The Voice has spent the week celebrating the 60th birthday of one of New York's greatest treasures, Joey Ramone. We've made our To Do Lists of things we "wanna do" and things we "don't wanna do," and we've stolen the "Joey Ramone Place" sign on E 2nd St. about a dozen times in the last 24 hours. We figured the best way to round out the week would be testing our smug, smarty-pants rock critics on how well they know a band that has absolutely nothing to do with Brooklyn. So we asked 15 music writers:

Can you name all seven Ramones from their various lineups?

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Our panel of music experts has proven themselves less-than-expert on any number of legendary subjects--Metallica, The Clash, Boyz II Men, pretty much anything that doesn't have a Lindsey Buckingham guitar solo in it. So we thought we'd test their knowledge about current events. You can't click on any piece of rock criticism this month without seeing the words "Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All." (Seriously, even the NPR review of the Paul Simon record might have stuck in the phrase "totally fucking swag.") There's a lot of chatter about these skateboarding, shouting, swearing, slur-tossing, syllable-flipping, stage-diving sociopaths--but do we really know who they're talking about? We asked 15 music critics:

How many of the 11 members of Odd Future can you name?

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Get ready to be caught in a proverbial mosh, New York, because The Big 4 of thrash--that's Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax--are coming to Yankee Stadium, and tickets go on sale this morning! To all you non-headbanging SOTC readers, this event is essentially as important to metalheads as LCD Soundsystem breaking up during an Arcade Fire show while Fleet Foxes make s'mores for everyone. Plus its location means a generation of metal nerds like ourselves will finally make it to second base (boom!). We decided to see if our trusty panel of rock critics shares our excitement and asked 15 music writers:

Can you name the four Anthrax albums that feature Joey Belladonna on vocals?

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We spent Record Store Day choking and punching out mouth-breathing, acne-flecked nerdlingers, hoping to secure a copy of that Big Star test pressing. While squeezing the very life from a particularly frankfurtery collector's neck we noticed a rock critic or two peeking from the vinyl stacks, ready to walk home with some limited-edition goods of their own. One release that particularly impressed us was the reissue of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, a $34.99 double LP that was superior to the tens of millions of clean, unopened 1977-era pressings currently clogging dollar bins like bedbugs clog your date's apartment. Since this thing is in such high dork demand, we thought we'd ask 15 music critics:

How many of the 11 songs on Fleetwood Mac's Rumours can you name?

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Queens rap legend Prodigy of Mobb Deep is officially out of jail after three long years, and we have a pretty authoritative feature about his last days in the bing. Our own Laura Checkoway (who co-wrote his autobiography My Infamous Life, due this month via Touchstone Books) gets closer than anyone, finding out about his in-jail germophobia, his first meal as a free man and his beef-squashing with Nas. All of this got us thinking--how much do us rock critics really know about this dude? I mean, every rock critic will tell you they love Mobb Deep (and will probably use words like "austere" when they do it) but do they really know these Queensbridge lyrical murderers? So we asked 15 rock critics:

Can you name the two members of Mobb Deep, and one of their songs that isn't "Shook Ones Pt. 2"?

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Michael Becker/FOX

Who are these people?

For weeks, our weekly indignity parade "Are You Smarter Than A Rock Critic?" has been putting our writers at an unfair disadvantage, asking for the intimate details of long dead and gone artists like The Clash, The Doors and Metallica [yeah, no sic]. In response to the overwhelming demand for something new and contemporary, we bring you the most of-the-moment question humanly possible. We asked 17 music writers:

How many of the eight remaining American Idol finalists can you name?

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Our weekly rock critic Scan-Tron is totally skipping work to run off to the Unsound Festival! The 10-day experimental music blowout is so enticingly nerd-centric that it makes Northside Festival look like a beer-bong at a frat party. This year's highlights include an appearance by electronic original gangsta Morton Subotnick, the second American performance ever by dark ambient cellar-dweller Lustmord, a night of chest-caving "Bass Mutations" courtesy of the Bunker, and a night of pan-global noise curated by New York's own Carlos Giffoni. Plus, Norwegian ambient duo Deaf Center will be interviewed by yours truly on Sunday, if you enjoy free talks that are likely going to devolve into super deep talks about Evil Dead 2. We rang up Unsound's publicist, Gamall Awad, who tells us that just under 100 rock critics have hit him up for guest-list spots (which are now closed, moochers.) All of which got us thinking--just how much do we really know about experimental music? We asked 15 music writers:
 
How many Steve Reich pieces can you name?
 
This should be remarkably easy, no? His name looms large no matter what genre you're into--his manic repetition foreshadowed electronic dance music, his skipping tape loops set the stage for hip-hop, Captain Beefheart bit his steez on Trout Mask Replica, and his pieces for feedback and amps certainly influenced any number of Sonic Youths. Plus, dude did a piece for clapping. Like how do you even applaud after that?
 
