why did rock critics hate Queen so much in the 1970s/80s?

the level of critical animosity directed at Queen in their heyday (actually, their entire career) is hard for me to fathom. now, they are a relatively uncontroversial part of the "classic rock" canon. to my mind, they were a great band, one with near-universal appeal: a charismatic and distinctive lead singer, great melodies, inventive arrangements, catchy hooks/licks, a very broad musical range. what's not to like, really? of course, I won't begrudge anyone disliking the band for whatever reason(s), but the critical hatred for them transcends questions of individual taste.

here's Dave Marsh's review of Jazz (one of the very best of their LPs IMO) from Rolling Stone, 1979. I've boldfaced the most (in)famous part of the review:

There's no Jazz on Queen's new record, in case fans of either were worried about the defilement of an icon. Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz — Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll. Jazz is just more of the same dull pastiche that's dominated all of this British supergroup's work: tight guitar/bass/drums heavy-metal clichés, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshmen sound funky and Freddie Mercury's throat-scratching lead vocals.

Anyway, it shouldn't be surprising that Queen calls its album "jazz." The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie & Company want, Freddie & Company get. What's most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it's so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.

Take the LP's opening song, "Mustapha." It begins with a parody of a muezzin's shriek and dissolves into an approximation of Arabic music. This is part of Queen's grand design. Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki.

But it's easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen. "Fat Bottomed Girls" isn't sexist — it regards women not as sex objects but as objects, period (the way the band regards people in general). When Mercury chants, in "Let Me Entertain You," about selling his body and his willingness to use any device to thrill an audience, he isn't talking about a sacrifice for his art. He's just confessing his shamelessness, mostly because he's too much of a boor to feel stupid about it.

Whatever its claims, Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, "We Will Rock You," is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band. The whole thing makes me wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas.

the bottom line -- i'm curious if anyone can help reconstruct a moment in history and a particular taste culture where Queen are perceived as the bogeyman. b/c I can't quite do it.

"supergroup" ?!?!

i just do not get the "fascist" label; for me, it's as if Dave Marsh (a critic I can appreciate on occasion) is coming from Mars. is he just translating the band's obvious theatricality and over-the-top-ness into his own spiteful terms? or is there something more to it? b/c he was not the only one to make a version of that charge.

does that guy maceo? or michelangelo? or whatever post here anymore? i feel like he would have interesting things to say about this for some reason.

Holy shit, super talented musicians playing like they're having fun, constantly rewarding albums, and a live show like no other, and critics didn't like 'em? Who'd a thunk?

it's hard not to see homophobia here "these creeps and their polluting ideas"

There's a 'something for everyone' element to Queen that imo rubs critics completely the wrong way

fuck dude, sometimes it seems like anyone who dared book a show at stadium that wasn't the Who or Springsteen in 1977-1978 was going to get on the wrong side of that guy…but as someone who has long despised DM to the point where I drunkenly heckled him at SXSW once, I gotta say that some of the things he sez about "mustapha" a recording I treasure, are spot the fuck on.

To your point: I think Queen hit a bunch of sore spots in 1979 re: rockcrits. Them pencil necked geeks, most recently shamed by punk rock to renounce anything with a corporate taint, would not like Queen's unambiguous celebration of expensive hedonism. They were perceived as corporate, plastic, willfully frivolous…and I would think that they would be uncomfortable with a gay guy who cares nothing about social justice, etc…this was a band that would play Sun City in 1984…and of the four Queen dudes, Freddie was likely the least troubled by the implications. The show tune aspect…the guy looked like a village Person…they were not on the right side of anything a rock critic in the late 70s/early 80s on the either side of the atlantic was supposed to rep for.

more succinctly: probly more than any other, Queen were the act that punk rock 1977-78 opposed. CF: NME caption of Freddie: "IS THIS MAN A PRAT?" and Sid Vicious running into Freddie at the studio: SV: "Eh Fred, bringing ballet to the masses?" FM: "well, we're doing the best we can, Mr, Ferocious, dear!"

