May 2010 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Q is for Queen

When I first heard the songs of the rock group Queen in the mid-1970s, I thought it was a very good group with songs such as:
*Killer Queen (#12 on the Billboard charts in the United States in 1975)
*You’re My Best Friend (#9 in 1976)
*Bicycle Race (#24 in 1978) – hey, I ride sometimes
*the rockabilly sensibilities of Crazy Little Thing Called Love (the group’s first #1, in 1980)
*Play The Game (#42 in 1980)
*the bass line-insistent Another One Bites The Dust (another #1, in 1980)
*the goofy fun of Flash (as in Gordon) (#42 in 1981)

Then Freddie Mercury died of AIDS in 1991, coincidentally the same year my friend Vito died of the same disease, and I thought the legacy of the band was over. Well, except for that annoying Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby in 1990 (#1), which swiped the instrumentation and the tune of the 1981 Queen/David Bowie performance Under Pressure (#29).

But not only did the band continue to play with other vocalists, but many of their original songs lived on.

We Are The Champions has inspired re-releases (1991 Gulf War, 1994 & 1998 World Cup, e.g.) and cover versions by various winning teams in sports around the world, usually performed very badly. The other side of that 1977 #4 single, We Will Rock You has become one of those songs that get played a great deal at US sporting events. The songs were re-released in 1992 and went to #52.

The performance of Somebody to Love on the soundtrack to the new US TV show Glee has created interest in the original (#13 in 1977) and the George Michael and Queen version (#30 in 1993), recorded for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert.

The title of Radio Ga Ga (#16 in 1984) was the inspiration for the name of the currently popular phenomenon known as Lady Gaga.

Is this…

But almost certainly, the most significant song in Queen’s oeuvre is the tiny rock opera Bohemian Rhapsody. Charting in the US in early 1976 (#9), it gained new life when it appeared in the 1992 movie Wayne’s World, when it got all the way to #2. Arguably, the best cover version is by the Muppets. (alternate location).

This is Calvin’s Canadian Cave of Cool’s favorite band, and after re-examining their music, I can better appreciate why.

So what are the rest of the members of Queen doing now?

Bassist John Deacon is retired from the music business. Drummer Roger Taylor is touring with vocalist Paul Rodgers.

The brilliant Brian May is also touring with Rodgers and Taylor. When I say brilliant, I don’t just mean his extraordinary guitar licks. In 2008, he completed “his Doctoral Thesis in Astrophysics…successfully submitted the new version of his thesis on Interplanetary Dust.” A story about him recently appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal: Queen Guitarist Brian May Digs Badgers Even If the Farmers Loathe Them.

Of course, the story of Freddie Mercury is told. I did enjoy reading a comic book trade story from the past couple of years called Freddie & Me, which I discussed briefly. Unfortunately, the direct link to Coverville #496, which features the rare Michael Jackson/Freddie Mercury demo to the Jacksons’ hit “State of Shock” doesn’t work; look for it on iTunes.

QUEEN lives on through its music.

ABC Wednesday

Hey, enter my giveaway contest; details on the sidebar.

Island Album

Writing about U2, writers from Kill Your Idols noted that “…those tuning in to the globally broadcast Live Aid concert on July 13, 1985, could be forgiven for thinking Christ had suddenly return in the form of a po’-faced Irish rocker.”

The fact that it’s Bono’s 50th birthday today reminded me of a conversation I had in 1988 with a friend of mine, who, as it turns out, I saw last month for the first time in months. I was making my list of maybe 20 island albums, and I placed on the roster on the list Joshua Tree by U2. My friend was practically incensed. “You can’t put that album on! It’s only a year old!”

OK, fair enough. It’s 2010. It’s still on the list.

In the past week or so, I’ve listened to all the U2 CDs I have on CD, only about nine of them, and it continues to be the one that is solid throughout.

As the Wikipedia article notes, this is both one of the best-selling and best-reviewed albums in recorded music history. Released on March 9, 1987, it was also “the first new release to be made immediately available on the compact disc, vinyl record, and cassette tape formats on the same date.”

Opposing view

So naturally, I pulled out Kill Your Idols this weekend. It’s a book, edited by Jim DeRogatis and Carmel Carrillo that trashes albums generally considered to be classics. from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run AND Born in the U.S.A. Naturally, Joshua Tree is here too, In the essay by Eric Waggoner and Bob Mehr, the writers complain as much about the band, and especially its lead singer, as about the album itself:

“…those tuning in to the globally broadcast Live Aid concert on July 13, 1985, could be forgiven for thinking Christ had suddenly return in the form of a po’-faced Irish rocker.” Noting the way he worked the crowd, they accuse him of “acting out what appeared to be a twisted messianic fantasy…”

As for the album itself: “a wonky, ill-fitting marriage of high-minded piety and humorless determination…[it] takes no risks, rolls no dice and couches every one of its supposedly deep insights in the broadest, most hackneyed terms possible.”

All of that notwithstanding, the album immediately spoke to me on a visceral level. I didn’t dissect it, as I did with Beatles albums 20 years earlier. I just let myself feel the experience. Prone as I am to overthinking, that is not the level at which I enjoyed this particular album.

