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This Saturday I will be participating in the sixth annual Boston Area Puzzle Hunt League, an all-afternoon scavenger hunt of puzzles around my hometown. This year’s event is supposedly built around some sort of fictional battle of the bands, and presumably every team is a band. Well, my “band” is comprised of the wunderkinds at Brown University (regulars to the site may remember one of them, Ms. Aimee Lucido). There were threats to name our “band” Brendan & The Brownies, which wasn’t going to happen on my watch. So out came my list of Band Names in Search of a Band, and from that, TUFTS was chosen. Crisis averted. Coolness achieved. Go TUFTS. Pictures/wrap-up of BAPHL coming on Monday.
Coming up with band names and/or working titles for songs has always been one of my favorite music-related activities. Sometimes, the working titles became the final titles, mostly because the titles were deemed better than whatever lyrics might have appeared in said songs: “Robert Duvall (David Duval),” “We Are a Well-Oiled Machine,” and “French Math” for instance. Other times, friends would come to ask us to name their bands. These suggestions were never taken, however, but both Windows 76, and Thanksgiving were briefly, even strongly, considered. After years of this dada-esque twaddle, a whole overly-complicated drinking game was constructed for the sole purpose of naming fictional bands. (I don’t have the time to write all the rules, so bug Mike if you really must know.) That album cover I’ve posted up above? Those are just a small handful of (mostly) Band Names in Search of a Band that have been compiled over the years. You’ll notice T.U.F.T.S. in the 16th row. Good times.
Why’m I bringing this up? Today’s puzzle is a Sporcle-like quiz of working titles of famous albums.
Share the puzzle. New one on Monday.
I liked the puzzle, but got off to a bad start when my current job (bar manager) led me astray. I jumped at the 1D/13D combination and thought spirit raising event was a “Pub Crawl”. 🙂
I was sitting down while I worked this one, but when I got to 66A, which i already had partially filled as E_EN, and read the clue “An apple-less merry land?” I stood up and said “Shiiat!” Man that was sweet!
I don’t get the connection between the working and real titles. How is “Everest” related to “Abbey Road, “The Two Americas” to “The Joshua Tree” etc. Is there a PUN (Groan) there that is over my head”. I thought Diary..Fiend would explain it, but it didn’t. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks.
No punning involved. The “working titles” were just that — titles that were used by the artists while they were working on the albums, but were ultimately discarded in favor of the familiar titles we know now.
Thanks Jeff, I did not expect such a straightforward approach; although as a re-read BEQ’s intro, I see that was the case. But he could have used the same clue for all, “A classic rock album,” as the working title was of no help in solving–at least to me.
The trivia on “Abbey Road” is that the Beatles knew that this was likely to be their last album, so they were going to go with the majestic, crowning glory inspired title “Everest”.
Then someone suggested that they travel to the Himalaya’s for a photo shoot. So they decided to just step out onto the street for the cover photo and call it “Abbey Road”.
Loved it!