The speaker in one song titled for this location complains, “Taxes takin’ my whole damn check, / Junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck” and opens by stating, “a rat done bit my sister Nell”. Besides that song from the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox by Gil Scott-Heron, this place appears in the title of a song that lists the games, “Monopoly, Twenty-one, Checkers and Chess” before stating, “If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool”. That song originally appeared on Automatic for the People and provided the title for a Jim Carrey film about Andy Kaufman. For 10 points, name this location, a paper type of which titles a popular Broadway song.
ANSWER: The Moon
3. One band named for a type of these objects performs a cool live show where Corin Roddick taps lightbulbs to make sounds while Megan James sings songs like “Ungirthed” and “Belispeak” from their debut 2012 album, Shrines. Mike confused that band for an emo band that released albums like Electric Pink that played at Bumbershoot this year. A song named for one type of these objects contains lyrics like “The taste of love is sweet / When hearts like ours meet” and continues, “I fell for you like a child / Oh, but the fire ran wild.” For 10 points, name these objects, which come between colly birds and geese a laying in the “Twelve Days of Christmas”.
ANSWER: Rings [accept things like Purity Rings and Golden Rings and Rings of Fire]
4. A Bad Religion song about this action specifies that it’s “not the after dinner kind” and sees Greg Graffin declare he’s “gonna build a world / Independent and exempt”. Another awesome song about performing this action describes a man who “watches my little children, play some board game in the kitchen / And I sit and pray they never feel my strife” and goes on to proclaim, “I’m just too much a coward / To admit when I’m in need.” That song about performing this action opens the album Gossamer by Passion Pit. This action also appears in the title of a song where the speaker declares, “To the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here” and notes in the chorus, “I want to talk to God but I’m afraid because we ain’t spoke in so long.” For 10 points, name this action that Jesus partakes in according to a Kanye West song.
ANSWER: Walking [accept word forms and stuff like Take a Walk or A Walk or Jesus Walks]
5. This song broke when KEXP DJ John Richards declared their single the “best song of the year” on January 2nd, 2012 and started playing that song two times in a row; KEXP would later play a “bathroom” demo of this song. This was the first single off of a self-titled album that contains songs like “Flowers In Your Hair” and “Stubborn Love”. You probably first heard this song playing in the background of the “Discovering Hawaii” Bing ad. This song imagines a scenario where we “Took a bus to Chinatown, / I’d be standin’ on Canal and Bowery, / And she’d be standin’ next to me”, and opens with the line, “I been trying to do it right / I been living a lonely life”. The chorus of this song goes, “I belong with you, you belong with me / You’re my sweetheart”. For 10 points, name this hit for the Lumineers.
ANSWER: “Ho Hey”
6. A great cover of a song of this name appears as the B-Side on Summer 2012 release by Superchunk. An album of this name contains a track whose third verse opens, “Break records at Louis, ate breakfast at Gucci / My girl a superstar all from a home movie” and has Big Sean giving a hook that states, “Ain’t nobody fucking with my / Clique, clique, clique, clique, clique”. That same record of this name contains the Kid Cudi track, “Creepers”. A song of this name opens, “Hot summer streets and the pavements are burning / I sit around trying to smile but the air is so heavy and dry”. This phrase also identifies a recent compilation album by Kanye West’s GOOD Music label. For 10 points, identify this Bananarama song where the title season is “Leaving me here on my own”.
ANSWER: Cruel Summer
7. Bonus acoustic tracks like “Adam’s Atoms” and “Chronophobia” appeared on a 2007 album titled for the “New Maps of” this place by Bad Religion. This place appears in the title of an album which contains the hook, “Syrup, painkillers, cigarette, weed, / Hennessy, vodka, hah-hah-huh, hah-hah / I’m on everything” as well as a track featuring a Bruno Mars cameo, “Lights”. That album titled for a sequel to this place was by Bad Meets Evil. The singer of one song named for this place states, “I used to think the idea was obsolete / Until I heard the old man stomping his feet” and goes on to sing, “All the things you try to hide / Will be revealed on the other side”. That song titled for this place is the best known track of swing revival group the Squirrel Nut Zippers. For 10 points, name this place “where eternally / fire is applied to the body” according to song.