We once again cobbled a consortium of 15 professional and semi-professional rock critics, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Billboard on down to random Tweets.]

2. You can't use Google.

Will our panel come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them come out to show them? Results below:

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Thanks to new albums by The Weeknd and Frank Ocean, this is totally the month of hipster R&B. You can read our own Sean Fennessey's magnificent think piece on it, or maybe peep The Guardian's informative take on the "cult of Cassie" among chillwaver types, or maybe just follow Eric Harvey on Twitter because no one is going to do a more lucid piece of writing on this than him tweeting "PBR&B." But all this got us thinking: Are rock critics in 2011 qualified enough to cover the older R&B that's supposedly fueling these blue-eyed and/or scarf-necked soulsters? We asked 15 music writers:
 
How many of Boyz II Men's five Billboard Hot 100 #1 singles can you name?

This should be remarkably easy, right? One of these songs broke Elvis Presley's record by staying on top of the charts for 13 weeks, then a second did 14 weeks. And then a third did 16 weeks, making it ostensibly the most popular song of all time. If you managed to avoid these songs, you must not have ears--which, the last time I checked, was literally the only requirement to doing this job (it certainly ain't knowing how to write). These songs soundtracked our homecomings and proms and weddings and probably even a divorce or two. They will be around a lot longer than How To Dress Well.

So we once again cobbled a consortium of 15 professional and semi-professional rock critics, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Billboard on down to random Tweets.]

2. You can't use Google.

Does our panel know their cooleyhighharmonies? The correct answer and the results below:

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Woe betide anyone who actually bought this record

For weeks, scared rock journos could avoid participating in this important "Are You Smarter Than a Rock Critic?" pop-quiz shame exercise by blocking our AIM name or not picking up their cell phones. But this week is SXSW! The yearly blowout where we critics bravely enter the wild, bringing our parade of pasty white skin and BBQ-stained neckbeards out from the comforts of mom's basement and into the vomit-saturated streets of Austin, Texas. I could finally ambush these folks in public, where they couldn't run to the safety of their hotel rooms and/or Google. Since we were in Texas, I figured the best route would be to celebrate the greatest thing to come out of the state since Frito Pie. And so we asked eight music writers:

How many members of the classic Butthole Surfers lineup can you name?

OK, yes, our panel is about half its usual size, but that is a fuck-up on the part of this particular anthropologist: Uh, I kind of was hanging out watching disgusting bullshit like Shit & Shine instead of trying to pounce on the sea of writers pouring from Stubb's when Smith Westerns were over. I even hung out on Red River for a little while, but all I saw was a steady rain of taco meat as drunks attempted to dump food in their mouth. But smaller panel or no, this should be an easy question, right? Dan Deacon is doing an entire Buttholes tribute as a part of that bonkers Our Band Can Be Your Life concert, and the book itself should be etched into the memory of anyone who writes about what these giant corporations in Austin call "indie rock." Plus, the Surfers had a genuine hit, and at least one of these guys is a full-fledged New Yorker now, and probably stood in line with you for that Cake Shop cookie last week.

So we once again cobbled a consortium of 15 (ok, this time only eight) professional and semi-professional rock critics, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Billboard on down to random Tweets.]

2. You can't use Google.

So do these guys know their Buttholes from a hole in the ground? Find out below:

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Recently our hackles were raised after a concerned Park Slope resident (or, as reports increasingly indicate, a gifted troll) sent out a petition hoping to keep a new club from playing the hip-hop music (gasp!) in yuppietacular Brooklyn. We could not imagine the anarchy if rap music ever hit Park Slope: Think upended strollers and innumerable adorable pug dogs scattering toward Grand Army Plaza, causing winter-squash raviolis to rattle off forks at Al Di La. Uh, you're all conveniently forgetting that the Rub throws a great weekly party on Fifth Avenue, and KRS-One was born in Park Slope, right?

Anyway, our favorite line in this ridiculous petition is the decidedly anachronistic description "another Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club," which moronically links a hit 1988 TV show with a hit 1999 song. Which got us thinking: Do today's rock critics know more about the seminal Yo! MTV Raps than your average panic-stricken Brooklynite? And so we asked 15 music writers:

Who were the hosts of Yo! MTV Raps?

Should be super easy, right? It's essentially the show that brought hip-hop to the suburbs in 1988, changing pop culture, fashion, and music forever. It brought radical politics to our living rooms and taught a generation of white kids to shave lines into their hair (sorry, mom). Was our panel of critics actually watching this landmark moment unfold? Or were they too busy waiting for Dave Kendall to play the new Mighty Lemon Drops? Our posse in effect consists of 15 professional and semi-professional rock writers, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone to Spin to Billboard.]

2. You can't use Google.

The correct answer and some dropped science below:

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