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

Have been waiting with bated breath for this poll.

So damn hard to narrow their barmy eclecticism down to 20 tracks! But I'm having fun trying.

I'm guessing 'Bo Rhap' will win the day, but 'Under Pressure' might come close? (And yes, I'll be voting for both of these tracks.) I'm open to being pleasantly surprised, though.

glad you're having fun working through the tracks, Wordy.

in my mind i always associated A Day At The Races as a fairly immediate companion piece to A Night At The Opera. it was quite a surprise to discover that it was not only stylistically different to its predecessor, but also of significantly lesser quality. there are still some excellent tracks, all things considered.

Father to Son is great. loose & adventurous with a really hazy mythical undercurrent, just how i like my early Queen.

Father to Son is crazy -- it starts off like the coda to some other, even grander prog tune. And the out-of-tune multitracked lead vocals are great.

I'm guessing 'Bo Rhap' will win the day...

I once heard MTV's Mark Goodman come out of a set by saying, "And that was Queen with what I call 'The Bo-Ho Rap,'" and I still haven't recovered to this day.

'Procession' to 'Father To Son' is a great intro to the album, although I'm still in two minds as to whether to vote for 'Father To Son' or not... 'Son & Daughter' on the other hand...

some genius/nutcase Queen fan has put the HD Live Aid footage to the original BBC-broadcast Stereo version of the audio and hoo boy is it amazing. much rawer than the polished version on the DVD/Blu Ray; full of feedback and crowd noise and squeaks and crunches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A22oy8dFjqc

does anyone here love "Who needs you," as I do? My fave Deac-y tune.

ahh the hell with it! I don't fuck with these polls you guys get so torqued up about but these are my fave deep kuts…

"machines,"
"Some day Some Way"
"The prophet's Song"
"it's late"
"made in heaven" (not a deep cut, but Brian's one line at a time harmony stacking starting at 1:19 is DEVASTATING);
"princes of the Universe" (also not a deep cut but BERSERK), "Dancer,"
"Battle theme" and "hero" from Flash (FUCK YEAH rendered in song 20 years before Andrew WK)
"Long away"

Yeah, there's some great selections there, one or two which may make it onto my ballot :D

Prophet's Song has one of the best pre-choruses of all time

i almost voted for It's Late. plenty of great work from May there. it just drags on a little, that's all.

Any "39" fans?

I'm guessing 'Bo Rhap' will win the day...

on ILM? i guess it'll slide into the top 5 but i can think of at least 2 or 3 songs that seem like far more likely poll winners around here.

Gonna spend some time revisiting the catalog before working on a ballot, but I have to put in a good word for "Drowse", which is the one Roger song I swear no one ever talks about.

nice slide guitar on Drowse! great vocal melody too. i'm of the opinion that Roger generally has a pretty good strike rate as far as the quality of his songs goes.

hopefully y'all are using your weekends to get a whole lot of listening in!

surely Drowse is about as close to psych as the band got.

listening to Teo Torriatte. kinda reminds me uncomfortably of The Living Years, what with the vainglorious choir and all.

"Drowse" is an inferior, nothing-at-stake version of the Who's "Cut My Hair".

i think it's quietly interesting and definitely a departure from their normal sound. small stakes, yes i'll agree with that.

My favourite version of 'We Will Rock You' (the 'slow/fast version' from the 1977 BBC session):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Eknl6ER6I

Although ... maybe patching the original together with the segue and fast part of this would make for the ultimate?

^^ that does rock pretty hard.

on the topic of '39, yeah i really like it. it does become a bit earnest and Bill Joel-like once the vocals begin, however.

my favourite May-sung Queen song is probably Sail Away Sweet Sister.

heard this Axl tribute of sorts a long time before I knew it was a Queen song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntrZa3n0L_0

I don't 'mind 'Drowse', especially the change into the 'Out here on the street' section (I was going to call it a middle eight, but not sure whether it technically is?)

Never particularly been a fan of 'Teo Torriate'. It's grown on me a little over the years, but I still think it's a bit of a half-baked sing-song finale.

Not really a huge fan of '39' or 'Spread Your Wings' either. Both so-so in my book.

'Father to Son' though--now we're talking! Will definitely figure in my votes.

Am also trying to find a spot for 'Backchat', 'Keep Yourself Alive', 'Jesus', and 'Great King Rat', but as I said upthread, this top 20 thing is a tough undertaking! One thing that's surprised me a bit is how many tracks from the debut I'm considering voting for. Sure, the songs don't quite have the production values of later work, but they're generally packed with ideas, and still retain some magic after decades of listening.

And finally, a track that I don't think anyone's mentioned, which will definitely be right up there in my ballot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e4Odk-v3oU

I voted for the Seven Seas from Queen II, actually!

hell yeah, Great King Rat. could have easily voted for that one, but my appreciation & fondness for it is a little too recently cultivated and therefore susceptible to possible flux. agree that Queen I is killer.

Rhye is a stone cold classic. wonder whether I should make some kind of concession in the vote tabulation for the two different versions, or is it reasonable to assume most people are opting for the version on II?

lol I made sure to specify in mine for that reason.

I figure more people would vote for the one from II than I but dunno that one should assume that when tabulating!

I'm all about some Ogre Battle too....