ANSWER: Hell
8. This song lends its name to a record where on one track the singer is told, “Welcome in, Welcome, if you’re White, my friend” titled “Talking Birmingham Jam”. One section of this song describes how “United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore”, and it opens by describing a time when “the young land started growing / the young blood started flowing”. The album of this name contains the tracks “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” and “Draft Dodger Rag”. This song’s chorus declares, “It’s always the old who lead us to the war / it’s always the young to fall”. The penultimate verse in this song has the singer “[flying] the final mission in the Japanese sky / Set off the mighty mushroom roar” before making the title protestation. For 10 points, name this Phil Ochs song about no longer participating in armed conflict.
ANSWER: “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”
9. The cover of this album was designed by Winston Smith and contains a large eight ball and a blond woman holding a guitar and pointing a gun at a man sleeping in a hammock. Some editions of this album end with the bonus track, “I Wanna Be on T.V.”, which later appeared on the B-Sides collection, Shenanigans. The final track on this album contains the lyric, “Call it as I see it even if / I was born deaf, blind and dumb” and begins, “Do as I say not as I do because / The shit so deep you can’t run away”. Prior to the release of this album, the band recorded the single “J.A.R.” for the Angus soundtrack. The biggest hit from this album contained lyrics like, “I’m having trouble trying to sleep” and was strangely co-released with “Jaded”. It concludes with “Walking Contradiction”. Featuring tracks like “Brainstew”, for 10 points, name this album that came in between Dookie and Nimrod by Green Day.
ANSWER: Insomniac
10. Some soldiers in this conflict added the verse, “That’s the wrong way to tickle Mary / That’s the wrong way to kiss” to a song whose chorus says “Goodbye Piccadilly, / Farewell Leicester Square”. On The Warrior’s Code, the Dropkick Murphys covered a song originally recorded by Eric Bogle about this conflict that asks “are you a stranger without event a name, / Forever enshrined behind some glass pane” of a 19 year old named William McBride. “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” was a popular song during this conflict. Perhaps the best known song about this conflict declares that “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming … and we won’t come back until” the war has ended in the title place. For 10 points, name this conflict whose popular songs included “Over There”.
ANSWER: World War I [or the Great War]
11. Daniel Tosh opened the most recent season of Tosh.0 by wearing an overpriced concert T-Shirt from this group. They covered X’s “Sex and Dying in High Society” on a single not included on their first album titled “Younger Us”. This band first gained popularity when Pitchfork recommended their song whose chorus goes, “We used to dream / Now we worry about dying”; that song was titled “Young Hearts Spark Fire”. Dryw Keltz wrote an article on why this band would “totally be better” if they had a bassist. Their most recent album included a single that begins, “When the soul of the city / Was laid to rest / And the nights forgotten / And left for dead” titled “The House That Heaven Built”. For 10 points, name this Canadian garage rock duo behind albums like Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock.
ANSWER: Japandroids
12. Songs by this group that didn’t appear on studio releases include “Hedgecore”. Reel Big Fish often close their live shows with a cover of a song by this group whose second verse starts, “Civilization? Ha! I call it as I see it. / I call it bullshit, you know, I still cannot believe it”. On one of their albums, the instrumental track “Bankshot” is followed by a cover of “One of These Days” by Nancy Sinatra. At live shows, Green Day often covers a song by this group which contains lyrics like, “I know things are getting tougher when you can’t get the top off from the bottom of the barrel” titled “Knowledge”; like Green Day’s early albums, this group was a top seller on the Lookout record label. Despite breaking up 15 years earlier, this group contributed their song “Unity” to the Rock Against Bush, Volume 2 album. Known for tracks like “Sound System” and the album Energy, for 10 points, name this East Bay punk band, many of whose members went on to form Rancid.
ANSWER: Operation Ivy
13. Near the end of this song, the title character is described as sitting like Buddha and is contrasted with people “in their coats and ties” who are free to drink martinis. This song describes jailhouses as places where “they try to turn a man into a mouse”. The singer of this song declares that Bello and Bradley “both baldly lied” and blames the newspapers for going along with the ride. The first person described in this song is Patty Valentine who enters “from the upper hall” after hearing “pistol shots ring out in the barroom night”. The title character of this song “was just a revolutionary bum” to the white folks and “could take a man down with just one punch”. For 10 points, name this Bob Dylan song about a boxer named Rubin Carter who was framed for murder.
ANSWER: “Hurricane”
14. Near the end of this song, the singer describes how his eye had great joy. One character in this song is noted for his “wanton cruelty” and was discovered after the singer overheard him “exchanging words” with the prior. The singer notes how even though he was “a child of three” he remembers the addressee as “a lad of eighteen”. Audience participation was requested for a performance of this song at Sasquatch where “the crew all was chewed alive”. The singer’s mother instructs him to “Find him, find him / Tie him to a pole and break / His fingers to splinters”. This song appeared on the album Picaresque and opens in a place where “ribs are ceiling beams” and “guts are carpeting”, namely the belly of a whale. For 10 points, name this Decembrist song.