With their limos, huge entourages and rapacious appetities for pleasure, even their long-time publicist, Phil Symes, concedes his boys wre hard to handle. "They were so confident that it often came across as being extremely arrogant. There were these four guys who played up the androgynous look with lots of make-up and black nail varnish. A lot of people couldn't handle them. The 'look' in the rock scene was tattered denims and long hair, then here comes Queen dressed in Zandra Rhodes satin threads. It was unheard of."

http://www.brianmay.com/queen/wwry/OZ/freddielives.html

doesn't wash. a lot of band from that era fit those criteria, more or less, but did get their fair share of critical love. thinking of blue oyster cult in particular (but then i would).

i think maybe the idea is that the theater of pop is inherently fascist. it rejects youth tribe collectivism and "authentic expression" (the "natural", "passionate", "soulful", etc.) in favor of a strict audience-performer divide and the contrivance of false baubles to be delivered from on high to the lowly masses. from this position, queen's populist pomp could be seen as cynical, condescending, manipulative, etc. it's a massively hypocritical argument, especially since applied selectively. i.e., basic rockism.

to pick up the glove thrown down by sleeve, BOC rather cartoonishly, even boorishly, het macho, always underlining their dudeness. course in retrospect, we'd say they dressed like leather daddies, but those were different times etc.

Queen are liked more now than in their prime. It's true Marsh didn't like them. And Christgau was lukewarm at best. My only guess is they were too bombastic, if that's the word, for the times. Not unlike the Prog groups that were fading in the late 70's.

Creem's review of Jazz, invoking more fascism

FOR A FEW weeks in 1978, an FM radio station in New York City was trying, earnestly and imaginatively, to create rock 'n' roll counter-programming. A ratings turnaround didn't happen fast enough, so it changed its format to something called "the Rock Champions" (i.e., more AOR elitism).

This was around the same time that every film clip of The Yankees on television was scored with ‘We Are The Champions’, and the movie FM attempted to pass off ‘We Will Rock You’ as the ‘We Shall Overcome’ of the rock revolution. I started to despise Queen; a two-sided platinum single of aristocratic, pompous, triumph-of-the-will arrogance in 4/4 time (if marches are to resound over the airwaves, better Ace Frehley's ‘New York Groove’ any day) summed up for me the worst in royalist rock, and I couldn't remember more joyless, numbing, contemptuous music reaching a mass audience. Frankly, I was wary of the implications.

I know this answer won't please anyone who's a fan, but I don't think it's a confusing question to anyone who remembers that moment. There were a lot of reasons, many already spelled out above. It's like with Rush. Putting my own opinions aside, these bands were simply not liked by critics in the late '70s.

to be fair, hearing "Rock You" at a sports event is going to give you Triumph of the Will vibes

hey now contendo I was just quoting their publicist, not sure I agree w/him

would like to see more bad reviews from the era

(Or at the very least, by the most of the critics who would have voted in Pazz & Jop--I'm sure they had some critical support.)

pretty impressive calling Queen "fascist" before they accidentally played Sun City

accidentally?

"We've thought a lot about the morals of it a lot," claimed Brian May at the time, "and it is something we've decided to do. The band is not political - we play to anybody who wants to come and listen."

shocked

Ugh, "not political" -- what a fucking bullshit cop-out.

Also worth noting is that to get off the UN boycott list, all an artist had to do was issue an apology for having played South Africa and promise not to do it again. It's telling that Queen did nothing of the sort.

(One group -- possibly the only group -- that apologized and got off the UN register were the O'Jays; they were profoundly embarrassed at having played there, seemingly duped into it by unscrupulous promoters.)

by playing to anybody who wanted to come and listen Brian was explicitly demanding the release of Nelson Mandela

They were stunning showmen; I've never NOT been impressed by a live clip I've seen. The Live Aid appearance deserves the received notions about its awesomeness.

For me, a gay man and rock critic, I just don't hear many impressive tunes on the four albums I've heard. Bizarre, for they had it all: excellent frontman, flash guitarist, solid rhythm section. And four songwriters in the band. Few rock bands had every one of its members write songs, all of which were hits in some chart or other. A lot of those songs aren't very good. They lack...mystery, without which their formidable audience-instinct powers looked hollow or at their rare worst grotesque. Plus, Roxy Music!

But I'm totally up for a reconsideration of Body Language, A Kind of Magic, etc!

