Oh, goddammit.
THOUGHTS ON THE QUEEN, MOTHERFUCKER.
Aw, come on. Usually we go months between these digressions.
Usually the world makes sense. THOUGHTS ON THE QUEEN.
Goddammit.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
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“Usually the world makes sense.”
–
Really?
i have been WAITING for this one! digress away….
When I hear the word Queen, I think of The Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen”, so I will go anti for a bit while you gear up to write about Brian May’s dad making him a guitar out of firewood(he’s quite the renaissance man and a warlock on the guitar), Freddie Mercury(aka Farrokh Bulsara) really being a Zoroastrian from Zanzibar & the now silent bass player who was the real genius behind the band(well at least he wrote many of their most memorable songs-the drummer is beyond annoying-I even like Phil Collins better only because he played on Eno records). In 77, I was 11. That summer changed my life as I went to the UK on the proverbial family vacation and I got see the punk rockers that my Deadhead sister was warning me about. Little did she know the seed that she had sown that anything she thought was awful was immediately brilliant to me. These louts looked so much cooler than Queen, The Bee Gees or KC & the Sunshine Band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoXHgBhWbyw
Maybe Queen the band has more long term popularity, but did they ever get banned from the airwaves or being forbidden to play in public under their own name? Can you imagine a band that was so threatening that the powers that be banned them from the internet? Can you imagine Richard Branson paying for this publicity stunt today? Funny watching him getting busted at the end. Too bad Johnny Rotten was right about the House of Windsor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcFp-eKKIws
Then there is this bit of humanitarian relief effort when the Pistols weren’t allowed to be the Pistols. To think about everyone that went to see the SPOTS tour (Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly) ended up forming a band in the UK. One the best Christmas stories ever(it’s long documentary, but it has Boney M in it). To think a little over three weeks later, this whole ephemeral Pistols outburst was over at the hands of Bill Graham at Winterland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXpSrT7jVb0&t=84s
I will end on these notes about Queen:
I never knew Killer Queen was about high class call girls, but I found out that Katy Perry was very inspired by Freddie Mercury’s idea of women. She claims this song defined what type of woman she wanted to be at 15. Maybe those Bob Larson types have a point about the evil influence of music on the youth..Bollocks to that I just like Brian May’s guitar playing an awful lot on it. As an 8 year old, I thought only Blackmore’s solo from Highway Star on Made In Japan was better. Killer Queen was quite revolutionary sounding at that time, and I remember it much more fondly than other classics of the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZBtPf7FOoM
Queen was a world band and really quite cool. To me this song was their greatest achievement. The fact that most everything was played by John Deacon even makes it cooler. Not sure why you never hear from him: must be counting the royalties that come from this song which is Queen’s best selling. On headphones, there are some whack vocal effects and subliminal synth sounds that get lost in the vast expanse of space of this track. A total takeoff on Chic, but meant with sincerity. Queen must have had a great desire to write sports anthems: between this song,, We Will Rock You & We Are The Champions they cover all bases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE
…
Whale watching?
If you’re going to do “Thoughts on Queen,” you HAVE TO talk about Live Aid. I don’t even really like Queen, and I could watch that performance over and over again.