Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.

Subject: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 12:45 PM

Before I head out to my new music room/summer cottage/sanctuary, (formerly the tool shed) for some more painting and floor laying, I wanted to run a couple of "travelling musicians' time wasting road games" by you. When you're on the road with others it can get a bit tedious (even with generally good company) so a lot of these time wasters get made up.

"Boticelli" WARNING! This particular game can make some people VERY angry. The folks that play it get used to being dumped on for being "too well informed for your own good", but boy, you can eat up about 200 miles with just one go around. Here's how it works (in the musician's version)

Think of a famous person dead, alive, or fictional. Give the other players the initial of the last name. For example, lets use "Babe Ruth". The others have "R" to start with.

They in turn must try to stump YOU with a famous person who's name starts with "R", by giving a fact about that person. Eg: Player #2: "I was the Singing Brakeman" who am I? If you (the person with the original "R" identity) says "Easy, Jimmie Rodgers", you get one point,(10 points win) and it goes to the next person. If you don't know the answer, the other person gets to ask you a "true or false" question. Eg: "Are you real or fictional?" You of course (being Babe Ruth) say "real". (they have 9 true or false questions left to discover your identity..and hence, win)

On a lengthy tour with Sandy and Caroline Paton, Caroline incurred our wrath by giving us the last initial "H". We tried for hours until giving up. "ROBIN HOOD"! she says! Dirty pool! said Sandy and I.

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Another goodie (and MUCH simpler) although you can still get a lot of flack for it, is "connect the names". Someone starts with a name, eg: Jimmie Rodgers, the next person has to give (quickly) a new name with either the first or last names of the previous one in it (we don't worry about similar spellings). So I might say "Rogers Hornsby" (baseball player), next might say "Bruce Hornsby", then "Robert The Bruce" etc, etc,. It wears pretty fast but is good for a 50-80 mile jaunt.

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"Talkin with lines from songs". This particular little game got a friend of the Patons and myself furious with us! (that in itself made a few miles pass by rather quickly)

Start with a song line: "I'll be Damned, here comes your ghost again" (Dylan). The next person has to either identify the song....OR...come up with something from another song that sounds connected, ie: "I'm looking through you" (Beatles) perhaps followed by "I can see clearly now" (Johnny Nash), then maybe "These Eyes" (Guess Who) and possibly "I'se The b'y that builds the boat" (told you we don't worry about spelling!)

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There must be hundreds of these "driving time wasters". Anyone else got any?

Rick

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: hesperis
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 01:13 PM

My family used to make chain-linked puns.

You start by picking a subject, like "kinds of fish" and then people have to make a sentence with an original pun on fish in it. ("Holy Mackerel" doesn't count for that.) If you can't think of anything in that subject, you can change the subject by a half-degree, like going to "parts of a fish" or "the sea" or "canning equipment" from "kinds of fish". Then all the other players vote on whether to keep that new subject. If you can get more than one pun in a sentence, you get a lot more respect...

It is impossible to keep score in this game though. You're usually laughing too hard.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: sophocleese
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 01:48 PM

We used to play Ghosts, its a spelling game. You all add letters one at a time, in order, and try and force someone to say the last letter of a word. Words must be longer than three letters and proper names are not allowed. My two older brothers spent two hours as we drove through Thessalonica while almond trees were in blossom arguing over whether the word ass-hole had a hyphen or not.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 02:50 PM

Rick, Botticelli is my all-time favorite parlor game/road game. I've always found it hard to explain how it's done, but people caught on as the game got underway. You gave a clear explanation.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 04:38 PM

Thanks Chantey. The explanation is usually what drive folks off. Got your starter in the PMs, but since I'm gonna be on the road a lot over the next few days I probably won't be able to get into it (this time!). So who's "C"?

Soph. Like that one. Never heard of it. May try it on the way to New England next week. (Heather won't play Botticelli with me!)

Rick

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 01 Oct 00 - 10:37 PM

Maybe when your back from your tour. Have a great one. As to the "C" person, if you asked me "Do you live in Ohio, have an outrageous sense of humor, worship a toy Opossum, and spend alot of time on the computer," you would have won.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: rabbitrunning
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 12:00 PM

There's a word game that I only know of as "The Game". I learned it by listening very hard to a group of what looked like camp counselors doing their laundry in a little town in Colorado one summer.

The first player says something along the lines of "I'm thinking of a game" and if someone says "Let's play" the first player starts in with:

(for example)
It's a game of blue but not red.
It's a game of bricks but not wood.
It's a game of blind but not deaf.

The other players listen to the descriptions, and when they think they know what the game is about they respond with:
Is it a game of buttons but not zippers?
And if they've gotten it the first player says, "Give me another one." And after a second correct example, now both of the players can keep adding to the list and tormenting the rest of them. You play until everyone has figured out the rule of the game. (In the example it's a game of words that start with the letter 'b'.)

You can play this with kids too, if you stick to easy rules, but with adults you can absolutely torment each other. My brother once kept the entire family going for forty minutes with a rule of "three letter words."