The stomping beat of "we vill rock you" sounded like jackboots to boomer rockcritics who also saw the arena concert scene as Nazi rallies revisited. "we will rock you" quickly became crowd-pumping music at sports events in the 70s which further explains some of the Fascist association. Truth be told, even Queen's best work could wear pretty thin when you heard it on the radio all day every day. Like their contemporaries Steely Dan & Hall/Oates I think Queen are best appreciated at a distance in measured doses. Constant involuntary exposure to elaborately produced OTT rock bombast such as Queen could make it sound oppressive.

of course Burce Sprungsteen is guilty of some of the same sins as Queen - musically anyway - so on that level Dave Marsh seems heavy-handed/hypocritical.

i forget when Springsteen supported apartheid

dave marsh seems like a really, really angry guy. he even seems angry when he's writing about stuff he likes. i have a soft spot for him because you never really see his byline anywhere anymore (or at least i don't -- is he currently writing for anything?) and thinking about him takes me back to high school, when i'd spend a lot of lunch hours in the library pouring through things like that huge red rolling stone history of rock book, and he was all over that. i remember he had an essay in there about neil young that was so contemptuous and dismissive of him that i was surprised later when i realized that young is mostly pretty highly regarded. i also remember a piece he wrote about kurt cobain's death where he expressed horror and disbelief that cobain actually admired and looked up to freddie mercury.

The difference for me, m, is I want to return to those Steely Dan and H&O songs after airplay has worn them down to nubbins; they persuade me to listen to those albums. Queen don't do this to me.

Dave Marsh is on record as "hating" Neil Young. Because Neil Young said nice things about Reagan, Marsh says, Neil Young killed his dad. Thanks to Neil Young and Reagan, Marsh's dad could not retire and thus worked until he dropped dead.

x post me neither!

god i feel like a jerk thinking about queen singles while dave marsh's dad is dead

i can't believe dave marsh was ever wrong about something.

can't believe Dave Marsh took money from a racist political regime

What Marsh wrote about Young/Reagan/his dad was absolutely meant to be taken literally/at face value.

So was that.

"Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki."

lol, freddie (aka Farrokh Bulsara) was probably THE most successful zoroastrian of parsi descent in history.

ty scott, did not know that

that's a whole lotta rrongg

Give'em credit -- looked up those foreign words in a Spanish dictionary.

dave marsh seems like a really, really angry guy. he even seems angry when he's writing about stuff he likes. i have a soft spot for him because you never really see his byline anywhere anymore (or at least i don't -- is he currently writing for anything?)

He has a blog, although at a glance it looks like he's been specializing in obituaries as of late (Pete Seeger, Bobby Bland, Chet Flippo, Lou Reed...). He has an entry about Rock & Rap Confidential that mentions his growing silence as a writer. It seems like he pops up in Mojo every once in a while to say something about Motown, or The Who, or Bruce. He also used to have a hosted blog at some newspaper site back in the early 2000s--I seem to recall one post about his Buffy fandom, which was surprising to say the least.

He has two weekly shows on Sirius XM: one called Kick Out The Jams, which is largely political, and another called Live From E Street Nation, which is self-explanatory.

Marsh otm in original post imo. Queen is def fascist and it creeps me out, even when its of the campy gay variety.

GrissoM: Can you post a link to the Rock & Rap Confidential piece? I'd like to read that. I looked around his blog, couldn't find it.

It's this about SXSW, and in the introduction he mentions in passing that he hasn't been writing as much, but hopes to fix that. Not a full piece about R&RC, or why exactly he slowed down.

I'm trying to think of an example of, when there was an artist or act who made music over time that I viscerally disliked, I thought those people were truly evil, worthless and otherwise detrimental to humankind. Yeah, I don't think that I've ever thought that about someone based on making music I didn't like. I might have known musicians personally who were repulsive, but that ain't the same.

marsh give the impression that making music he likes is right, and that making music he strongly dislikes is wrong, and that where an artist/act falls w/r/t his own aesthetic determines whether they are good or bad for humanity. This is boomer narcissism, to which many many critics of his generation succumb.

I so wish Zombie Formalist would do like a AMA about the differences btwn 70s/80s RS/Creem/Hit parader/Lisa Robinson-era (is the reason there has been no thread about her book is because she's terrible and always has been?) rock press milieu vs the 90s-10s one that I reckon most of us worked in.

fucking pseudo-Broadway leatherman shit that makes me embarrassed to be a fag

fwiw i kinda hate Springsteen and '70s Who too

queen rox and u r all gay

they were awesome. they could do anything kinda. but i'm a hard rock fan who loves disco and broadway and glam. so they were kinda made for me.

and pop. and metal.

and rap. and funk.

I love disco, glam, rap, and funk, but despise broadway, and am 50/50 on metal.

Queen for me was always a workmanlike (at their absolute pinnacle) rhythm section, a not-wholly-uninteresting guitarist (the apolitical Tom Morello of his day), and a singer who, to paraphrase one musician's view of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, exemplified "the Rolls-Royce aesthetic, but without the Rolls-Royce."

