Stone POLLd Crazy: The ILM Queen Poll Voting Thread (#68? in a series)

i do actually also find The Works to be a bit calculated, mainly due to some especially flashy playing from May that tends to shape a lot of the songs before you're able to properly sink your teeth into them.

i've been playing Hot Space quite a lot recently, though admittedly strictly with this Poll in mind. it has revealed itself to be an enjoyably unique experiment, the anomalies of which are flattered by perspective, which enables us to situate the album as an interesting deviation in the band's diverse overall picture. i can see why it might have been considered a disappointment at the time.

the results are starting to take interesting shape. i'm having a lot of fun with this - please keep your ballots coming!

I almost don't want to send one! I'd feel like the guy who goes into mock drafts and takes Tim Tebow* in the first round.

_________

* A much ballyhooed American football player who's handsome and Christian and has 10 million fans, but can't throw a ball to a receiver to save his life.

haha well you could submit a Queen ballot that's wall-to-wall radio staples and it would still be inspired, such is the unconventional nature of so many of their best-known tracks (the appeal lay so often in the sophistication of arrangement and performance rather than a strict adherence to anything overly formulaic), and the diversity in compositional outlook supplied by the input of four distinct songwriters.

kinda wishing i voted for Sheer Heart Attack (the song), because it's growing on me to the point that i can't stop playing it.

Does anyone have suggestions for tracks they rate from the solo records? I have this suspicion I'll be wasting my time on investigating Roger's albums in-depth...

Fun in Space is probably your best bet as far as Roger's albums go. Future Management is one of the highlights there.

favourite Freddie track is probably There Must Be More to Life than This.

never made it very far with Brian's solo records.

I've just drawn up my first draft of my ballot and now down to the difficult pruning/ranking stage, it's so difficult to put a list together of 20 tracks for a band that have 14 studio albums! I'm increasingly thinking that the "deep cuts" only route is the way to go...

Er, 15 studio albums, rather. I'll be very surprised if many of the songs on my ballot place.

agree that it was pretty daunting. i kind of had to bite the bullet at the expense of a lot of great songs.

these guys really had a huge volume of great songs.

without giving anything away, 1st place is a very close race at this early stage with no less than 4 songs vying for the top spot.

well, that's some great motivation to get my ballot done!

i would hope so! but at the same time, totally unnerstan' these things being last minute based on my experience running a previous poll, but also more tellingly voting in them (i don't think i've ever jumped in well ahead of the deadline).

you have the weekend and a bit to finalise your ballots and get them along ! remember: your votes have a good chance of shaking things up.

how many ballots in so far?

not so many just yet... about 16 or 17? probably not many for a band that everyone knows the songs by.

in other words: make sure you get a ballot in, everyone! :)

You Take My Breath Away is really kinda wonderful when you listen to it in the right mood.

love how the guitar line creeps in to sit on top of the piano melody towards the end of the song.

I remember in high school, wanting to sing that song as my Senior solo for our final choir concert. I played it for my dad and he was like -- "this? ain't nobody gonna know this song", so I went with Elton John's "Your Song".

I just love the haunting piano line.

I should have mine in within the next few hours or so :)

As long as we're talking about over-the-top Mercury ballads on Day at the Races, dig the "where the hell did that come from?" insane bass playing on Millionaire Waltz, which given the mix and Deacon's unexciting tone back then I had never noticed before.

Ballot sent!

I must have re-done that several times over and I'm still not quite satisfied with it, but it'll have to do - if it had been 30 songs instead of 20 it would have been so much easier!

Yeah, the bass playing on 'The Millionaire Waltz' is great... it's strange, but I often find Deacon gets overlooked as a bass player sometimes - there's some great playing throughout the Queen catalogue. Usually, when Deacon is discussed it's usually for his songwriting.

Having made my anti-Taylor position clear, I think a lot of the problem is that they were a terribly mismatched rhythm section -- and I suspect that Deacon spent a lot of time trying to keep out of Roger's way and keep things moving.

Deacon's approach varied from song to song, really... if it was a Freddie-composed piano song, more often than not he was trying to lock in with what Freddie was doing with his left hand on the low end of the piano, on the more riff-based songs like 'Ogre Battle' and 'Dragon Attack', of course he was doubling up with the riff, on his own material written in the funk style like 'Back Chat' and 'Another One Bites The Dust', the bass tended to be the lead instrument etc.

Although, on 'Liar', he does kinda get a bass solo!

