Rock & Pop History Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

What is the name for the Jamaican music that emerged at the end of the 1960s from the earlier styles of ska and rocksteady, with a chopped guitar or keyboard chord on the offbeat, a heavy, melodic bassline and lyrics often rooted in the Rastafari faith?

Question 2

Which British group, each member given a one-word nickname by a magazine, burst out in 1996 with the single Wannabe and a slogan about girl power, and became a merchandising phenomenon before the departure of one member in 1998 took the momentum out of it?

Question 3

Which moment at the Newport Folk Festival on 25 July 1965 split the folk world, when Bob Dylan came on stage backed by a loud amplified band and was met with a mixture of cheers and furious booing, one organiser said to have wanted the sound cable cut with an axe?

Question 4

What is the name for a long-playing record whose tracks are bound together by a single story, character or theme rather than gathered as separate songs, a form that flowered in the late 1960s with Sgt. Pepper and reached extremes with Tommy, The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon?

Question 5

Which British band lost its original singer and guiding light, Syd Barrett, to a breakdown in 1968, then, led by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, made elaborate concept albums including one about madness and mortality that stayed on the American chart for around 15 years?

Question 6

Which London band, built around the songwriting of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, styled itself the bad-boy opposite of the Beatles, scored with Satisfaction, Paint It Black and Gimme Shelter, and saw a fan stabbed to death by Hells Angels at its free 1969 Altamont concert?

Question 7

Which Los Angeles band, with the poet and provocateur Jim Morrison out front and Ray Manzarek supplying bass lines on an organ, had hits with Light My Fire and Riders on the Storm before Morrison's death in a Paris bathtub in 1971?

Question 8

What is the name for the British style of the early 1970s built on stomping beats, sing-along choruses, glitter, platform boots and a knowing play with androgyny, its stars including T. Rex, Slade, Roxy Music and, for a time, David Bowie?

Question 9

What is the name for the main American singles chart, published weekly since 1958, that ranks songs by combining physical and digital sales, radio airplay and, in recent years, streaming figures?

Question 10

What is the name, now often shortened to two letters, for the Black American popular music of the 1940s and 1950s, built on blues structures with a strong backbeat and often a honking saxophone, that was the direct parent of rock and roll?

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About Rock & Pop History

Rock and pop have been the mainstream of popular music for 70 years, and this quiz traces that history in eighty questions. Each describes an act, a genre, a movement, an era, a landmark record, a piece of jargon or a famous event, and asks you to name it from four choices, then fills in the story, the fallout or the myth attached to it.

The first pack is the canon: Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan and the Rolling Stones; the birth of rock and roll and of Motown; the British Invasion; Michael Jackson, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd and David Bowie; punk, grunge and disco; the Beach Boys and U2; the launch of MTV; and the Live Aid concerts.

The second pack widens the field. More acts, from Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly through the Who, Hendrix, Marley, the Kinks, the Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Springsteen and Prince to the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, Metallica, Aerosmith, Radiohead and Oasis. The genres, grunge, Britpop, heavy metal, progressive rock, new wave, glam, reggae, ska, rhythm and blues, folk rock and psychedelia. And the machinery around the music, the concept album, the Billboard Hot 100, Woodstock, the 27 Club, the supergroup, payola and the Wall of Sound.

The third pack is scandal, disaster and legend: the 1959 plane crash called the day the music died; the killing at Altamont; Lennon's bigger-than-Jesus remark; the Monterey and Woodstock festivals and the shambles of Woodstock 99; the Spice Girls and girl power; Napster and the collapse of the CD; the Paul-is-dead hoax; Auto-Tune; Disco Demolition Night; the Beatles' rooftop finale; the Battle of Britpop; Milli Vanilli; the charity records Band Aid and We Are the World; Elvis's 1968 comeback; Dylan going electric; the loudness war; MTV Unplugged; and the Grateful Dead's touring culture.

The wrong answers are always the same kind of thing as the right one, an act beside acts, a genre beside genres, so a shaky guess is easily caught. Where a picture is used it is deliberately neutral, a jukebox, a drum kit, a guitar, a turntable, a mixing desk, a synthesiser, and never a portrait or an album sleeve, because those would give the answer away outright; each one has been checked against its own four options.

Nothing here assumes musical training. Facts, dates and chart claims have been checked against reference sources, and several persistent myths are corrected along the way: the 27 Club shows no real statistical spike at that age, the anti-disco backlash carried a strong charge of racism and homophobia, and Milli Vanilli's singers really had signed their voices away. Coverage runs from the 1950s to the streaming era and tries to balance the famous with the genuinely important.