Friday, October 03, 2008

Puzzle

What relationship do the following songs have with each other: Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown (1965) Refugee (1979) Stairway to Heaven (1971) Black Magic Woman (1970) Band on the Run (1973) Walk This Way (1975) Tequila Sunrise (1973)
A class-mate of mine gets invited to a party each year where the invitation gives a hidden clue as to who the musical guest will be. This year's is a stumper and so we're turning to Big Green for help.

While there may be a music-related link here (i.e. lyrical, writer, producer, etc), it could very well be something entirely non-musical. Any MeFi music buffs find any relationship at all with those songs?

As an example, two years ago the invitation included references (which you always have to figure out) to 7 songs. Different bands and with dates from roughly 1971 through 1998. It turned out that ALL of them had been covered at some time or another by Paul Simon. He was the guest. Another thing that made the invitation easy for my classmate was that the invitation came in a Kodak box. Anyway, Paul Simon was the guest musician.

Now, one other thing: don’t look for someone who has covered all of those songs. There is NO WAY that they would use the same type of “puzzle.”

If it helps, here's an explanation of this year's invitation:

There are 7 cards with photographs on them, and each one contains a year (presumably the year the song was written). Each one depicts a song and the letters of the song are written in “hangman” style, with the initial letters given (e.g. N_________ N______ B________ - but on the card you could tell how many letters were in each word). The picture also depicted the song. He is POSITIVE of 6 of the songs; the only one we are not certain of was from 1979, showed two kids with suitcases standing next to a railroad, and they were both dressed in white long sleeve shirts and dark pants. It started with an “R” and was seven letters. Pretty sure it is “Refugee” but if anyone else has an idea of something different, let me know (e.g. is there a “Runaway” from 1979?). Also, the dates given above are the release dates for the songs.

P.S. One more thing to add: the invitation reads “One Enchanted Evening . . .”. Don’t know if that adds anything.


The concert was on Sept. 27, so the answer is at the very bottom of the AskMe thread in question. There are a lot of good theories along the way, though.

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