Freddie rules so hard

Hubbard too, obv, lol

otm (x2)

Was it Wayne's World that shifted opinions from "they're so serious" to "they're in on the fun"?

they could be serious AND funny. in the same song. which i like.

yeah, i dunno about pegging reassessment to any particular thing. i figure it's more likely generational progression. i grew up w/ queen as a radio staple, both their old classic rock chestnuts and their then-contemporary MTV hits ("another one bites the dust", "under pressure", etc). i didn't have to process them as the opposition to anything i might hold dear, they were just THERE, part of the eternal pop architecture. from the beginning (mine, i mean), it seemed obvious that they were awesome, funny and very clearly in on their own joke - but not so much so as to spoil it.

Anxiety about pop fascism seems to have largely faded, but if one were to dredge it up again, wouldn't the obsessive "nation"-building attempts that seem so ubiquitous now (from reverb to live to e-street to ford) seem to be yearnings toward that hegemonic "glory" of mid-70s arena rock?

For ppl my age and I guess thereabouts (I'm 35) the Wayne's World thing ws MASSIVE, me and loads of guys I knew at school bought (or got copied) Queen's Greatest Hits 1 and 2 and got into Queen overall cos of it

Freddie's voice when he does that "scat" thing that sounds like he has a hairball in his throat is literally the most unpleasant sound in all of nature

Bizarrely, I saw a clip of the famous live aid footage (I think?) and it was just him doing that for like 5 minutes

queen shite

& for dicks

There are still some Queen records I think are great (Don't Stop Me Now, Under Pressure, Another One Bits The Dust) and more that I find teeth-grindingly impossible to listen to (Bo Rap, We Are The Champions, We Will Rock You, Radio Ga Ga, anything involving girls with large bottoms), but they've become the epitome of something really quite horrible in British culture that has nothing to do with why critics hated them in the 70s and 80s. I've met people who still say that Queen are their favourite band and they all seem to be the worst kind of reactionary Middle England types.

I accept that this stigma probably doesn't exist in the US (or at least you have your own version of them, although I'm not sure who that would be).

The stomping beat of "we vill rock you" sounded like jackboots to boomer rockcritics who also saw the arena concert scene as Nazi rallies revisited. "we will rock you" quickly became crowd-pumping music at sports events in the 70s which further explains some of the Fascist association. Truth be told, even Queen's best work could wear pretty thin when you heard it on the radio all day every day. Like their contemporaries Steely Dan & Hall/Oates I think Queen are best appreciated at a distance in measured doses. Constant involuntary exposure to elaborately produced OTT rock bombast such as Queen could make it sound oppressive

This is certainly how i've always understood the criticism. Stadium rock's emphasis on slickness, power and manipulative theatricality was seen to be an echo of Nuremberg. As the slickest and most theatrical, and as a band that played with some martial themes, Queen were the most obvious target for this. Laibach's Geburt Einer Nation is an excellent parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwdOX19_ETI

No idea what big queen fans are like over here. Guitar mag dudes, obviously. We hosted a German exchange student in high school and the only CDs she brought with her were the first two greatest hits volumes, but she was mostly just quiet and studious.

are mustaches an echo of Hitler?

Queen was invisible in the US between "I Want To Break Free" and Wayne's World. You wouldn't even hear their older stuff on "classic rock" radio (though "Rock You" and "Champions" were still heard at sporting events). Their records during that time always tanked here, although I do remember "One Vision" getting a little airplay.

Their fans here now seem to be largely casual "classic rock" listeners who also dig Zeppelin and maybe Sabbath and a little Floyd. I've never met a single hard-core Queen fan, or anyone who's even heard their post-1983 records, much less owns any of them.

If I were to meet someone today who claimed that Queen were their favourite band I would automatically make a load of other assumptions about things they like (The Rocky Horror Show, The Great Escape, Jeremy Clarkson). I'm aware this doesn't reflect particularly well on me but I basically associate them with Alan Partridge.

The strange thing about Queen animus is that at least on paper the band wasn't up to too much that Bowie wasn't doing and/or had done, and critics loved Bowie. So maybe with Queen is was a matter of too much, too late? That is, just when everyone (incl. Bowie) was stripping things down or going New Wave, Queen was getting bigger (in every sense).

(I read an interesting interview with Roy Thomas Baker about the Cars, where he notes that as austere as that early stuff is, he still enlists the same massed vocals that marked Queen, it's just the backdrop is not as bombastic.)

