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

one of my very earliest pop culture memories, very earliest memories period was being a very very young child and staring at the cover of news of the world. at the time it was positively terrifying and mystifying to me, i remember i'd stare at the cover of physical graffiti also but that was more like playing w/ a pop up book, news of the world was something different altogether. 'another one bites the dust' was one of the first pop hits i was obsessed w/, it's kind of silly macho aspect was easy for a young boy to grip on to and then 'another one rides the bus' came out and i loved that as well. 'flash's theme' i loved as well, for some reason my mother wouldn't let me watch the movie (i can only assume because it was a deserved flop, she let me watch the jerk and halloween so it wasn't shielding my eyes from whatever), so that was the proxy i got and it served its purpose, probably outdid it. and then queen effectively disappeared for me. what at the time felt like forever later but in retrospect was only five years later 'a kind of magic' was a minor hit but i latched onto it, like running into an old friend. at this point also the local top 40 station played a countdown of the british charts show at the end of sunday nights i'd listen to as i went to sleep so i knew that queen were massive in england (though not as massive at the time as pet shop boys). a few years after that 'i want it all' came out and again our local top 40 station played it quite alot, far more than its chart showing. i also had acquaintances that always listened to queen when they cruised around cuz they were highlander dorks. so right before the tribute concert and wayne's world reestablished their legend in the us they'd still managed to maintain some position on the periphery, they hadn't completely disappeared like molly hatchet or something. what's interesting to me is how well that tribute did in reestablishing their legend. i hear nearly as wide a variety of their hits on classic rock and oldies radio as i do for zeppelin or ac/dc and tracks like 'i want to break free' and 'radio ga ga' that really did nothing in the us the first time around have been made revisionist hits similar to what has happened w/ 'don't stop believing' in the uk though not to the same magnitude.

sent in my ballot! 10 Freddie songwriting credits, 8 Brian, 5 John, 2 Roger.

http://i.imgur.com/iYYPy56.png

i remember when I was younger my preference was the bombast, genre-tourist Queen, but the older me gravitates towards the Queen rockers now.

excited for this rollout.

they were such a great hard rock band. i don't necessarily think isolating the different strains of their catalog would do it more justice than reveling in the variety, but a playlist of their hardest rockers would definitely be a load of fun.

i knew they rocked harder when they started out but i didn't realize how much, i think i first became aware of it reading hetfield talking about elektra approaching metallica to cover queen for rubaiyat and them thinking 'queen???' and then listening to the early stuff and thinking 'holy shit'.

yeah a few notes into "Brighton Rock" and it's like ....damn!

I always loved that even when May was playing heavy riffs, his guitar playing always had a melodic sensibility. not talking about his leads so much, as those are obviously iconic, but even those hard rock riffs he played were just earwormy on their own.

haha big fan of that Hetfield story.

if anyone else wants to throw in a ballot right at the final hurdle, now's your chance. anyone else still putting one together? pisces, Alfred?

thread inspired me to put on Sheer Heart Attack right now - the remaster!

ahh man I forgot how good Tenement Funster was!

Christ I'm gonna have regrets about not including more songs from this album on my ballot, tho to be fair I did include two.

this remaster is really clear too...

Sheer Heart Attack rocks very hard indeed. it's also a whole lot of fun - Queen had this wonderful, unique thing of never taking themselves 100% seriously, so that the joy you can extract from the songs is almost uninhibited if you want it to be.

I still giggle whenever I hear that slide whistle on "Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke" from Queen II.

word.

this poll is going to be a Top 39 by the way (in tribute, of course, to the song of the same name).

they were such a great hard rock band. i don't necessarily think isolating the different strains of their catalog would do it more justice than reveling in the variety, but a playlist of their hardest rockers would definitely be a load of fun.

― some dude, Tuesday, September 22, 2015 2:06 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's already a compilation out there which leans towards their more hard rock tracks, the imaginatively-titled Queen Rocks!

Sheer Heart Attack is a brilliant album, IMO... A Night At The Opera is considered the "classic", but I personally would rank Sheer Heart Attack above it. In a way, I wish you could vote for 'Tenement Funster'/'Flick Of The Wrist'/'Lily Of The Valley' as one song, because on the album those three songs flow together a form a kind of suite, although if we were to go down that route, then it would make voting for parts of Queen II, particularly the second side, such a ballache.

I wanna talk more about this when the results thread comes up and I can point to specific examples, but for me so many of their best early rockers are let down by sloppy, probably unplanned tempo changes. There are a couple of songs where Roger just comes in at a completely different tempo than Brian and/or John, and it takes a couple of bars for everyone to follow in line behind Roger's new (slower and thumping) tempo. This isn't a problem in the piano-led songs, rocking or not. But I'll make my case as the songs come up, and it doesn't stop me from replaying the stuff in my head with all problems edited out and loving it.

Didn't vote but looking forward to the results rollout immensely.

It's worth noting that there are a few songs on Sheer Heart Attack that Queen initially worked on without Brian May, because he was in hospital - I'm not sure which songs, but I'm assuming that 'Misfire' was one of them.

I wonder if his own Dear Friends was one

should be able to get this thing underway in a few hours...

]I wonder if his own Dear Friends was one

― Dominique, Wednesday, September 23, 2015 12:20 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, Brian was definitely involved in the recording of that one from the beginning - he plays piano on it, and aside from the vocals there's very little else!

Let's defend Freddie against the movie's bullshit.

While I'm at it, let me destroy this crap.

I can't find fault with any of your Freddie picks, aside from that 'My Melancholy Blues' does very little for me. 'We Are the Champions' and 'We Will Rock You' are both fucking classic, though!