What the heck is music poker? That’s exactly what I thought when a friend told me about it. “Well,” she said, “it’s a little difficult to explain. It’s something like music trivia meets name the tune meets bingo, but it’s a lot of fun and you should come!”
Okay, so I met with a few people at Que Pasa in the Golden Zone of Mazatlán to participate in this game that sounded like it was invented for old people.
We were almost late, so I missed most of the explanation of how the game works. I was given two playing cards for forty pesos total. Each card had 25 squares with songs from the 1950’s. And without much ado, the game already started. Learning by doing.
The moderator first read a bit of music trivia, for example, “the next song was released as a single in 1955 and a number one hit on the Billboard Top 100’s, and it made it to number five on the UK charts. This song was later covered by Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Jimmy Parkinson and, most notably, Freddie Mercury.”
For this one, I already guessed after the trivia description that it would be The Great Pretender. Then, the song was played for a minute, or so. By this time, we should know for sure which song it was. You’d mark the song on your playing cards with an X. And then, the next song is played after its trivia introduction.
The players were actually having fun. They sang along with the songs, and they drank and laughed. Some danced; the waiters were having fun, too, and were helping those who didn’t know the tunes.
After five songs, the moderator asked, “is there anybody who has an unmarked playing card at this point?” I raised one of my cards. The moderator said, “this is referred to as a sucky playing card,” and everybody laughed. When the card was checked, though, it turned out that I had missed one of the songs. So, I was told, it’s not the card that sucked, implying that I did. Of course, everyone laughed even harder, including me.
And so the game continued, until someone was able to mark five songs in a row and won a free drink on the house. And on we went. There was a moment when I had four in a row, and the only song I was missing was called Get a Job. I got another laugh for that when I showed my friends. One of them said, “the universe is trying to tell you something…”.
Eventually, another person won a free drink for a fully marked row. And the final winner of the round had to complete an ‘X’ with two full diagonals, corner to corner. The X won a two-hundred-pesos restaurant voucher.
While it wasn’t exactly my kind of music, I had to admit that it was kind of fun. In the break, we got to know our table partners a little better, until the next round began. Again, we got two playing cards, this time for Country Music Drinking Songs. Well, that wasn’t my cup of tea. I didn’t really know any of the songs, and there was much less singing-along. After this game mercifully finished, I was talked into one more since the category was hair bands. Someone said, Guns’n’Roses etc. Well, that was a little more up my alley, but to be honest, the air was out.
This game was, sort of, fun for one round. After that, it was boring and I felt much older than my years for sticking around. Lesson learned – if it sounds like it’s… not for me, it probably isn’t.
Regardless, it was nice to do something together with friends and make new connections. We walked back home after about three hours of games and enjoyed the fresh night’s air and some less trivial conversation.
I did make some interesting new connections that day! That was one benefit 🙂
Hallo Dee,
das erinnert mich an eine Quizsendung aus den 70igern. “Erkennen Sie die Melodie”. Die fand ich aber nicht mal ein bißchen gut und Alkohol gabs da auch nicht :-). Quizzmaster war ein gewisser Ernst Stankowski von dem ich bis heute überzeugt bin, dass er ein Außerirdischer war.
Liebe Grüße aus Lutterbek
Heinz
Hola!! Sounds like my kinda game. Hey you are there to try new things! Remember!!
C