Stuff On My Phone (28)

The quiz mentioned in the previous post ended, as is traditional, with a craft round. There are big points on offer, so it often pays to have a few 'creatives' in your team, not just quiz geeks. I can say that because one of the reasons we were hosting the quiz this year was the fact that we won last year. This was due in no small part to building the tallest free-standing bird sculpture out of newspaper, feathers and other such lightweight and unsturdy materials. Our winning bird was taller than several members of the team!

But on to this year. AG, our organiser-in-chief, had devised a carbon neutral,  environmentally-friendly task, which was revealed slowly to the teams. First, each team had to select a tray of vegetables...

Photo courtesy of AG

before being informed that they needed to build a vehicle, which would then be trundled down a ramp to see which one went the furthest.

As I had spent countless hours downloading tracks for the music round, I was tasked with providing some suitable backing sounds for all this malarkey, with the only additional instruction being "Make sure it includes the theme tune to Wacky Races!"

Reader, it was no chore 😀

Apart from the afore-mentioned cartoon, there were appearances from Yello's 'The Race', the Beach Boys' 'Little Deuce Coupe', Fleetwood Mac's 'The Chain' and Propaganda's 'Jewelled' mix. The latter two having been the theme tunes for Formula One and the World Rally Championship.

However, for me, the biggest trip down memory lane took me back to the early 1970s. I recall watching a documentary about, I think, a whitewater raft journey down, I again think, a South American river. It was probably an episode of 'The World About Us', remember that?! Anyhow, the backing track to some of the fast-paced frothy action was an amazing bit of electronica (was, still is, will be forever!), Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'. I didn't know that at the time, obvs, but as the song became more famous, it wasn't long before the album was added to my collection. It didn't make me the coolest dude in school, but at least it was an album graphic I could draw. Which I did, a lot, everywhere. Note to future self - "You'll be one of the quiz geeks, not one of the creative ones (this will make more sense in 2018)".

So, here's a live version of the single track, inevitably found on Youtube.

Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn'.

Back in 2019, here are some of the veg vehicles...

Photo courtesy of AG

The winning car had a bit of a tracking problem, steering right, but successfully managed to go the furthest despite thinking it was an oval racer!

The vegetables were later re-used or composted, whilst the knives (from a charity shop), were returned to said charity shop, in a neat circular economy version of the winning lap.