Queen in Edmonton

Our family recently returned from our annual pilgrimage to West Edmonton Mall and the TELUS World of Science up in Edmonton. On these trips, I hold out little hope of finding Queen-related items in Alberta’s capital city these days but was pleasantly surprised this past weekend when I came across four unexpected sightings.

My first find was totally serendipitous. The hotel we were staying at had a tiny games’ room that harboured a single upright arcade game and a table hockey game. (And judging by the uniforms of the miniature players, it was an Oilers-Bruins showdown.) For some reason, whoever used the game before my 11-year-old and I visited the room, had left before their time expired, so the sound effects were still being looped. There was the standard play-by-play commentary and the odd snippet of organ music you’d expect to hear at a real hockey game. Surprisingly, I kept hearing the familiar STOMP-STOMP-CLAP, STOMP-STOMP-CLAP as the sound effects kept looping. Okay, I think there’s my Queen fix for the day.

The next day we headed to Whyte Avenue, a trendy shopping area down the street from the University of Alberta. Our oldest kiddo is trans and wanted to check out a store called the Quiltbag, which focuses on 2SLGBTQI+ merchandise. In my experience, these niche stores usually have a curated book selection and this one was no different. A pink book cover stood out amongst the small collection: Queer Icons: From Gay to Z. Hey, I wonder if Freddie is in there. Sure enough, there he was. So I picked up this title to add to my Queen collection at home. Another Queen sighting I didn’t expect.

The following day, we paid a visit to TELUS World of Science. We have annual passes for the science centre here in Calgary and most science centres in North America have a reciprocal agreement where a membership at one grants them free admission to another, so admission was free. While we were wandering around in the NASA exhibit, my wife caught a sign promoting a Laser Queen event scheduled for the following night, so she suggested I take our youngest to the laser show. Okay, I’m not opposed to that.

For all the times we’ve been to this science centre, I don’t recall attending an event in their dome theatre, so I was eager to check out the venue as much as I was to see a Queen laser show. Upon entering the dome, the first thing I noticed were all of these full-length body pillows piled up on the floor in the centre of the viewing area. My 11-year-old ran to claim one but after lying down and looking up at the screen, he changed his mind and joined me in the front row instead.

I was curious to see what this laser show would look and sound like. I was struggling to imagine how exciting a bunch of random coloured laser beams was going to be, but I’m thinking that, at worst, I’ll get to hear some Queen tunes played really loud. The first song was WATC and sure enough, the corresponding laser show resembled a kinetic sine wave that simply followed the beat of the music. Because the lasers were set against a backdrop of a starry night, the light show at times felt like digital fireworks. 

As the song list moved from one to the other, the imagery generated by the lasers morphed into realistic objects. The Flash Gordon sequence gave us a spaceship and a variety of planetary line drawings. Now I was curious as to how the lasers were controlled and I started to respect the effort it probably took to incorporate realistic imagery into the arbitrary laser patterns usually associated with a laser show.

Fat Bottomed Girls took the animation to a whole new level, in my opinion. Whoever designed this show took a real tongue-in-cheek approach to visualizing the song. To my surprise, there weren’t any naked bike riders in this segment. (I wonder if Queen Productions needs to vet this type of event before it goes public?)

Overall, I really enjoyed the laser treatment of Queen’s music. As a designer myself, I was intrigued by the imagery and how it complemented the music. If I were to produce a Laser Queen show, I’d give serious thought to pitching a song selection that is more deep cuts than greatest hits. What would a Queen II laser show look like? What about The Prophet’s Song or She Makes Me? I get why the organizers went with the popular songs because they have to sell tickets, but I’m pretty sure there’s a market for the more robust Queen fan to enjoy obscure tunes that also have a story to tell.

Although I was still on a high from the laser show the night before, I was totally unprepared for seeing John Deacon on the morning news as he celebrated his 73rd birthday on our last morning in Edmonton. 

Four days in Edmonton. Four Queen sightings. Awesome.

The last time I had a Queen-centric moment in Edmonton was back in 1993 when I drove up to see The Brian May Band open for Guns N’ Roses at the Coliseum. That show was memorable for a couple of reasons: a) it was the first time I had seen any Queen member live, although I’d been a fan since 1975; and b) Brian said “fuck.” Hearing that surprised the hell out of me. I always thought he was pretty buttoned-up with his language. Perhaps he was preparing the crowd for Axl and crew?

Bohemian Rhapsody

Well, I caught Bohemian Rhapsody at the IMAX the other night and I must say that the best part, in my opinion, was the 20th Century Fox credit which occurs before the movie’s opening scene — to my delight, its famous orchestral theme got the Brian May wire choir treatment.

It was a Queen version of a classic piece of music we all recognize. Sadly, the movie that followed wasn’t able to sustain that level of excitement as the story unfolded.