And yeah, Queen fandom in the US is I'd argue as casual or culty as ABBA fandom in the US. Everyone loves "Dancing Queen," but in the US you'd never gather ABBA was the biggest pop act of all time or whatever.

One Vision was on the Iron Eagle soundtrack.

Bowie was dogged by allegations of fascist sympathies for years.

That is, just when everyone (incl. Bowie) was stripping things down or going New Wave, Queen was getting bigger (in every sense).

I dunno...Queen's biggest US hits were "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"
-- not exactly "new wave," but pretty stripped-down compared to "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "We Are The Champions."

the early 80s US rock audience probably was discomfited by Freddie. Like "Another one…" did not work on rock radio, and heaven knows "Hot space" would be regarded by a 38 special fan as disco those fags and blacks listen to. mainstream "rock" fans were more or less openly racist and loudly homophobic in the early 80s.

Whereas in the UK and the rest of the world, they were consistently amongst the biggest bands extant in the 1980s. I think maybe for an NME reader/ Smiths fan / RiP Rig and Panic partisan in the 80s, their fans in the UK must have been like the lumpen proles who had bad hair, were embarrassing from a quasi-class perspective, etc etc…like imagine Boston/Styx/Foreigner/Journey/Asia (all of whom meant nothing in the UK) rolled into one band, then imagine the people who would go to their concerts…

I've never met a single hard-core Queen fan, or anyone who's even heard their post-1983 records, much less owns any of them.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

If I were to meet someone today who claimed that Queen were their favourite band I would automatically make a load of other assumptions about things they like (The Rocky Horror Show, The Great Escape, Jeremy Clarkson).

― Matt DC

mainstream "rock" fans were more or less openly racist and loudly homophobic in the early 80s.

I think that's painting the audience with far too broad a brush, though those elements were certainly there (and vocal). I always assumed that the "I Want To Break Free" video was what killed their career in the US. Boy George could get away with it, but an established stadium rock hero like Mercury appearing in drag -- and I believe a large portion of Queen's audience at that time didn't know Freddie was gay and/or assumed he wasn't -- was unacceptable.

That ws a v srs video and the other three guys're gay now too?

Tho tbf I guess there's not the same popular/comedic drag tradition in the US and it's a little baffling they used the same video there

I raised myself on Marsh/Xgau/Marcus lists so the Queen hate is something I take for granted but it is interesting. like, those guys weren't only about "true", authentic and socially conscious r'n'r and r'n'b. they supported the more pop styles of soul in particular (Doo Wop, Motown, philly, disco, boogie, english postpunk soul, all types of hip hop, new jack...) as opposed to more widely accepted "quality" soul (Xgau's distaste for 70's blaxploitation was particularly refreshing) which I always found useful but it's far from "common sense" music criticism. there was a promotional (Heart of Rock and Soul) radio interview with Marsh where his love for Nolan Strong is treated as weird which I think is a good example of this schism.

That ws a v srs video and the other three guys're gay now too?

It was enough that Mercury was perceived as being gay to an audience that, for the most part, hadn't given it much thought one way or the other up to that point. A similar fate befell Billy Squier, whose career was over after the "Rock Me Tonite" video. The mere suggestion that a mainstream hard-rock artist might be gay was enough to kill a career in the early 80s in the US.

Tho tbf I guess there's not the same popular/comedic drag tradition in the US and it's a little baffling they used the same video there

There's some tradition of it here, from Milton Berle in the 50s to "Bosom Buddies" in the 80s, but I don't know enough about it to understand where/how/why certain lines were drawn vis-a-vis audience acceptance/perceptions.

like, those guys weren't only about "true", authentic and socially conscious r'n'r and r'n'b. they supported the more pop styles of soul in particular (Doo Wop, Motown, philly, disco, boogie, english postpunk soul, all types of hip hop, new jack...)

Yeah, it always bugs me when Marsh gets pegged as someone for whom anything other than REAL ROOTS-ROCKIN' GUITAR is anathema. ffs, he loves Metal Box.

I'll take yr word for it re: PiL, but I've tried listening to his Sirius show, not the one devoted to the guy his wife co-manages, and it's excruciating. The only new shit he plays are singer-songwriters; he once went on a lengthy Gordon Lightfoot tangent; goes on and on about Doc Pomus and Frank Zappa (whom I would think he wouldn't like until PMRC time)…

was super amused when RRHoF announcement came down, and re: Kiss, he said "maybe I don't know what rock and roll is anymore." yeah, maybe you are not the final authority of what is correct in American music.