LINKS to each song:
Where the Streets Have No Name
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
With or Without You
Bullet the Blue Sky
Running to Stand Still
Red Hill Mining Town
In God’s Country
Trip Through Your Wires
One Tree Hill
Exit
Mothers of the Disappeared

Though I suppose the Two Americas theme resonated at some level, the country it is and the one it strives to be.
Whatever the reason, Joshua Tree is one of my 25 island records. Which is appropriate since it appears on Island Records.

Mother’s Day 2010

I saw, with my wife and daughter, my mother last month. This is a good thing; she lives in North Carolina, so it is a sometimes thing. The previous time was June 2009, with the Daughter, not my favorite visit, let’s say.

She is doing reasonably well. All her vital signs are good. Her cholesterol is in a good range, and we wonder if she still needs her medications.

She’s losing weight, about 9 or 10 pounds, and she can afford to do so, per the Body Weight Index, but it makes her look a little gaunt to me. She’s a little dehydrated, common among people of her vintage. She was 5’7″ when I was growing up, but she looks about 5’5″ now. It’s strange.

I must say that Carol is a very good mother to Lydia. These are pictures I took on the first day of school back in September. As I probably mentioned, Lydia felt ill-prepared for kindergarten, even after having been in daycare for three years. This was a self-imposed pressure, and Carol handled the situation well.

I hear some children try to pit one parent against another, and perhaps Lydia tried that when she was about four. but we’re old/WISE enough to present a united front on most issues.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Lydia’s mom, Carol’s mom, Rebecca’s mom, Alex’s mom (the latter two would be my sisters) and all the moms out there.

The Lawn Mower QUESTION

I returned the lawn mower. You have no idea how rare that is for me to return items to a store.

I received a postcard recently telling me that I may be entitled to a $35 rebate if:
1. You purchased a lawn mower, for your own use, containing an engine with up to 30 horsepower in the United States or Puerto Rico and between January 1, 1994 and April 12, 2010.
2. Either the lawn mower or the engine of the lawn mower was manufactured or sold by a Company listed below.
3. You submit a claim.

It’s some class action lawsuit that “does not concern the safety of these lawn mowers.”

I did, in fact, purchase a lawn mower. It was 2002, give or take a year, after we moved here in 2000 and before the daughter was born in 2004. Not only did I have to mow our lawn, but the lawn of the rental property six blocks away. It was difficult to keep up with both lawns with a reel mower, which is what you call those old-fashioned machines that require only human power, not gasoline or electricity. The new machine was purchased from one of the companies listed on the website. To have a good start, you could just leave the job to the experts at King Green to take care of your lawn.

It was gas-powered, which troubled me from an environment POV, but the grass was getting long at the rental property. After mowing our lawn, which went reasonably well, I took it to the rental property, where it quickly became jammed. I unjammed it, and used it again when the grass was shorter, but I had the same problem.

So I returned it. You have no idea how rare that is. I HATE returning stuff; it’s just a hassle. But this was also a couple hundred bucks. The salesman did those things that were supposed to make me feel like scum – more attitude than actual words – but I was not to be talked out of it.

When the postcard came in the mail, the Wife said, “Should I just toss it?” After all, I had the machine for less than two weeks. I think not; let me mull it over. Am I even eligible? It requires having the serial number of the machine, which suggests current ownership. I am pretty sure that we probably DO have the serial number somewhere.

Now I’m not going to file; it seems unethical. But it was VERY tempting.

The QUESTION: Do you ever have such ethical dilemmas? Are they worse when they involve impersonal entities? Bad service?
***

Get a free sticker, or buy a few.

I Admit I Like Billy Joel

Billy Joel tells the story about when the instrumentation all drops out, it was an accident, when he was playing with the knobs and feared he’d ruined the recording.

One of my colleagues, knowing my affection for music, was telling me about a Billy Joel song called We Didn’t Start the Fire, which you can hear here, after a short ad. I was never a huge fan of the song. But she explained to me that the historical references in the piece made her want to look up the background behind those events. So, I have rethought the song and deem it OK, especially after I came across this teacher’s guide to it.

Actually, I rather like Billy Joel, even though it was never really cool to like Billy Joel. The only time I saw him live in New Paltz in 1974 (I think). Buzzy Linhart opened for him. Joel and the entourage got lost getting to New Paltz and were over two hours late. Billy was practically glued to his piano bench. The song I love most from that period was Captain Jack.

Compact disc

Subsequently, I bought several BJ albums. In fact, when I FINALLY bought a CD player, I bought a half dozen CDs to play on it, one of which was this album:

I got rather fond of much of his music, which seemed to dominate MTV in the early years.
Some favorites:
Big Shot, which I always thought was self-referential
Allentown, with the industrial sounds
Pressure, with the specific reference to Channel 13, the PBS station in NYC. He tells the story about when the instrumentation all drops out, it was an accident, when he was playing with the knobs and feared he’d ruined the recording.
But probably my second favorite song, after Lullaby, is Big Man on Mulberry Street, probably because of that fantasy piece on the TV show Moonlighting, a program I loved early on *(and then not so much…)

There was a recent piece in Salon that called Billy Joel a Misunderstood American Master, and I think he is right.

I’ll end this with BJ’s rendition of New York State of Mind, a great version from right after 9/11/2001.

BJ turns 61 on Sunday.