My heart is so broken that I can't make their next gig on the 29th (both because I don't have a car and can't get to Worcester and I have plans that have nothing to do with Queen). But! I should get in touch with them the next time they want to do a Freddie tribute to see if I can be involved in some way that wouldn't be just answering the shit out of trivia questions :-P
Today in 1982, Queen performed on Saturday Night Live. As far as I know, this particular episode is not freely available on the internet, but the ever-amazing Gregsynthbootlegs has posted both Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Under Pressure! Yay!
I was super stoked to see that auditions are being posted on the Queen Extravaganza site! And then I watched some of the auditions. So far I'm not terribly impressed beyond disgusted and horrified (I go Simon Cowell on everyone's ass when it comes to Queen covers). But!!!
*swoon*
I mean, some of what Roger's said in this article has left a bitter taste in my mouth*, but I'm choosing to be cautiously optimistic and hang in there for as long as I can.
As stated in the comments on my last post (all two of them!), tribute bands are formed out of love. And yeah, in accordance with the rules of music, some bands suck more than others. But it seems really micromanaging to me for Roger to rip a tribute band apart just because they're trying and then say, "Fuck it! I'm picking people for the next tribute band!"
--
*Queen drummer Roger Taylor was recently in his hometown when he saw a poster that caught his attention. "It said, 'Queen on stage,'" Taylor tells Rolling Stone. "I saw in the very hall where we used to play and there's just the quite bad picture of a band. There are so many of these tribute bands and then there are like orchestral concerts going on featuring music. A lot of these things are not up to scratch and so we want to do it properly."
"...but there are an awful lot of tribute bands, some of them good, some of them not good... It's a big hurdle, [but] this is a way of keeping our music alive and doing it to our standards."
"So we'd like really great looking guys to be in this band." (I'm hoping this has been said in general and he's enthusiastic about auditions from people who don't identify as guys)
Also from the site earlier today "The highly anticipated Live Final, held in Los Angeles, will be judged by the official Queen Extravaganza panel, fronted by Roger Taylor. The 10 final contestants, and possible 'wild-cards', will perform LIVE as part of the band in front of Roger and the panel"
With a giant sigh of relief, I have finally finished Is This The Real Life? And just in time for 40 Years Of Queen!
I really enjoyed Mark's book, but it was sobering to read that someone the author referred to was quoted as saying that John Deacon looked like he had become a rock star by accident, and that he probably wanted to be done with music since The Works. On one hand, I'm thinking "How on earth could anyone not want to be one quarter of Queen??" On the other, I can totally see that. The music business is indeed, a right pain in the ass. And to badly quote Elton John in an interview from The Magic Years: "You are more or less public property." I wouldn't be able to handle that either.
So John, if you happen across this by accident: Thanks for sticking with it. Your contributions to music have not been lost on me - particularly Spread Your Wings.
My only complaints about the book are that my copy had some typos and small things the proofreaders missed. Apart from that, I really loved how thorough it was and that it didn't focus too much on Freddie, as books about Queen do too often. It wasn't something I used to pay attention to all that much before since I'm such a huge Freddie fan, but as I was reading about how Brian, Roger and John became interested in music and their childhoods in general, it occurred to me that I really have no fucking clue who those guys are and where they came from. I should see about changing that...
But yeah, apart from the typos I highly recommend this book! Depending on the textual content of this 40 Years Of Queen book, Mark Blake's might be worth buying if you haven't already. And even if this upcoming thing completely upstages it, there's no harm in adding it to your collection for the sake of having a bigger collection if it's financially feasible ;-)