Just to clarify, the video I linked to above is 'Seven Seas of Rhye' from Queen II. But I had been discussing the debut immediately before I linked to the video, so that was kinda confusing now that I think about it!

But yeah, I think it's probably safe to assume people would be voting for the Queen II version? I do love how the version on the debut rounds things off after 'Jesus' though--a nice bit of sequencing.

I have to confess that I dream of the alternate reality where Roger Taylor took the Genesis gig offer, Phil Collins joined queen as the singing drummer, and Genesis became the Prog band that couldn't play and Queen would have gone supernova.

wow that's an interesting idea

man Sheer Heart Attack is such a strange-sounding song. so muffled and strangled sounding in a way that must have been deliberate. the similarities between this song and Sister by Prince have been well documented, right?

All Dead, All Dead, is about May's cat he got as a young teenager, which I just learned and find heartbreaking.

Lobbying for this May tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5xBeuB01jc

Anybody like "In the Lap of the Gods"?

I loved the arena reprise too

Any "39" fans?

The world needs more skiffle songs with lyrics about time dilation.

Anyone like their novelty pastiche numbers? Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Seaside Rendezvous etc. Did they pretty much drop them after A Day At The Races (Crazy Little Thing Called Love excepted I guess)?

I looove Seaside and Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

yeah 39 is great. May has a wee moan that it wasn't a single in the Classic Albums show about A Night At The Opera

and THIS was surely a big surprise at the Freddie tribute show. he clearly loved it and the audience reaction when it starts up is killer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvpZuFX681o

I love 'Sail Away Sweet Sister', definitely one of my highlights of The Game, that.

Anyone like their novelty pastiche numbers? Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Seaside Rendezvous etc. Did they pretty much drop them after A Day At The Races (Crazy Little Thing Called Love excepted I guess)?

― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Sunday, September 13, 2015 7:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, they carried on doing them for a while after. 'Sleeping On The Sidewalk', 'Dreamer's Ball', 'Man On The Prowl' etc.

One of my favourite Innuendo deep cuts...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7kUc5RcMqc

Innuendo really is a huge step up after The Miracle, which i don't dislike but find very uneven.

Innuendo has a far more "serious" mood to it than The Miracle, and the band hadn't released an album with that kind of mood for quite some time, which I think is one of the reasons why fans rate it so highly. It's not without its flaws though: 'Delilah', the programmed drums on 'I Can't Live With You'. I think both Innuendo and The Miracle have their highlights, but The Works is the most "complete" late-period Queen album for me. A Kind Of Magic for me is one of their lesser albums.

I saw footage recently where Brian May mentioned that The Miracle is one of his favourite Queen songs. interesting choice as I find it to be a bit treacly, despite appreciating the sentiment/ celebration of life informing it.

Yeah, 'treacly' sums up 'The Miracle' (i.e. the song), I reckon. I was surprised when Brian said it was one of his favourites.

The programmed drums on 'I Can't Live With You' were replaced by Roger's drum track in the 'retake' released on Queen Rocks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgrrICRcQyY

(X-post)

i feel like a lot of musicians rate their more sentimental work more highly than others do. it makes sense, really, they probably wouldn't take a turn for the sappy in the first place if they didn't believe in it.

Anyone like their novelty pastiche numbers? Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Seaside Rendezvous etc. Did they pretty much drop them after A Day At The Races (Crazy Little Thing Called Love excepted I guess)?

― めんどくさかった (Matt #2), Monday, September 14, 2015 5:36 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Detractors might say that every Queen track qualifies as a novelty pastiche number! And in fact I'd say that a fair chunk of their catalogue can be appreciated in that vein; there's usually at least an element of tongue-in-cheek involved. But on the other hand, I agree with Turrican's point about the more 'serious' mood that pervades Innuendo ... or at least parts of the album (e.g. the title track, 'Don't Try So Hard' 'All God's People', 'Bijou', 'The Show Must Go On', etc.)

One of the things I've always loved about Queen is their ability to constantly shift moods across an album, or indeed within the space of a track. I can think of a lot of acts who can do 'bipolar' shifts from soft to loud, sad to joyful, or what have you, but not many acts can jump around within a palette of moods like Queen can. Critics and fans will often point to the band's willingness to dabble in many styles and make them their own, and the fact they had four talented songwriters. No doubt these factors overlap with and contribute to the multiplicity of moods in their work. But it's one thing to 'capture' a mood; it's something else to dance across and between moods, and to make this seem effortless--and for me this is what Queen can do when they're on song.

listening back to the albums now - "Jealousy" is such a nice little number

yes, all of that is very true, Wordy. at the same time, i can't help but think that Queen's final albums are characterised by a newfound investment in expressing the gravid authenticity of particular moods rather than the invention of mood for the sake of artistic leverage. this change, conscious or otherwise, lends some of the later stuff a kind of earnestness that i am still a little bit ambivalent about. i mean, a song like Bohemian Rhapsody has undeniably sad moments, but it's a cabaret-style sadness that is patently light-hearted at its core, therefore enabling the flippant and frequent shift of moods that is so emblematic of Queen at their most inspired. a song like The Miracle seems to be contained by its own moralism, not that i think the band weren't entitled to sing about moral issues, or that these themes weren't relevant to Freddie's plight in his last years.