I'm not sure I've read anything by him; I think maybe I've dismissed him because his name is "dave marsh"

His stuff was printed extensively in the Baltimore Sun when I was growing up, trying to find my way through the Arts section or whatever. I just presumed he was THE rock critic.

Whereas the parody was acclaimed in the UK, it was considered controversial in the US and banned by MTV[1] and other stations.

I just don't hear many impressive tunes on the four albums I've heard.

this aggression must not stand. "Ogre Battle"? "Father to Son"? "You're My Best Friend?" for crying out loud? The longer I love Queen, the more incredible the early albums sound to me.

Am v hoping Ogre Battle is indeed a good song bc many worlds of things open if so

Queen was invisible in the US between "I Want To Break Free" and Wayne's World. You wouldn't even hear their older stuff on "classic rock" radio (though "Rock You" and "Champions" were still heard at sporting events).

Wait, is this true? Even as a kid, I think I was fairly familiar with "Bohemian Rhapsody" from (Cdn) classic rock radio pre-92?

'Ogre Battle' fucking rules.

Personally, I couldn't live without their run of albums between Queen and Jazz, and I find plenty to enjoy on the albums that came after also.

'we will rock you'/'we are the champions' never left and 'radio gaga', 'a kind of magic', and 'i want it all' were minor hits plus there was highlander (all the queen fans i knew pre-waynes world were highlander dorks). they had a big commercial peak and crashed w/ the next release and then kinda lingered neither gone nor really here, it happens. axl talking them up constantly helped and metallica covering 'stone cold crazy' helped (and personally 'terminator x to the edge of panic' helped) and then waynes world and the concert w/ freddies death sorta cemented the rehabilitation in america. rush seems like a real good comparison point - 70s success turning into very early 80s commercial peak prompted by adapting to some sound of the day, followed by quick predictable fall from fashion, an exile period w/ a core of nerdy fans keeping the faith, followed by early 90s quasi comeback prompted by new material as well as reissue or renewed focus on old classic material, w/ this last act cementing the band's brand and making rrhof selection inevitable even though at one point just a few years earlier their candidacy would have seemed doomed.

Yep, that sounds more accurate to me.

I've been fostering a love of Queen albums lately after growing up on the hits, there are really some amazing deep cuts (although I prefer the late 70s stuff to the first 4 albums): http://narrowcast.blogspot.com/2014/03/deep-album-cuts-vol-14-queen.html

I think one of the big US/UK divides is that even after post-Wayne's World resurgence, I never even heard of the posthumous album Made In Heaven, which apparently sold a ton in other countries

Interesting list, some choices I definitely wasn't expecting to say the least. My deep cuts list would look very different.

yeah that album was huge in europe. 'you don't fool me' was all over the radio in italy, i swear you could play that, articolo 31's 'domani', and jamiroquai's 'cosmic girl' back to back and if i closed my eyes i'd be on a beach in sardinia. still one of my fave posthumous vault scraper hits, nice balearic groove:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTQhhGTSE8

sheer heart attack is one of the best albums of the 70's. and definitely one of the greatest hard rock albums. it's near perfect. and VERY unique too. not a lot sounds like it. their thing was very definitely their thing. but critics like sparks more. i like sparks! there were so few hard rock bands that could be a legitimate hard rock band and write a song like "you're my best friend". which is kind of a perfect pop song. cheap trick could do it. badfinger. the raspberries. and there were even fewer bands where all four members could write memorable songs. news of the world has GREAT songs by all four members of queen.

Sheer Heart Attack is indeed excellent, and full of great moments: an absolutely killer opener with 'Brighton Rock'... the 'Tenement Funster'/'Flick Of The Wrist'/'Lily Of The Valley' suite... the over-the-top intro to 'In The Lap Of The Gods', the thrashy 'Stone Cold Crazy', the restrained 'She Makes Me'... the way the album ends with the sound of an explosion (caused by tape saturation). Oh, and it has 'Killer Queen' and 'Now I'm Here' on it, too.

Never would have guessed that rock critics vs. Queen would make for such a busy thread in 2014. I've always been puzzled that rock critics don't like Cream as much as I do (at least not anymore), and if I thought it'd get a quarter of the interest found here, I'd probably start a thread.