By now, it’s obvious that the movie has its hardcore fans and its detractors. iMDB viewers are giving it very high ratings (8.4 at last count) but if you dare to read a random sampling of the external reviews, they’re pretty unanimous in panning it for being, well, not faithful to the band’s timeline or trying to shoehorn too many landmark moments into a 134-minute movie.

The scenes that stood out for me were:

• Freddie’s interactions with his family, which were both humorous and touching;
• Mike Myers playing the EMI executive who’s having trouble understanding the whole opera thing;
• The last 20 minutes where they re-enact their Live Aid performance 

In addition to Brian’s rendition of the 20th Century Fox theme, no one's commented on the Marlene Dietrich poster that Freddie walks by in one of the early scenes. I remember watching a Mick Rock documentary where he talks about his inspiration for the harsh lighting and iconic poses depicted on the Queen II cover photo...he more or less admitted that he borrowed the aesthetic from old Marlene Dietrich photos.

So while that small detail is probably lost on the casual movie-goer, my hat goes off to whoever decided to put that poster in the shot. Too bad the rest of the details in the movie didn’t have that same fundamental grounding in reality.

I’m disappointed in Brian and Roger for letting the script dismantle the integrity of the band’s history. By allowing blatant mistakes in their chronology, they are endorsing these fabrications. As stewards of their own legacy, they’ve taken extreme measures in the past to ensure quality and accuracy in everything Queen Productions has put out since Freddie’s death, so why would they rubber stamp a project with obvious errors even if it falls under creative license for a movie adaptation?

Beyond the liberties the script takes with the band’s history (i.e., Fat Bottomed Girls playing over a montage of their 1974 US tour, or Freddie learning he has AIDS in 1985), I would argue the portrayal of conflict is perhaps the film’s greatest weakness. I counted at least seven elements of conflict going on simultaneously:

• Freddie’s relationship with Mary and how it evolves (devolves?) over the years
• Freddie’s relationship with Paul Prenter
• Freddie’s relationship with Jim Hutton
• Freddie’s relationship with his Parsi family
• The band’s fighting with the record label to retain the vision for their music
• Freddie being confronted with a solo record deal which puts him at odds with the band
• Freddie learning he has HIV so time is now against him 

Did the film studio simply push to get it done, especially given the setbacks that Sasha Baron Cohen and Bryan Singer brought to the movie's development and production? In hindsight, the two-minute trailers for Bohemian Rhapsody were actually more effective at capturing the spirit and essence of Freddie and Queen than did the 134-minute film itself.

Did I like it at all? Sure. I’m over the moon whenever the band and Freddie make it into mainstream media and their achievements are recognized by the masses. But in my opinion it came off as sanitized and a bit cowardly. I have heard, however, that that was the stated intention of Brian and Roger from the beginning, which, of course, led to their falling out with Sasha Baron Cohen. Were they protecting Freddie’s parents’ honour? Did they simply want to avoid an “R” rating? Having Bryan Singer’s departure come at a time when he was called out during the #metoo movement certainly didn’t help.

Now I’m left wondering what a Sasha Baron Cohen interpretation would have looked like. There’s no question that Freddie did lots of drugs, chain-smoked, and could be as lewd as the next rock star. However, if Cohen managed to balance out Freddie’s debauchery with his fondness for Shakespeare, Liza Minnelli, Cecile B. DeMille, ballet, art history (Dadd, anyone?), and Jim Croce, then I think we’d be closer to understanding the man who was fearless in living life to the fullest.

#BohemianRhapsody 
#BohemianRhapsodyMovie 
#FreddieMercury
#queen

From Stone Town to Heavy Metal

When Another One Bites the Dust came up on our PVR’s episode list for The Amazing Race (S29:E4) from April 2017, I was very curious to see how Queen factored into this very popular reality show.

After the obligatory recap of the previous week’s episode, host Phil Keoghan explains that the next leg of the race lands them in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island off the coast of East Africa that is part of Tanzania. Aha, there’s the Queen connection, they’re visiting Freddie’s birthplace. I wondered if the choice of Zanzibar for one of the show’s locations was due to a producer knowing about Freddie’s history on that remote island and it would be a great fit as an exotic location the racers hadn’t been to yet? Or, did they choose Zanzibar because it is an exotic location that might give the American contestants a bit of ratings-friendly culture shock and it just so happened that when they Googled Zanzibar they discovered the Freddie connection and wrote an episode around him?

Whatever the case, it was neat to see Freddie’s birthplace included in a reality show.

The first time we learn that Freddie is part of the episode is when the contestants are told to make their way to Mercury House, although it’s initially referred to as “Farrokh House” which didn’t seem to resonate with the players given that they were in Zanzibar.

