Another One Bites the Dust

I'm pretty sure Bohemian Rhapsody got a spin on radio here, like I said I was doing mostly albums. Can't remember if they shortened it for radio. Wayne's World later brought it back. Not sure where it charted either time in the US.

Roger Taylor is an enigma. Incredible, incredible heights in vocal ability. Incredible, unreal. Yet he has that rough chest voice thing going as well. Tenement Funster was a personal favorite as a frustrated youth full of angst.
 
Actually I had all their albums on vinyl. The originals and sold them with lots of others about 2 years ago maybe 3.

Queen was Freddy and other 3. Not what they are now the Brian and Roger ego band. Besides which since Brian has his new job of lecturing us all on how to live our lives, it has turned me right off. His guitar playing hasn't changed since 1975 which I find boring now as well. I was once their biggest fan.

Sorry, I missed this post.

C'mon, man, don't go there. Sure Freddie Mercury was a unique force to be reckoned with, but a band like Queen is a sum of its parts. Replace any number of other very successful bands with Freddie as the lead singer, to include song writing contributions, and neither Freddie nor that band may have ever experienced any success. Queen succeeded because they were Queen, the band.

I do think it is/was a mistake to continue after Freddie was gone. I think Paul Rodgers is an excellent soulful vocalist who i've heard many a famous singer praise as a standard by which other singers could be measured. But it's not the same...although it shouldn't be, otherwise it might as well be an imitation cover band. If May and/or Taylor can take over vocal duties, fine. I don't know, it's above my pay grade. I'm not familiar with May's lectures, luckily.
 
Unless you're in The Beach Boys, the law requires black t-shirts and dark jeans for all rock bands.
lol

Hey, don't go messing with the Beach Boys. >:(

Yeah, black was good. The only down side, as a musician you spend a lot of time inside away from the sun, practicing. The resultant white on black gives the appearance that someone should perhaps check for a pulse. Later in the 80s button shirt and actually sometimes wore a tie on stage...mostly leather ties! Black jeans, black Levi corduroy pants, or leather britches. The jeans and corduroy got a wash now and then, the leather not so much.

As a kid I like most youths doing what youths do was of the mindset to not give a clue to the parental units. My older (middle) brother wore t-shirts with marijuana leaves, cartoon characters smoking joints, etc. He picked them out and mom actually paid for them. A character, but not in a fuckup way. Fun loving, gregarious, but always driven and has led a successful life. Now has cancer, prostate. Carefully weighed surgery or radiation. Decided to go for the sure thing to be done with it, surgery. They didn't get it all. He's now going through radiation. It's changing him, anxious and seemingly angry. Sad to see, but I can understand that. I hope he makes it. Apologies for the thread drift.
 
I watched a Lynyrd Skynyrd bio on the Circle channel yesterday. BlackBlackBlackBlackBlackBlackBlack.. and Black :D

I'm sorry about your brother, man. I get tested for that twice a year - so far, so good. My prayers are with him.
 
Thank you. Yeah, he got tested, before the pandemic. PSA test. There was what should have been a possible red flag, a bit elevated. Doctor never mentioned it. Delay in the schedule on account of the pandemic....next test wasn't good with an elevated PSA. It can run in the family. I was already procrastinating on my yearly checkup when the pandemic hit. So i'm way overdue.

Yeah them Skynyrd boys, especially Van Zant, they definitely had that white boy in a black t-shirt look. On the bright side, it can work pretty cool with the light show. :-)
 
There’s an uncanny Freddie Mercury sound alike. I think his name is Marc Martel. It’s scary how close to him he sounds. Has all the nuances and everything. Only thing missing is a bit of growl.

 
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Sorry, I missed this post.

C'mon, man, don't go there. Sure Freddie Mercury was a unique force to be reckoned with, but a band like Queen is a sum of its parts. Replace any number of other very successful bands with Freddie as the lead singer, to include song writing contributions, and neither Freddie nor that band may have ever experienced any success. Queen succeeded because they were Queen, the band.