Queen are an institution in the UK though

Cream only seem to be held in esteem by doom/stoner rockers and Mojo readers. (which i dont understand)

dug out my blue RS Guide and there is a different Queen review, uncredited (I assume John Swenson), that calls Greatest Hits "redundant to the single 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love,' the only listenable rock song in a dismal career."

while trying to find an online transcript I went down this related rabbit hole:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/schmidtt/rolling_stones_500_worst_reviews_of_all_time__work_in_progress_/4/

I'd imagine some the disinterest in Cream by some critics is being unable to separate their dislike of Clapton.

Queen had a pretty wide range when you go from proto-thrash like Stone Cold Crazy to You're My Best Friend to Another One Bites the Dust to Radio Gaga To Crazy Little Thing Called Love To Bohemian Rhapsody and that really doesn't cover all the odd one shots in their catalog. They definitely were not afraid to try something different.

It's a damn shame it took Freddie getting gravely ill to get them all back on the same page, but I think Innuendo is one of the better late career albums by a 70s rock band.

I learned to love "A Kind of Magic" from a touching bit in the otherwise ghoulish US edition of "Queer as Folk," and AMC had as part of its pre-show in the early '00s a commercial with "I Want to Break Free" featured prominently, the playing of which would cause die-hards in the audience to squeal. balls' neither-here-nor-there account of the post-Hot Space US career sounds otm to me.

the first version I heard of Bohemian Rhapsody was this one by the guys from the Young Ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wM58YXp2x0&feature=kp

Bad News ruled

love The Comic Strip. They actually did Bad News just before Spinal Tap was made too. Brian May actually played guitar on that single.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6030/5980195685_509916c25f_o.png

LOL.

ok responding to a bunch of stuff:

Marsh otm in original post imo. Queen is def fascist and it creeps me out, even when its of the campy gay variety.
― Οὖτις, Friday, May 16, 2014 9:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I cannot think of a reasonable definition of "fascist" that would include Queen. I could imagine someone arguing that they flirted with fascist aesthetics, or something. I happen to think they didn't—indeed, that was stock-in-trade of 3rd-rate punk bands at the time.

a larger context here is the way that critics are almost always, implicitly or explicitly, making moral judgements alongside aesthetic ones. that is, a negative review—especially one as vituperative as Marsh's above—is seldom just a diagnosis of music that doesn't quite work. whether the tone is one of outrage or disappointment, there's a sense that the musicians have failed in some primary responsibility to an audience (or to the critic's ego construed as a figure for the audience). i mean part of this speaks to how important music is for a lot of people in our culture, though it also derives from a milieu (rock criticism and extreme fan-dom) where a narcissism of small differences reigns supreme. and thus distinctions (like, I dunno, Queen vs. New York Dolls) that would seem without a difference from a different cultural position suddenly become hugely portentous.

we're probably all guilty of this—personally, I wish I could wash this aspect of my personality out of my brain—but there are still occasions, especially when I have the benefit of cultural or temporal distance, when I'm like, "seriously guys?" this is one of those occasions.

queen rox and u r all gay
― The Reverend, Friday, May 16, 2014 10:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this thread was predicated on the assumption that Queen are awesome and that most people probably like them! SMH

the early 80s US rock audience probably was discomfited by Freddie. Like "Another one…" did not work on rock radio, and heaven knows "Hot space" would be regarded by a 38 special fan as disco those fags and blacks listen to. mainstream "rock" fans were more or less openly racist and loudly homophobic in the early 80s.

but we're not talking about fans (Queen had tons of those), but critics. critics who were quite comfortable with soul and disco—at least that applies to Dave Marsh, a guy with catholic and unexpected and rich tastes even if he often seems to betray them in favor of explicitly political roots-rock garbage. or what g simmel said (I really hope you're named after georg simmel btw).

if this all broke down into simple binaries, then the thread question wouldn't be very interesting, after all….

can someone speak more to the putatively "fascist" aspects of queen and why they were perceived that way, especially, in the 1970s? there's been some really good stuff on this thread so far (THANKS!) about it but I'd still like to hear more.

maybe it's simply that my experience listening to Queen has been mostly a private one of sitting around and listening to records, rather than doing so in their commercial prime and having to encounter their antics (?) on TV and in the newspapers etc. maybe their ubiquity and bombast would have scared me off, too, once upon a time.

xps Ha, this is the first version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" I heard. My dad told me it used to be a rock song when he was a kid and I couldn't envision it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmEzBuU5N_Y

Marcello takes them seriously.

xp It was one of the impetuses for this thread: Less famous covers that you knew before the more famous originals

Also note that it features what appears to be the silhouette of a black woman on the cover when it was sung by a white lady. A total Bobby Caldwell/early Madonna case.