Once the teams began asking the locals about Farrokh House, the players discovered that it is Freddie Mercury’s childhood home. The problem, though, is that his original home was demolished and some of the locals knew this, so they were taken to a pile of rubble where they sifted through the debris for the next clue.

Luckier players were taken to the actual “Mercury House” that is part museum, part heritage home and was the location of the LOCK or KNOCK detour. The outside entrance to this building has a windowed display case featuring a variety of Freddie images.

Choosing LOCK meant players had to search through stacks of wooden chests of drawers seeking a key that would open a particular padlock and reveal the next destination. Choosing KNOCK required players to meander through the back alleys and walkways of Stone Town looking for three distinct doors which are considered “royal” doors by the residents. Once they visited all three, they’d get their next clue.

The final Queen connection came near the end of the episode when Phil and the players made their way off the island and back to Tanzania where a Road Block awaited.

For this “Heavy Metal” Road Block, the team had to fashion a metal straining spoon out of a sheet of aluminum without the benefit of modern tools.

Heavy metal? At this point, the Queen/royalty/music/Zanzibar connections seem a bit forced. But, since they were on a musical theme and they had a road block dealing with metal, why not use the term heavy metal...even though most of their music fell outside of that genre. It’s a minor detail, I suppose.

So who connected the dots between Zanzibar and Freddie as a possible leg of the race? The husband and wife team of Dutch-born Bertram van Munster and American-born Elise Doganieri are a power couple in the world of reality TV producers. I tend to think that van Munster’s European upbringing — and Queen’s overall fanbase in the European community — would suggest that he knew about Freddie’s history with Zanzibar first and conceptualized the episode around those themes. But, maybe I’m wrong…perhaps Doganieri is the Queen aficionado in the family and she made it happen. Doesn’t matter…I’m just happy it made the cut and the episode was able to showcase Farrokh Bulsara’s humble beginnings and how remarkable his rise to international fame really was, all things considered.

I wonder if tourism picked up for the tiny island after this episode. Much to the angst of the local politicians who govern the officially Muslim territory, his gay lifestyle is part of his legacy. 

screen capture from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z-hleeVmTQ

They did succeed in banning a large scale celebration at Mercury’s, a local restaurant and bar, that was planned for Freddie’s 60th birthday, but this still shot from a YouTube video showing visitors to Mercury House prior to the Amazing Race appearance indicates that Freddie is a sizable draw for tourism dollars and at least some of the locals are keen to look past dogma and capitalize on his Western accomplishments.

Steampunque?

I caught Trooper, Canada’s favourite party band, at a community association fundraiser recently. (Trooper, incidentally, was my very first arena concert experience as a kid in small-town Alberta, so the last time I saw them was in 1977, so this fundraiser was promising to bring us back together after nearly 40 years.)

As stoked as I was to see them, however, it was their opening act, Punch Drunk Cabaret (PDC), that actually made the night memorable for me.

The Punch Drunk Cabaret line-up (L-R): Sean E Watts (drums), Bandmeister Randy B (guitar/vocals), and Terry Sawbones Grant (bass)

The lead guitarist, Bandmeister Randy B., was decked out in a white suit and bowler hat, and began throwing around some rockabilly riffs that really got the crowd going. A few minutes into their set, what started as Rock This Town by the Stray Cats, segued into a variety of song snippets and eventually ending with the Everly Brothers’ Wake Up, Little Susie. Half-way through this extended medley was a few seconds of Fat Bottomed Girls!

PDC eventually conceded the stage to Trooper after a 40-minute set and as great as Trooper was that night, I kept thinking back to that medley which included FBG. When I got home that night, I tracked down PDC on Facebook and messaged them about the FBG appearance and if they’d be open to answering a few other Queen-related questions. To my surprise, Randy B., also the band’s manager, responded the next morning and invited me to send over whatever questions I had. So I cobbled together a list and fired them back.

QV) As mentioned, Randy, I caught PDC when you guys opened for Trooper on February 11th. To my surprise, I heard the intro to Fat Bottomed Girls during your song medley. Can you tell me the backstory on why you featured Queen and, more specifically, why that song was chosen.

RB) By design, Punch Drunk Cabaret is an act that is always looking for ways to involve the audience in the show. We’ll spike our originals with snippets of cover songs, and radically re-arrange cover songs to make them more original. Adding a chorus of Fat Bottomed Girls into the Stray Cats classic, Rock This Town, might seem an unlikely fit but it goes over with ANY audience, which is a testament to Queen’s universal appeal. The decision to juxtapose those two songs was completely stream of consciousness. I credit it to developing a broad musical vocabulary as a kid which had a lot to do with listening to Queen.

QV) On a scale of 1 to 39, how would you rate yourself as a Queen fan?

