X – Common factor between Pink Floyd‘s Speak To Me and Brain Damage.
Y – Common factor between Floyd’s Great Gig in the Sky and Money.
X and Y are also related to each other. ID X and Y.
Question courtesy: Easwar

X is Peter Watts, father of Naomi Watts, who was sound engineer with Pink Floyd. It is his laughter which is heard in both the mentioned songs. Y is his wife Myfanwy Edwards whose voice is heard in the two songs.

Turned out be tad too tough. Zero cracks.

The following songs are connected as being part of a particular famous (and bigger) list. What? (Please don’t give us the answers like “list of all Bollywood songs”!)

Answer in comments.

Answer: These songs were all annual top songs on the legendary programme Binaca Geet Mala. The list started with Yeh Zindagi Usi Ki Hai and ended with Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai in 1993.

Rightly answered by Easwar, Rosh, Anshuman and the Flightless One.

One of the reasons rock music was frowned upon in its early days was its constant use of controversial lyrics on tabooed subjects. One such song of the ‘60s is Hey Joe which became such a standard that more than 400 bands have covered it so far. The song is about a man about to kill his wife accusing her of adultery and then runaway to Mexico. The song came into prominence in the early ‘60s and has been covered by almost all famous bands of that era. The most popular version, however, is one by the legendary Jimi Hendrix which he recorded in his first album with his band The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The exact origin of the song is unknown. The lyrics of the song are often erroneously credited to American musician Chester Powers aka Dino Valenti. The copyrights of the song however, rest with songwriter Billy Roberts who registered it in 1962. During 1965 and 1966, the song was recorded by a number of popular bands such as The Leaves, The Standells, The Surfaris, Love and The Byrds swiftly making the song a garage rock classic.

Folk rock singer Tim Rose recorded the song in 1966 and it was a much slower song. Hendrix got inspired by Rose’s version of the song and made a rock version out of it. Hendrix’s version of the song rose to instant popularity and entered top 10 on the charts peaking at #6. The man responsible for Hendrix’s rise to fame was his manager Chas Chandler who had just split up from his group The Animals. Chandler had seen both Tim Rose and Jimi Hendrix play their renditions of Hey Joe and after hearing the imaginative version of Jimi Hendrix with his rough voice and his quirks on the guitar, Chandler took him to London where Hendrix rose to stardom. Interestingly, this song never reached the charts in the United States although it was released there at almost the same time.

Wikipedia itself mentions about fifty cover versions of the song by popular artists such as Cher, Frank Zappa, The Who, Patti Smith, etc. Although it would be impossible to write about every song here, a cover version that I must mention is one by Deep Purple since it is the first version of the song that I have heard. Deep Purple covered this song in their debut album “Shades of Deep Purple”. The song starts with a guitar and synthesizer arrangement that sounds like it has been taken from a western movie which fits perfectly with the mood of the song. Although the lyrical arrangement is the same, the beginning and end of the song give it a completely different feel.

In one of our earlier posts, we had mentioned that the largest guitar ensemble in the world was in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany, which involved 1802 guitarists playing Smoke on the Water. This record, however, was more than comfortably beaten on the 1^st of May, 2009 by a group of 6346 guitarists playing at the “Thanks Jimi” festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

While we sign off now with only so much for this song, you enjoy Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth while performing this song.

Jimi Hendrix Performing Hey Joe

Deep Purple’s rendition of the song

The Who performing Hey Joe

Simply connect.. No hints required..

Answer: The connect is the band Marilyn Manson. The band members were known for taking up stage names which were made up of the first name of a Hollywood screen siren and the last name of a serial killer. The above series contains some of the people who inspired the names. For obvious reasons we didn’t feature Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.

Two cracks – Abhishek and the Flightless One.

Yesterday’s proved to be quite tough. Hence today we present you with another absolute sitter. This song is a tribute to?

Answer: This is a tribute to Elmur Fudd from the Looney tunes by a guy called Mark Mccollum.
easwer and Vivek both get one point each.

A slightly devious connect today. The connect is definitely music-related we assure you.

Answer:

The connect proved to be more elusive than we expected, with zero cracks! The connect was American singer Gwen Stefani. Pic 1 is of Arthur Hailey, the character from whose book Airport inspired Gwen’s parents to name her so. Second pic is of yesteryear actress Jean Harlow, whose role Gwen had portrayed in her debut acting venture in The Aviator. And the third pic is of the band Bush, whose lead singer Gavin Rossdale is the husband of Gwen.

Rumoured origin of which band name?

Answer in comments.

Answer: ZZ Top

One of the rumoured origins of the band name ZZ Top is that it has been named after two popular brands of rolling paper, Zig-Zag and ‘Top’.The current version of the story—as told by Billy Gibbons and recorded in his book Rock + Roll Gearhead–is derived from the name of blues guitar master B. B. King.They thus figured that “King” was also at the “top”, and so settled on ZZ Top.

Cracked by Dante, Praneetha, Rosh and the Flightless One.

Which famous series of compositions does this piece come from?

Answer in comments

Answer:

This composition is called English Notes, by Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar, later popularised by Madurai Mani Iyer. Muthiah Bhagavathar came up with this composition when he was asked by someone to compose a Western sounding composition using carnatic elements. Apologies for mentioning it in question as a “series of compositions” as I got confused with Nottuswara Sahityas by Muthuswami Dikshitar which again follow a similar structure. You can watch a wonderful rendition of the entire composition in these links.

Part 1

Part 2

Only Arun A S managed to crack it this time.

Which classical composition inspired this single from Jeff Beck?

Question Courtesy : ARUN A. S.

Answer:

The composition is Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, and this piece, as Jayesh pointed out, is called Beck’s Bolero. Thanks a lot Arun for the question.

Five cracks today, by Easwar, Rosh, Rajib, Jayesh and Praneetha.

A.R. Rahman is joining the likes of U2, Shakira and Peter Gabriel to spread awareness about water. The event is called Moving Stars and Earth for Water, it is an artistic happening broadcast online. It is organized on the occasion of the Poetic Social Mission seeking to raise everyone’s awareness of water-related issues. The Mission is carried out from space by Guy Laliberté, Founder of Cirque du Soleil and President of the ONE DROP Foundation.

Moving Stars and Earth for Water will be a special two-hour program. It’s basically a tale written by Yann Martel (Life of Pi) and will be staged across 14 cities, the Indian episode will be aired from Mumbai and will feature activist Vandana Shiva and A.R. Rahman. Rahman has chosen one of his most beautiful compositions for this event, the song called Vellai Pookal (literally meaning White Flowers) from the Mani Rathnam movie Kannathil Muthamittaal. The song remains majorly unaltered but is packaged in a beautifully shot video featuring the two of them, which does perfect justice to the brilliant composition. And it is really heart-warming to see Rahman start off with “This is A R Rahman from India”. A proud moment for us indeed. Take a look at the video.