APRIL 9th (12th GRADE)

OPINION COLUMN

Objective: To identify specific information and vocabulary related to music in a written opinion column.

VOCABULARY

• MOB

• TO LAND ON

• QUARRYMAN

• TO SWITCH

• TO STRUGGLE

• TO STAKE OUT

My New Band Needs a Name

​and, candidly, we’re struggling with it. Not everyone comes up with a Who or Beatles on the first try — not even the Who and the Beatles.

 

By Steve Knopper 

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 Mr. Knopper, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, is the author of the book “Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.”

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Sept. 12, 2018

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Last year I sang in a rock ’n’ roll cover band called Smaldone Faces. It was the best name of any band I’ve ever been in, even though we had to constantly explain it to people. (So did the Ramones, at first, I kept saying.) We were based in northwest Denver, and a notorious mob family from the ’50s and ’60s, the Smaldones, used to run this neighbourhood. Our drummer, Bret, and I came up with the play on words with the British Rockers Small Faces in a flash of inspiration one night before practice.

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Not everybody lands on a Who or Beatles on the first try — they were once called the High Numbers and the Quarrymen, respectively, and who knows how history might have turned out if they hadn’t switched?

My new band is struggling to find a name. Sid Delicious is our bassist’s preference, but a few people have staked out that name on Twitter and Instagram. Our guitarist suggested Red Mollusk Sect, because we cover Blue Oyster Cult, but it’s too hard to say. 

With Smaldone Faces, we Photoshopped an electric guitar onto an old image of the family patriarch Clyde Smaldone and used the “Godfather” font for our fliers and Facebook page.

It was a fun marketing shtick until I received an unexpected message from a bald, big-bearded, mixed-martial-arts fighter who said he was a Smaldone relative and was not amused by our use of his family name and likeness. He called us “cheesy little [expletives]” and added: “You don’t know what my family endured.” 

Extract of an opinion article about music taken from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/opinion/knopper-band-names-music.html

 

Multiple Choice

What do you understand with these information?

My New Band Needs a Name

and, candidly, we’re struggling with it.

• It is going to be easy to find a new band.

• It is going to be easy to find a name for the new band.

• It is going to be hard to find a new band.

• It is not going to be easy to find a new name for the band.

Multiple Choice

"Not everybody lands on a Who or Beatles on the first try — they were once called the High Numbers and the Quarrymen"

• "The Who" and "The Beatles" never switched bands' names.

• "The Who" was the first name of "the Beatles".

• "The Beatles" and "The Who" switched their bands' names.

Multiple Choice

Sid Delicious is our bassist’s preference, but a few people have staked out that name on Twitter and Instagram.

• Few people didn't like that name.

• People love that name.

• There were people using that name.

Multiple Choice

A notorious mob family from the ’50s and ’60s, the Smaldones, used to run this neighbourhood.

• A crime familily

• A modern family

• A poor family.

Multiple Choice

What is "the High Numbers and the Quarrymen".

• Names of some bands.

• The names of the beatles and the who before switching.

• Singers of different bands.

Multiple Choice

When was this article written?

• 1998

• 2 years ago

• 2020

• 2017