I do think it is/was a mistake to continue after Freddie was gone. I think Paul Rodgers is an excellent soulful vocalist who i've heard many a famous singer praise as a standard by which other singers could be measured. But it's not the same...although it shouldn't be, otherwise it might as well be an imitation cover band. If May and/or Taylor can take over vocal duties, fine. I don't know, it's above my pay grade. I'm not familiar with May's lectures, luckily.
They all did their own stuff except John the bass player really. Freddies was a success. Brian and Rogers stuff was mediocre. Take away their fame their solo stuff would have died.

The Queen wagon keeps them going and the repeated recognition of Freddy being there grew which is part of the Queen road wagon. I don't knock that because I agree with it. But 'Queen' was Freddy, John, Brian & Roger.

There are other groups who receive basically no recognition for what they did or how good they were. Queen were a step up from that. I followed them from early 74. I saw them change over the years. I loved the early stuff but they had their heads on their shoulders. They knew way back then that they had to be a commercial success to make it. Others groups didn't know this or couldn't hack it. So they fell by the wayside.

Queens commercial success has bridged several generations partly and mainly because of Freddies story and I do not mean the film which is purely entertainment.
 
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There’s an uncanny Freddie Mercury sound alike. I think his name is Marc Martel. It’s scary how close to him he sounds. Has all the nuances and everything. Only thing missing is a bit of growl.


Crows, Freddies voice changed over the years. It wasn't just his singing voice but his normal speech also changed from a London accent (not cockney) to a neutral accent.

Why this was we are never told. Did he have further voice training at one time? I suppose we will never know now.

Regards covers by people.........It's ok doing the odd song. You have to be able to do the full bag to really be compared. The only one who could have touched him for strength was George Michael who also had further training.
 
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I've just completed 76 Pantomimes with 'The Show Must Go On' - didn't get tied of it at all - unlike the other songs. The baddie sang it, with 8 dancers dressed as lions. Take too long to explain - but a cracking number.
 
The Game is one of my favorite Queen albums. There are songs that I skip, and Dust is one.

Play the Game
Need Your Loving Tonight
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Rock It
Sail Away Sweet Sister
Coming Soon
Save Me

Great songs. The discoey songs, I don't really like.

If I'm not mistaken, and I think a lot of fans were shocked. This was the first Queen album with synths. They used to brag they didn't use synths on their albums. Either Opera or Night has it in the liner notes (I think).

My ex was a FANATIC. I mean she'd have been a groupie fanatic. It broke her heart when Freddie died. She stopped listening to them. The proper final album INNUENDO is magnificent. She's never heard it.
 
I think the discoey tracks were lying around half finished and somebody made a decision to put them in an album and release it. By this time it was way too late and as we now know a failure.

The synth's thing was because back then in the early-mid 70's, it was frowned on that somebody could just hold a key down and get a variety of notes or sounds from it. It was in the early days not considered being able to play your own music. But they started to creep into most peoples tracks and then you had groups like Yes who started to make them mainstream. Before Queen used them, most of the 'extra' sounds need were made by Brian rubbing things on his guitar.
 
It seems to me at some point it became more and more about cult of personality so to speak than Queen as a group/band. I don't really mean that as derogatory, just an observation. Freddie Mercury, and band. Heck, Freddie and his sexuality it would seem became to personify Queen. Did their output suffer as a result? Possibly. Maybe a necessity to evolve with the times and not repeat themselves had less of an appeal to me. As I said, something about Jazz, which some of it I actually really like, signaled a coming change of direction. Actually the personally disappointing News of the World and its anthemy stuff was possibly the first indication of a shift, backtracking a bit with Jazz, then whatever came after that. At that point the direction of quite a few bands was taking place, with disappointing results. Another One Bites the Dust indeed. Musically and perhaps even socially the 60s arguably segued fairly smoothly into the 70s. 70s to 80s maybe not so much. To be honest, and realistic, I don't reckon moving into the 80s Queen needed to release another Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, so we got Another One Bites the Dust. :facepalm:

Thread seems to be petering out. I mentioned earlier Queen/Freddie isolated tracks. There's hope for us all in that even, even Freddie Mercury can get a wee bit pitchy at times. What an incredible talent....and i'm not particularly fond of that term because for most of us it wasn't a gift just handed to us, we've had to work for it. For some...