Millionaire Waltz really does do some interesting things musically. really warming to a lot of Day At The Races, actually. it's not necessarily a very immediate album - it helps to spend a little time with it.

okay, so we're getting to crunch time in the voting! make sure you keep them coming in. i guess there's only around a day of voting left?

what time zone are you in, Charlie?

ballot sent!

thanks balls!

i live in Sydney, Australia, but am very flexible with the deadline/ other time zones etc.

by my lazy calculations, those in the States are probably settled in at work now, and those in the UK about to finish up for the day. perfect timing for all parties to throw together that last minute ballot!

I'm pretty excited about the forthcoming roll-out, actually... even if hardly any of my tracks place, I suspect I'll still be more than happy with what does, particularly if there's a few surprises there. It's also going to be interesting to compare people's ballots, as I'm sure that different locations are going to have different preferred Queen eras, and it's also going to be interesting to see how different Queen eras fare in the final results.

the spread of appreciation across different Queen eras is something i've really enjoyed noticing as the ballots have trickled in.

for those yet to vote: even at this late stage, it is within your power to influence the order of the highest-ranking songs through what you choose to include, but also what you don't choose to include.

Stand by for one more.

Any other Americans can agree or disagree, but our relationship with this band is so weird. One of the biggest artists of the classic rock era, and yet, so many of their biggest "hits" were nothing in this country.

Here's a tweet I made last year when I was in Sydney:

http://i.imgur.com/tVo8mAk.png

I think I was talking about "The Show Must Go On" or something.

Yeah, I kinda expect US ballots to be quite The Game/Hot Space-heavy for some reason. It's strange, because here in the UK, I feel very safe in saying that if you asked various random people to name several Queen songs off the top of their head, they really wouldn't have much trouble doing so or have to think too hard about it.

Yeah, Queen in America was basically over after The Game. Even "Under Pressure" wasn't huge here (wiki says #29) -- I know that growing up, there was ZERO Queen played on classic rock radio after "Another One Bites the Dust", and even that was rare compared to pretty much any of their hits from the 70s. I think US fans didn't take to the band leaving behind their bombastic rock roots for pop and dance stuff. Remember, this was the country where "disco sucks".

(fact is, the first time I'd ever heard of Under Pressure was in a Vanilla Ice song...)

First video of the MTV era was for "Under Pressure", which was just buildings falling down and stuff.

"Radio Gaga" was ok, but when they got dressed up in drag for "I Want to Break Free," I guess U.S. viewers said, ok that's enough.

Seriously, I probably saw the video for "Bohemian Rhapsody" on MTV more times than any of the 80s songs, and this was even before Wayne's World.

Album rock stations in Baltimore and DC definitely played Under Pressure when it was new.

wait when are ballots due? i thought it was like end-of-day Monday, but tell me how much time i have and i'll make sure i get mine in

well, it got to #29, so I'm sure someone was playing it. However, I was only 8 when it came out -- when I started listening to classic rock in the late 80s, they didn't play it at all (or any other Queen post 1980). It wasn't until Innuendo came out that it ever occurred to me what new Queen music might actually sound like, as the local classic rock radio stations were making a big point to say the band was returning to its roots.

in relation to Pleasant Plains' comment about hearing Queen in a Sydney Aldi store: yes, growing up in that same city - and i imagine it might have been the same across the UK - Queen were definitely one of those few bands that became a part of your everyday consciousness without you even realising it. this was due in large part to the sheer number of hits, all of which served the purpose of making the repetitions of your day - the long car trips, the excursions to the supermarket - a little bit larger than life.

heading to bed shortly & happy to keep accepting ballots till i wake up (i'm on holidays, so that'll be a nice leisurely hour) or till Monday officially ends your time. honestly, no rush. my priority is to get as many more in as possible.

I can understand US audiences being a bit confused by the 'I Want To Break Free' video - it was a bit of a pisstake of the long-running UK soap Coronation Street, which I wouldn't expect Americans to be familiar with.

i imagine it might have been the same across the UK - Queen were definitely one of those few bands that became a part of your everyday consciousness without you even realising it

Yup, this is definitely OTM.

did Wayne's World bring about a bit of a Queen revival in the States?

for that one song, at least. what year did the Greatest Hits albums come out? sadly that's what most of the US casual fans know them from (not that it's not a great collection, jsut there's so much more they're missing out on)

i guess the release of Wayne's World also coincided with Freddie's death, which would have made the renewed interest more poignant.

Greatest Hits I was released in the early 80s, but it did get a huge amount of exposure in the early 90s, possibly simply because it was bundled alongside Greatest Hits II.