RB) I don’t really think of myself in terms of being “a fan.” It’s much more like a philosophy or belief system that I ascribe to as a musician and performer. Of course I have favourite songs and albums, but Queen’s manifesto was impressed upon me when I was a very impressionable nine- or ten-year-old. Thirty years later, I still adhere to that manifesto. It’s become a lifestyle. I don’t know how to conduct myself any other way. So it’s more like saying “I’m a practicing Buddhist” rather than, “I’m a fan of Buddhism.”

QV) That’s an interesting way to think of it. You told me earlier that you had the good fortune of discovering ANATO and NOTW when you were ten years old. What were the circumstances in which you discovered these two albums?

RB) In the mid to late ’70s, I had a cousin who was ten years older than me with a modern record collection. That exposed me to all kinds of great music that I would then beg my parents to buy me. At that age I was also really drawn to the cover art, which is why I initially bought A Night at the Opera. I loved that great regal, coat of arms. It was as if Queen was its own nation and the listener could belong to it. Then I got News of the World and that giant killer robot scared the hell out of me! The cover alone was such a great narrative.

QV) Funny you should say that…Seth MacFarlane had the same fear as a kid. How has Queen’s music and/or stage presence influenced PDC?

RB) When I talk about Queen’s “manifesto,” I’m referring to things like...
- “performing” music as opposed to simply “playing” it,
- pairing great music with engaging visuals,
- including the audience in the show and creating a communal experience,
- creating a broad and dynamic body of work that defies genres and categories,
- inhabiting a character or character's during a performance,
- embracing the fact that you are an entertainer,
- injecting a sense of humour into your art,
I could go on and on...

QV) Do the other band members have a similar attitude towards Queen or is it just you?

RB) My bandmates didn’t have the same personal experience with single Queen albums like I did, but they were equally impacted by ’70s era theatrical rock that was also being popularized by KISS, Bowie, and to a lesser degree, Cheap Trick.

QV) As a professional guitarist, can you comment on Brian’s playing and songwriting?

RB) For me, Brian is counter-inspirational! His level of talent and skill set is so highly evolved that you just think to yourself “why do I even bother”? Studying Brian’s work is like studying alien DNA. From establishing a signature guitar AND guitar sound, to being an outstanding songwriter, he has it all. I remember buying the music for The Game when I first started playing guitar and thinking “how does he know so many chords”?

QV) Has the band done a proper Queen cover tune? To me, an obvious choice would be CLTCL since it’s rockabilly anyway, but I can easily imagine PDC reinterpreting a lot of Queen songs.

RB) We haven’t fully covered a Queen tune yet. On occasion we’ve lead the audience in a chorus of We Will Rock You during an original called Digg that’s a blues shuffle. It reframes the lyrics from a triumphant declaration to a veiled threat!

QV) That’s awesome! It seemed to me as I watched your performance the other night, that the steampunk, retro-technology element of your show had traces of Metropolis, and even a nod to Queen’s The Works era. Is this coincidence or is there a subtle Queen connection there as well?

Queen adopted many of the retro-futurism motifs from the film “Metropolis” for The Works album and tour in 1984.

RB) Identifying the Metropolis link is most perceptive! What we share with Queen isn’t obvious to the casual observer. We look like steampunks, our sound is a rockabilly/swing/ rock mix and we play with the energy of a stadium rock act. But if you look under the hood, you’ll see that our approach and execution is built on the same template as Queen. On a personal note, I have to admit that on this tour, the armband and stripes down the legs of my suit harken back to Freddie’s iconic, mid-80s look.

An early Punch Drunk Cabaret set design with similar retro-futuristic imagery. Photo © Papa Razzo.

QV) Were you lucky enough to catch Freddie and Queen back in the day? Any desire to catch Q+AL in Edmonton later this summer?

RB) Sadly, I never caught vintage Queen live. I saw one of the world’s top tribute acts and was left very underwhelmed, so it would be a good idea to see them with Adam Lambert this summer to wash that taste out of my mouth.

QV) Maybe it was serendipity that Queen and the Everly Brothers appear together in your song medley....when Phil Everly died in January 2014, Brian May is on record saying that the Everly Brothers were a major influence on Queen’s vocal harmonies years later.

RB) Interesting point. It certainly wasn’t planned to mash those songs together, but I find it endlessly intriguing how artistic decisions can seem so arbitrary at the time, only to discover the elements are connected after all. That’s far more interesting than calculating things in hopes that they’ll appeal to an audience.

Find out more about Punch Drunk Cabaret at their website here.

Under Pressure Cooker

My wife picked up one of those Instant Pot pressure cookers a couple of weeks ago after reading great reviews about them online. It turns out, the brand has such a devoted following that they even have a name for an Instant Pot owner: a Pothead.

