I would be remiss if I didn't backtrack a bit and discuss my first major crush on a band, which was Queen in 1975 with the release of A Night at the Opera (and, in retrospect, likely my first crush on a guy - Roger, not Freddie). Loved this song the first time I heard it and still do - the drumming, the vocals, those lovely bits that May plays on guitar in and around the vocals. Another song that, as a kid, struck me as incredibly sad. To be honest, I still find it sad today; of course, our narrator made a conscious choice, and some people might read that as empowering. I just never did.
I'm in Love With My Car...
IBL:mm
I'm in Love With My Car...
IBL:mm
Regarding Queen. I am not a Queen fan, nor have I ever been a Queen fan, still a little resentful at having had to put up with people replaying me Bohemian Rhapsody ad nausia, the We are the Champions tie in with sports victories etc. The most I managed was to complacently tap my foot when their music came on. But recently, and i don't remember the context, I saw the video I have linked below, and I thought of everything that has happened, and I thought of mercury's death, and I remembered when the book AND THE BAND PLAYED ON came out, and I remembered growing up where I had grown up and finally being able to take the City I had grown up in the shadow of my whole life as my own as a young man, and I remembered working for that gentle man Jim Carroll at Carroll's Books on Church and 24th, and I thought of your friend Michael Balch, and I though of literally a thousand friends and acquaintances whose lives had been touched by devastation, and I listened to this song and it gave me chills. So here's to Queen:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/5L8-FTvSVxs
And here's to you, George...
ReplyDeleteProbably not the dirtiest of my musical dirty laundry (hello ELO & Foreigner), but I still squirm a bit when I recall my Queen fandom.
ReplyDeleteAnd George is absolutely right: "We Are The Champions" is a sin that will require a lot of purgatory time. And to think it was on the same single as "We Will Rock You"...the horror.
Paulie - Teo Torriate. Enough said, yes?
ReplyDeleteSung out loud.
ReplyDeleteTo a 'girlfriend'.
A girlfriend I never got to second base with.
Waiting to get in to see Boston on their first tour.
With Starcastle opening.
It's like childhood sexual abuse, really; if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.
Stand tall and proud, Paulie: YOU SAW STARCASTLE. I only ever played the video game of the same name.
ReplyDelete