ANSWER: “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”
15. This album doesn’t contain the “extra gory” version of the final track, where the title figure dies. One song on this album opens with a cover of “Loser” and ends with a cover of “Basket Case”, while its second track sees the singer guessing whether it’s “Uncle Frank of Cousin Louie” when hands are placed over his eyes. The final song on this album describes how the title figure is now “in a federal prison for his infamous crime” and goes on to note that the title figure’s wife is “on the phone every night / with her lawyer negotiating the movie rights”. This successor to the TV Album contains a track which samples from a Bart Simpson prank call and was inspired by a TLC track. The singer on its title track has “churned butter once or twice” living in the title place. For 10 points, name this 1996 Weird Al album that contained tracks like “Gangsta’s Paradise”.
ANSWER: Bad Hair Day
16. Brad Pitt is slated to play Vaughn R. Walker opposite George Clooney’s David Boies in an upcoming play based on this cause. One song advocating this cause opens with the rapper sharing an affinity with his uncle “Cause I could draw” and declares that “America the brave / Still fears what we don’t know”. That song features a hook where Mary Lambert sings, “And I can’t change / Even if I tried / Even if I wanted to” and appears on the album The Heist by Macklemore. Jack Black has a cameo as Jesus who claims “the Bible says a lot of things” in a Funny or Die mini-musical titled for a law opposing this cause. For 10 points, name this cause advocated for in songs like “Same Love” and the aforementioned Prop 8 – The Musical.
ANSWER: Gay marriage equality [accept equivalents]
17. In one of these works, a man is described as having moves “slow as a tortoise” to “taste my slipper shoe”. In another of these works, Angela Trimbur declares, “[you] married a writer, but I don’t even think you can read”. The final entry in the first series of this works contains the line, “But for now, just stick to editing that gay ass Monday Show” and was delivered by Epic Lloyd; later, Nice Peter declares, “I’m the one who had the brains to let a midget play the bad guys”. The first of these works contains lines like “I’m the ORIGINAL Dark Lord / You’re like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice!” and the punch line, “Your style smells something sour / You need to wash up / Here, take a step inside my shower”. Entries in this series have featured people like Bruce Lee, Bill O’Reilly, and Darth Vader. For 10 points, name this popular YouTube series of dis raps.
ANSWER: Epic Rap Battles of History
18. This song shares its name with the only Bad Religion song I can think of that uses the word “proximad”. It was once combined in a mash-up with Jay Z’s “Numb/Encore” for a Grammy medley. The writer of this song was dissed for not recording anything else of note on another artist’s track, “How Do You Sleep?” Jimmy Fallon’s Blow Your Pants Off contains a version of a song of this name with its original lyrics, “Scrambled Eggs”. This song describes a woman who “would not stay” because “I said something wrong”. For 10 points, give this name of a track from Help! which describes a time when “all my troubles seemed so far away”.
ANSWER: “Yesterday”
19. The 2012 edition of the best music festival in this country featured local acts like Funk That Shit! and the awesome Apparat Organ Quartet. A band from this country describe a family that “had a pet dragonfly / The dragonfly it ran away” on their track “Dirty Paws” and had a breakout hit with a song whose chorus declares, “’Cause though the truth may vary / This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore”. That same group from this country released songs like “Little Talks” from their album My Head Is an Animal. Another artist from this country recently released the Biophilia album which comes with 10 companion iPad apps and is probably best known for appearing at the 2001 Oscars in a swan dress. For 10 points, name this country home to Of Monsters and Men and Bjork.
ANSWER: Iceland
20. The Vandals recorded a song about changing the world with an instrument from this sport. Tom Connors claimed that this sport was “the best game you can name”. A song about an athlete from this sport declares that on a playoff run he “could make a dad go buy the new TV”. That song, “Petition” was recorded by Weakerthans frontman John K. Samson. The singer is going to “take the Red and the Orange line” to attend a game in this sport in “Time To Go” by the Dropkick Murphys. Tom Cochrane’s song “Big Leagues” describes an aspirant in this sport. This sport is played on the roof of the store in Clerks. For 10 points, name this sport, which is often the subject of songs by the Zambonis.