Idolator

Your Guest Idolator has spent much of this week with his sweaty palm wrapped around the TiVo remote, driving his wife crazy watching VH1's World Series of Pop Culture. Any snobbery this pop-trivia nut might have had about the show melted away when it debuted last summer: props to the Entertainment Weekly dweebs who produce the show, 'cuz many of these questions are actually challenging! Of course, as a guy born in the early '70s who somehow managed to never watch Brady Bunch reruns as a kid, the entirety of the TV categories generally stumps me. Then again, the other day I actually froze when the lyrics to the Killers' "Mr. Brightside" were read aloud, so go figure. Anyway, if your built-in bullshit detector or urbane snobbery have kept you from watching the show, give it a try; emcee Pat Kiernan has a good sense of humor (you haven't lived till you've heard him read the lyrics to E.U.'s "Da' Butt" aloud), and hey—what else are you gonna watch in July?

What always fascinates me about mass-appeal shows like this is how the music-related questions open a window into the general public perception of the corpus of rock and pop. The EW/VH1 folks may be trying to challenge the contestants, but they're not going to ask Volvo-driving guys and gals from Kentucky to name a member of the Arcade Fire. (And by the way, the aforementioned E.U. lyric stumped both teams.)

But the category that had me, at various moments, gawking and laughing was Wednesday night's "I'm with the Band." The premise: Kiernan names "three lesser-known members of a popular music group" (his words), and the contestant must simply name the group. Some examples—you can play along at home and yell out the answers if you like:

Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Jack Irons
James Iha, D'Arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin
Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor

The second one above is timely, especially since the show was pretaped months ago; and as for that third grouping, it's gotta be galling to ol' Nick that John Taylor is presumed to be more famous than him. For the record, the two battling contestants plowed through these questions easily.

They also made short work of these two, which were actually the first of the category and, hence, considered the easiest:

Chad Smith, John Frusciante, Flea
will.i.am, Taboo, apl.de.ap

Wow. That's gotta hurt, eh? I mean you're Flea—in 1989, you were on the cover of SPIN by yourself, and now, 18 years later, your buddy Kiedis is the unmentionable dead giveaway in a trivia question. As for will.i.am, if that Saturday Night Live parody calling the post-Fergie Black Eyed Peas shills made you question your life, playing second fiddle to the pants-soiler on a game show might make you want to lock up the knives.

For the record, the list that stumped a contestant and ended the trivia round was this one:

Jon Buckland, Will Champion, Guy Berryman

Anyone wanna speculate on whether throwing in Chris Martin's name would have made the question any easier?