There’s also a unique trend happening within the Pothead community, which was brought to my attention when my wife showed me this:

The comments to this Facebook post were overwhelming positive, no doubt because the song is the musical manifestation of the kitchen appliance. There were a few snickers in the comments crowd, too, since Freddie's pose along with the position of the word “under” gave the impression that Freddie was actually releasing some pressure, so to speak.

The more knowledgeable Queen fans in the group came to Freddie’s rescue by reminding everyone that the decal was put on the Instant Pot incorrectly...it should be turned 90˚ counterclockwise so Freddie is seen leaning backward.

And then my wife discovered another UP reference:

And another:

 And another:

Putting a clever decal on your Instant Pot usually means relating it back in some way to either cooking, steam, the letters “IP,” or the word “pot,” as these custom Instant Pot decals shows:

Some Potheads are so enthralled by their Instant Pot that they purchased two...and did up matching decals for them up, too.

So what about other Queen possibilities? A quick flip through their song list suggests these classics could make interesting decals:

• Who Wants to Cook Forever
• You’re My Best Friend
• Love of My Life

Slim pickings, I must say. Under Pressure is without a doubt the best decal choice.

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Suicide Squad Trumps Limitless Suits on Billboards from the ’70s

While I don’t have as much time these days to update Queenville as often as I’d like, pop culture references to Queen are as pervasive as ever it seems.

For example, I just finished watching Season 1 of Suits, a TV drama focusing on a high-powered law firm in NYC. (I noticed, however, that many of the high-rise shots actually featured Canadian buildings from downtown Toronto, so after some snooping on iMDB, I discovered it is indeed shot in Toronto and stars Canadian-born Patrick J. Adams as the gifted college drop-out, Mike Ross.)

What I didn’t expect was the nerdy character of Louis Litt (played by Rick Hoffman) proclaim Queen to be the best band ever, as seen in his S1:E8 exchange with Harvey Spector, the firm’s star lawyer, as he goes through Harvey’s record collection:

Litt: I see that the greatest band of all time is conspicuously absent…

Harvey Specter: Who would that be, Louis?

Litt: Oh, I don’t know…a little British band called Queen.

Specter: Should have seen that coming. You know, real musicians…they don’t wear eyeliner.

I’m assuming that the writer of this episode is a Queen fan who saw Louis Litt as a bit of an outsider; people seem to judge him based on his appearance rather than his abilities, not unlike Queen in many ways. But then Litt goes on to defend eyeliner on rock stars by reminding Specter that Prince would disagree with his assessment of “real musicians.” Or maybe Litt just has a preference for musicians with royalty titles because it reminds him of what he wants to achieve?

Another TV series that used an obscure Queen song was Limitless in the S1:E9 episode called Headquarters. The song plays for quite a long time over an extended montage of scenes mimicking pop culture/social media characters that were “trending” at the time. You can watch the YouTube segment here.

The connection to a father and a son wasn’t immediately obvious as I watched the show, although the main character’s dad does pay a visit to his son at one point late in the episode. Whatever the reason for the song selection, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked with the visuals.

In politics, it was Trump vs Queen – not once, but twice –  during the GOP candidate’s campaign run leading up to the RNC last month. The Trump machine had used WATC at one point and Brian specifically asked that he not use their songs as a soundtrack to his campaign. And a month later, during the RNC, it was used again when he won the party’s endorsement as the official Republican party candidate.

There was a flurry of opinions as to whether or not Trump had secured the rights to the song for that particular event...some claimed it wasn’t his call but the event coordinator’s and that the licensing of the song was legitimate. Others contend that Queen doesn’t own their songs anyway so Brian has no say in the matter.

What?

Unless the ownership of Queen’s catalogue has changed hands in the last 20 years, I distinctly remember Brian claiming that the band had bought the rights back from their record label back in the day and that they were one of the few bands who actually had ownership of their music. So unless that was signed away during the whole Hollywood Records deal or some other transaction that I missed, I’d say that Brian has a pretty good leg to stand on as far as asking Trump to stop using it.

What’s a bit perplexing, though, is that Hollywood Records released a mash-up of WATC interspersed with Desert Storm quotes from Bush Sr. and I don’t remember Queen having much to say about that back in 1991. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure that Brian and gang still retain the moral rights to their work and would conceivably have a say in how it is used separate from general licensing. At least that’s my understanding of intellectual property rights here in Canada.

As an aside, WATC has been a rallying cry for Americans before. When the White House announced that Osama Bin Laden was killed by US Special Forces military unit in 2011, a flash mob gathered at the White House to sing the national anthem and WATC. You can read about it here in a previous blog post. Coincidentally, I was watching Celebrity Apprentice when news broke of Bin Laden’s assassination.