 
For those who are unfamiliar with Queen 2 and Fairy Feller's Masterstroke. It's a bit proggy I reckon, and I would guess not everyone's cup-o-tea. Queen 2 is a great album. Oh, hell, why not since it gets cut off at the end, let's also include the following track, Nevermore.



 
Well we all knew he was gay back in the 70's. We are told by the snowflakes who know it all today that .........'he had to hide it', 'he wasn't accepted', 'it would have done this or that if it was known'. Totally crap!

We knew he was with blokes same as the others like Elton who relished the fact that 50,000 football fans sang 'Elton John's a homosexual' and 'Don't bend down in front of Elton'.

So being gay or homosexual affected nobodies output because simply nobody cared. It was a good track or bad. A good band or not. That's all there was to it by people who were there and not what some millennial read on the interweb.

Faerie fellas masterstoke has nothing to do with being gay. Its about the goings on in a painting by a bit of a fruit case called Richard Dadd which is hanging in a famous gallery somewhere.
 
lol @ fruit case

Fruitcake or nutcase?...make up your mind Orson. All the same in the end, half a dozen of one, six of the other. Fairy Feller's is similar to Lennon's Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, which was taken from a promotional poster with a fair portion of the lyircs printed there on.

It didn't take a rocket surgeon to know Mercury was the gay back in the 70s, or Elton for that matter. And you're right, nobody really gave a damn. It was those who were shall we say a bit more ambiguous who caught more grief. Some nasty rumors about Rod Stewart concerning a stomach pump comes to mind. Maybe that was more on this side of the pond.
 
There’s an uncanny Freddie Mercury sound alike. I think his name is Marc Martel. It’s scary how close to him he sounds. Has all the nuances and everything. Only thing missing is a bit of growl.


Yep.... no reverb .......he really hits some nuances perfectly damn close cloner there.... and yep the growl is moderatly missing...piano is close on most parts overall. A class cover especially without all those wild harmonies helping carry it... (y)
 
That guy provided some of the vocals for the Boh Rhap movie. Maybe all. I think he's contractually/legally bound not to say. Maybe he did do it all, maybe some of it actually is Freddie. A mixture, maybe. Maybe they kept the growl, and cleaned up the pitchy parts? :D

Kidding, I was just kidding!
 
That guy provided some of the vocals for the Boh Rhap movie. Maybe all. I think he's contractually/legally bound not to say. Maybe he did do it all, maybe some of it actually is Freddie. A mixture, maybe. Maybe they kept the growl, and cleaned up the pitchy parts? :D

Kidding, I was just kidding!
Yep, a mixture of him, the actor (who’s also a decent Freddie sound alike but not as good as Martel), and Freddie himself.
 
On another note<---see what I did there?....I find it a bit curious and somewhat disappointing in viewing Queen live performances Freddie rarely attempted replication of studio recordings with the falsetto. To be fair many vocalists altered melodies to facilitate live performance, avoiding the risky high passages. Hey, you could have just stayed home and put on the record if strict adherence was your expectation, eh? Still, it was a signature aspect of their sound.

Maybe that guy resolved that issue for the film?
 
I've watched some videos of that guy in the past, it's actually not a put-on. No matter what he sings that's the way he sounds. Kind of odd he naturally sounds so much like Freddie. Then again I guess the world is in the perfect place for that sort of thing to happen, sometimes i'm a dead ringer for Captain Beefheart.

*rimshot*

These are the jokes, people. Try the veal.
 
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