We play it that the last person in gets to start the next game.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 02:26 PM

Even harder than Ghost is Superghost, in which you can add letters to either end, so long as you don't spell a word. We usually allow words of length 3 letters or less to stand as "non-words" -- in other words if you spell "o-r-e" we will just pretend it's not a word and go on to the next person; only words of four letters or longer make you "out." This allows for much greater range of words.

Boticelli is a wonderful game. There was a book "Boticelli and beyond" which I bought for a friend many years ago, but (alas!) didn't get a copy of for myself; it had numerous such word games. Haven't seen it since (wah!).

An extension of Boticelli is to allow any noun, and not just proper names. Of course this greatly opens up the playing field, but it makes the game easier for people who don't know a lot of famous biographical names.

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Barbara
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 03:38 PM

One we can play in Oregon, is we try to be the first person to create a word from the 3 letters on any license plate visible around us. If not a single word, then a phrase is accepted. Some states have more letters, so the game gets harder.
For example, if a car has DNT on it you could say dynamite or disenterred or don't or needlepoint. The letters have to be in order, but the word doesn't have to start with D, or end with T. If traffic is slow, you can try to see how many you can think of.
One other advantage of this, is you can play it by yourself.
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 04:43 PM

'Course the All-time number one musicians' road game is bullshiting about all the weird gigs you've played.

Chantey! Catspaw would NOT qualify as a famous person! I must challenge you on that. That's as bad as Caroline's "Robin Hood"! No nicknames. That means you gotta buy the gas at the next stop. Famous Mudcatters? Yup, he's the one though.

Rick

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:18 PM

"Stick Quiz" is fun. One person gets the stick,and he is the "Stickmaster".He asks questions of the others in turn,like "what number am I thinking of?" If they guess correctly,they get one point.If they are wrong,the "stickmaster" gets to hit them with the stick.

This game makes the miles fly past as long as you're the "Stickmaster".

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: sophocleese
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:37 PM

Then there was the time we played Hide and Seek in the car. My poor younger brother got stuck in a loop where every time he opened his eyes the first person he saw was himself so he had to be it for ages. Eventually he saw me hiding in front of the cushion and I was it.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Ely
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 05:49 PM

We did plain old Slug Bug until my mother complained that we were beating each other too much.

I always liked cow bingo (or horse bingo, or dog bingo). You make a list of cows or horses or whatever animals (colors, breeds, whatever) and the first person to see all of them wins. It works better in some places than others, though. (No good in dairy-farming Iowa, "Holstein. 'Nother Holstein. Damn, there's a lot of Holsteins around here. Oh, wait, black Angus! . . . Holstein.")

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: rabbitrunning
Date: 02 Oct 00 - 11:38 PM

We played license plate bingo. You look for license plates from different states to fill in the squares. The "free" square is always the state you're in at the time.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 02:30 AM

Wait, Rick, didn't Catspaw win the Nobel peace prize and bring home an Olympic gold medal in the same year he won a pullet surprise for the hunting competition? OK, you got me there. I'll have a legitimately famous person for you when your back. As for gas, see spaw for that!

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: GUEST, Banjo Johnny
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 02:58 AM

I realize you're not trying to be rigorous, but you left out something important in Ghost. The way you have it now, someone could keep throwing in X's and Z's and the game goes nowhere.

There is supposed to be a rule that when you add a letter which does not form a word, you need to have a word in mind that can be spelled using the portion that exists. If another player thinks there is no such word, he can challenge you. If you can name such a word, you win. If not, the challenger wins.

I hadn't heard of Super Ghost - brilliant idea! == Johnny in OKC

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: catspaw49
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 02:40 PM

Damn but I LOVE Boticelli!!!! When I read this thread the other day it gave me one of those tremendous flashbacks.....Happy and depressing at the same time, but really a rush. A group of us played in college for hours on end everyday....it beat hell out of going to classes that semester. Long story, but a great memory...great group of people.

We ought to be able to start a Bot thread. We'd have to divide into groups and ........probably too complicated. E-mail maybe? Great game though........

Spaw

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: Susan from California
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 03:29 PM

Ok, here's an easy one we played with the kids when we could still get the older two to take long cartrips with us. The Geography Game. Name a place, say Ireland. The next person has to name a place that starts with "D", (since that is the last letter of Ireland) maybe they will come up with Denver, or Delaware. And it goes on, and on, and on.

Subject: RE: Musicians' Games. Soakin' up the miles.
From: John Hardly
Date: 03 Oct 00 - 04:51 PM

Rick,

Safe to assume you once travelled with Tim O'Brien who named as a "Crucial influence(s)" "Elton John Boy George Michael Jackson Brownie Mcgee and Molly Hatchet Job. Alton, Rabon, Rodan, Raydon, Neon, Nylon, Snap-on, Roll-on "Buddy" Roll-on, Mother Mel Bay, Dock Boggs, Dog Barks, Whoof!"

As a liner notes junkie, I play connect the musicians by recording. Neil Young-James Taylor Harvest, James Taylor-Dan Korchmar Gorilla, Dan Kortchmar-Billy Joel River of Dreams, Billy Joel-Ray Charles Baby Grand,etc

John millring Hardly