There’s some buzz going on right now about Bohemian Rhapsody and its use in a trailer for Suicide Squad, the latest DC Comics adventure starring Will Smith. Queen’s version of the song was used in the trailer in a way that suggested the song would be a “character” in the film, much like its appearance in Wayne’s World back in 1992.

But it’s not Queen’s version that ends up in the actual movie...it’s a cover version by Panic! at the Disco. And when the Panic! version starting to get a lot of positive reaction from the — I’m guessing, younger — crowd who dominated the Comments section, a lot of people suggested that they check out the original by Queen which was better. Those that did check it out claimed that the lead singer of Panic! was as good as Freddie since he hit the big notes (I haven’t heard their version yet so I can’t verify this). But if Panic! is so great, why can’t they hit it out of the park with their own material?

Finally, a local radio station up here in Calgary has been marketing themselves as the “70s and more” station and this billboard featuring Freddie went up next to a high-volume thoroughfare. (They also have an Elton John silhouette sitting at a grand piano and a silhouette of the Fab Four walking across a crosswalk.)

I’m all for Freddie and the boys being used as a draw for listeners, but if they’re all about the ’70s, why did they use a Freddie pose from the Magic Tour?

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Together again?

Another One Bites the Crust

With the suspicious death of Prince a few days ago, the title of this blog post may seem cold and inconsiderate of his passing, but it’s not meant to be. It’s taken from a line of dialogue in a 1997 Muppet Show skit where Prince is challenged to write a song based on food and Another One Bites the Crust is thrown out as a facetious suggestion. He accepts the dare and comes up with Starfish and Coffee at the spur of the moment.

With the worlds of Queen and Prince coming together in that skit, one can’t ignore the unintended irony of that Queen song being referenced. Prince’s death follows an unusually long string of notable celebrity deaths over the past five months: Lemmy Kilmister (Dec 28), Natalie Cole (Dec 31), David Bowie (Jan 10), Glenn Frey (Jan 18), Paul Kantner (Jan 28), Vanity (Feb 15), George Martin (Mar 8), Keith Emerson (Mar 10), Merle Haggard (Apr 6), and Lonnie Mack (Apr 21). Wow, another one bites the dust is an understatement.

Besides Freddie, the most notable celebrity deaths from 1991 were Dr Seuss (Sept 24), Miles Davis (Sept 28), Tennessee Ernie Ford (Oct 17), and Gene Roddenberry (Oct 24). Freddie was the only casualty from rock music from what I can find. Fast forward to 2016...we’re only four months into the year and pop music has taken some serious hits.

I remember when I first heard Prince with Little Red Corvette and 1999 back in the early ’80s, I thought it was curious that another musical artist had adopted a royalty moniker, not unlike Queen. Then, a year or two later, a new wave band called King arrived on the scene and the entire royal hierarchy was now represented on the radio.

Theres no denying that like Queen (and their song!), Prince had staying power. His Purple Rain film and soundtrack was huge in 1984 and he continued his prolific output which, by all accounts, surpassed every mainstream pop songwriter — well, maybe not Diane Warren — with an estimated catalogue of between 500 and 1,000 songs he’s written over his career.

Although Prince struck me more as a Jimi Hendrix clone, many people saw a parallel of sorts between Freddie and Prince back in the 1980s. One Prince fan wrote on the prince.org site that Freddie was:

“…a big admirer of Prince, and loved Kiss. I know these things as fact. Also, the feeling appears to have been somewhat mutual, as according to the butler who worked for Prince during UK rehearsals for the Sign ‘O’ The Times tour, Prince spent a considerable amount of time in his room watching Queen shows on video when relaxing.”1

The same Prince discussion group is also quick to claim that Prince was far-and-away the better songwriter and performer compared to Freddie. In fact, one contributor was so bold as to say:

“The songs Prince wrote from 1981 to 1987, including unreleased ones, are better than anything Queen could have possibly written...Freddie did some awesome songwriting with Queen, but I can take 50 [Prince] songs from 1981–1987 that can top damn near anything.”1

And, apparently, he explored musical territory that Freddie was afraid to try:

“Prince’s musical palette dwarfs Freddie’s in every way possible. Whether his compositions were as complex or not, I couldn’t say. But I could never picture Freddie undertaking anything like Sign ‘O’ The Times or WTWIAD or PARADE and then giving us the Symbol Album or The Truth. In every way I can imagine, as much as I like Freddie, Prince simply has the upper hand in songwriting.”

I’m not entirely convinced that Prince could go from March of the Black Queen to Bring Back that Leroy Brown to Mustapha to Barcelona. Maybe he can...I’ll have to give those Prince albums a listen and find out for myself. I will be pleasantly surprised if he changed genres as much as Freddie did. As for performing, again this same person claims Prince is superior to Freddie.

“Yes, Mercury had the costumes and the flare. Yes his performances (like Live Aid) are regarded as classics. So what. Prince’s performances were always tighter and more eye-popping than any rock ’n’ roll act (Kiss cheats with make-up and pyro). Prince never needed anything more than motion and attitude. Think he didn’t? Place two screens side-by-side. Prince Sign ‘O’ The Times movie on one side and any Queen concert you want on the other. Mute the sound on both, and tell me which one catches your eye more.”1

Nice try. If I wanted to watch a tightly choreographed and eye-popping performance, I could bring up any Madonna or Janet Jackson video. But I typically don’t watch music performances for the visuals; I’m there for the music and the spontaneity it brings. Besides, it’s not fair to compare an edited movie with concert footage, is it? Nonetheless, this is something we can measure if we look at Queen’s performance at Live Aid in 1985, as noted in the earlier quote:

“Queen’s performance on that day has since been voted by more than 60 artists, journalists and music industry executives as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music, while Mercury’s powerful, sustained note during the a cappella section came to be known as “The Note Heard Round the World.”2

Obviously, we'll never know how Prince would have performed at Live Aid since he didn’t participate in person but sent in a pre-recorded video instead.

I shouldn’t be whining about a Prince vs Freddie comparison since they’re both gone now and the world is ultimately a better place because of their legacies. Both were unconventional musicians who died too young. I wonder if they ever met. I didn’t see any evidence of it on Google but I found this image, which may be the closest they got to each other:

One last thought...maybe Prince was onto something with his adoption of a symbol and the resulting industry’s coining of his unofficial new name: “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” With all the vitriol leveled at Brian and Roger when they went on the road with Adam Lambert recently, maybe they should have called themselves “The Band Formerly Known as Queen.” That would probably have satisfied most of the critics and Queen purists who had a problem with them using the name.

1. http://prince.org
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Aid

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It's only natural that Freddie would end up on Supernatural

When I finally got through watching all six seasons of Lost on Netflix last year, I was hooked on binge watching and decided to flip through the other TV fair that Netflix offered. The synopsis for Supernatural seemed interesting. It sounded a bit like the X-Files but more occult-oriented. Okay, I’ll give the pilot a shot and see what happens.

The first thing that stood out for me was the use of classic rock music to help tell the story of the Winchester brothers. The references were not limited to just the musical score, though, as the names of classic rock musicians are frequently woven throughout the storylines, usually as fake identities that the hunter brothers use when playing FBI agents working on a case.

When I first heard Sam introduce the two of them as “Agents Bachman and Turner” to a local sheriff, my immediate reaction was to laugh out loud. As a Canadian, I immediately got the Bachman Turner Overdrive reference. BTO was well-known in Canada in the ’70s, and now Eric Kripke, the show’s American creator, was showing the range of his classic rock taste which, to my delight, was the beginning of a larger, tongue-in-cheek Canadian connection to the show.

So with Kripke’s fondness for classic rock — Led Zeppelin being one of his favourite bands — I wondered if or when Queen might make an appearance. Surely he’d find a place in one of the storylines to capitalize on Queen, one of the biggest bands from that era. Kripke is on record saying that the cost of licensing a Zeppelin song for the show was too steep but he did manage to include them in the characters’  dialogue or even within the episode title instead of music. Perhaps he’d do the same with Queen.

I do recall “the show must go on” and “another one bites the dust” being used in dialogue by Sam or Dean at one point, but those idioms are so common it’s difficult to say with certainty that Kripke wrote them as a subtle nod to Queen or simply as a reflection of pop culture.

The episode that I am fairly certain contains a cleverly disguised Queen reference was Hammer of the Gods (S5E19). Sam and Dean get called out to a convention of gods, so to speak, and there is a smattering of pagan deities from several cultures all discussing what to do about an impending showdown with Lucifer. One of the pagan gods present is the messenger god, Mercury (above). Obviously, this is the same Roman god that Freddie adopted for his last name, but who outside of Queendom and history buffs, would know that Mercury is the messenger god? Nonetheless, this is a perfect mix of story character and classic rock so I’d be surprised if Kripke chose Mercury for some reason other than it references his beloved classic rock. There is no Queen music featured in this episode but Mercury is actually the host of the god party, so we should be flattered that Kripke gave Freddie the top spot.

As an aside, this episode is a great example of the level of religious criticism and self-reflection inherent throughout the show’s storylines. The fact that a gathering of gods from different cultures and eras are all arguing over who’s the most powerful god is both funny and scathing since they all come off as absurd when compared with each other.

So I’ve watched up to the end of Season 10 (they’re currently shooting Season 11 in Vancouver), and I still haven’t encountered a Queen song in the soundtrack. I’m starting to think that the royalty fees are too high to include Queen tunes, just like Kripke stated was the case with Led Zeppelin.

But Freddie finally makes an appearance (in name, anyway) in The Prisoner (S10E22). Once again, Sam’s fake ID cards are being questioned by a local sheriff: “Ozzy Osbourne,” “Lemmy Kilmister,” “Freddie Mercury.” Ha! It’s official, Kripke is a fan. Wait, maybe not since this episode was written by Andrew Dabb and not Eric Kripke. Maybe Dabb is the bigger Queen fan and used this opportunity to get Freddie to the front of the line. But if that is the case, why is Freddie’s name spelt wrong:

Personally, I think it’s an inside joke with a double entendre. Queen fans know that Freddie’s name is misspelt a lot so having it wrong on the fake ID might be an acknowledgement of this. Maybe Sam got the name wrong, just like lots of others do.

I did a Google Map search for the address indicated on the license. Nothing. Too bad, it would have been a neat tie-in if there was a Queen reference of some kind at that address.

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LA and Vegas sightings

Holy procrastination, Batman . . . look who’s back.

Actually, I haven’t been procrastinating at all, we merely had a baby on April 1st (no fooling) which put everything else on hold, including blog writing.

Nonetheless, my wife and I figured we’d make a road trip this summer down to Disneyland before our five-year-old starts kindergarten in September. So we packed up the van, drove south through Helena, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and then on to Anaheim for a two-week stay at the World’s Happiest Place.

My first Queen sighting ended up being a “hearing,” so to speak. The mid-afternoon Pixar parade through the California Adventure Park featured Don’t Stop Me Now amongst the medley of tunes played. Here’s a video clip I managed to capture as The Incredibles family scootered by me:

This theme park sighting reminded me of the LegoLand rocks I wrote about here.

Photo by Patrick Brooks

Photo by Patrick Brooks

The big attraction at California Adventure is the Radiator Springs Racers ride at the new Cars Land exhibit. The level of detail built into the simulated landscape and associated buildings of Radiator Springs was truly amazing. Automobile-themed music was being pumped throughout the walking areas of Cars Land and since Queen made an appearance in the Pixar parade, I half-expected a cover version of I’m In Love With My Car to be included on the playlist . . . but it wasn’t.

My next southern California Queen sighting was one that I deliberately sought out . . . their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Finding it was simple;  I looked up the address for it on Wikipedia, typed it into Google Maps, and asked my buddy Mike May (aka ProphetM from the old alt.music.queen days back in the ’90s) to take us there.

Photo by Patrick Brooks

I remember the lobbying and fundraising effort in the early 2000s by a handful of dedicated Queen fans to get a coveted pink terrazzo marble star included on the Walk of Fame. 

Photo by Patrick Brooks

And while the exact location or address of a celebrity’s star may have some connection to their career (i.e., Farrah Fawcett in front of a hair salon or Roger Moore at 7007 Hollywood Blvd), I couldn’t see any immediate reason why 6356 Hollywood Blvd. would be special to Queen. The street numbers are arbitrary and the business establishment, Hemingway’s Lounge, doesn’t appear to have any connection to Queen’s history (assuming, of course, they were there in 2002 during the dedication ceremony).

After our holiday in LA was over, we again packed up the kids and van and headed back to Vegas again on our first stop-over on the journey home. (We stayed in Luxor’s pyramid this time, just to see how the elevators worked.) On the MGM promo TV channel there was a clip of Ryan Seacrest introducing the iHeart Radio Music Festival coming up in September.

To my surprise, he mentioned that Queen and Adam Lambert would be making an appearance together. Hmm, should I plan another trip to Vegas in a month’s time? Probably not, since it won’t be a full-on concert from Q+Lambert, just a limited appearance along with other artists. I’m sure Katy Perry will enjoy hanging out with Brian and Roger backstage talking about how well her Killer Queen perfume is selling.

Photo by Patrick Brooks

The final Queen sighting on our trip was also in Vegas. There is an entertainment collectibles store in Mandalay Bay called Art of Music which I stopped into for the hell of it.

Instead of wasting time looking for Queen paraphernalia on their walls, I approached the fellow at the cash register and merely asked him what they had. He showed me an autographed drum stick by Roger up for sale. (The framing job didn’t impress me too much. In my opinion, Roger’s drum stick should be the focus rather than one of many eclectic images in the composition.)  I then asked what guarantee I have that the autograph is genuine given my previous experience with Antiquities over in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace. He said he’s only had two returned items in the past five years compared to Antiquities two hundred or so returned pieces.

How he acquired those stats is a mystery but I’m inclined to believe him.



http://festival.iheart.com/?cmp=artist19
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/16/how-to-get-a-star-on-the-hollywood-walk-of-fame/

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