Third note about The Braids' cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody": It was totally piggybacking on the success of the Fugees' stylistically similar cover of "Killing Me Softly" which had been all over the radio that year.

Marcello takes them seriously.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, May 17, 2014 4:01 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unfortunately, i can't take marcello's writing seriously. or rather, when reading him i get the distinctly unpleasant feeling that i'm witnessing a mind unravel.

To me, ascribing the differences between the New York Dolls and Queen to the narcissism of small differences--whether you're talking about the music, Dave Marsh's reaction to the music, or just about anything except their historical proximity--would be like saying the same of the differences between Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Lelouch, who were both successful French film directors in the mid-'60s.

To someone else, maybe they are more or less interchangeable.

I prefer "unfurl"

xpost

the difference between Queen and the New York Dolls is that Queen invaded Poland

while the Dolls couldn't even invade Christgau's living room.

!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-SMOsXCc0c

Xp But later David Johanson invaded both multiplexes and our hearts with his memorable role in Freejack.

Just heard "'39" for the first time. Lovely!

yeah that's a great song

not the dolls, but queen was def. taking notes while watching mott the hoople (supposedly the only act they ever opened for?).

no greater authority than joe elliott:

Rumor has it Freddy Mercury actually wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody" having watched Mott. Mott the Hoople were the only band Queen ever supported, and on that tour Mott were doing "Marionette" every night. Fred would stand and watch it. And although the two songs don't sound remotely like each other, you can see a parallel between them.

I always heard "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a nod to the Who's "A Quick One, While He's Away."

And although the two songs don't sound remotely like each other, you can see a parallel between them.

eh?

very dramatic, constructed out of lots of different tricky parts, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU7rqB9E_0M

LOVE that song.

Marionette / Bo rhap?

Naaaah.

can someone speak more to the putatively "fascist" aspects of queen and why they were perceived that way, especially, in the 1970s?

I think Marsh makes himself clear as to what he means, that he feels their drama is heavy-handed, audience is being spoon-fed, etc. You say in one of your first posts that other critics made the same charge, but who were they?

"We Are the Champions" - Queen's Nordic Supremacy-suspect current hit single

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1299&dat=19771212&id=_wBOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=94sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2650,5489244

he feels their drama is heavy-handed, audience is being spoon-fed

I mean, this doesn't quite seem to justify 'truly fascist' and 'creeps and their polluting ideas', does it?

See also: Bangs on ELP, Christgau on Journey, every Golden Age critic on Rush, etc

Certainly, The Game is less obnoxious than Queen's last few outings, simply because it's harder to get annoyed with a group that's plugging away at bad rockabilly than with one blasting out crypto-Nazi marching tunes.

Most of the songs on News of the World either challenge Queen's artistic enemies or endeavor to establish a vision of the new order. "We Are the Champions" ends with the line, "No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions—of the world." It's an appropriate comment for a side that also includes "We Will Rock You," which has the atmosphere of a political rally in a Leni Riefenstahl movie and is at once a rock anthem and a commandment.

Speaking of the NY Dolls, does anyone remember when David Johansen went on the Tonight Show as Buster Poindexter and explained to Johnny Carson that he quit singing rock music because his shows were becoming like Nazi rallies? I swear this really happened.

I found it. About 40 seconds in:

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

tons of reviews of Queen albums here, incl. dave marsh's "fascist" comment in the rs review of 'jazz.'

http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Queen_Music_Reviews

haha, from david fricke's review of live killers: "There are also two versions of their Aryan command, 'We Will Rock You.'"

most of this stuff just seems like a bunch of uptight guys justifying their hatred of a band with whatever cultural/political boogeyman seemed most damning at the time

probably because it remains such a popular practice to this day

otm. today they'd undoubtedly be racist/sexist. oh wait they were sexist then too.

News of the World [Elektra, 1977]
In which the group that last January brought us a $7.98 LP to boycott devotes one side to the wantonness of woman and the other to the futile rebelliousness of the doomed-to-life losers (those saps!) (you saps!) who buy and listen. C

70's crit is chock full of homophobia. almost the default setting.

queen has always had a large female following. or at least from a night at the opera on. they appeal to drama queens. like me. and my sister.

rock critics have always sneered at stuff popular with teens. i think that's it more than anything.

freddie was soooooooooo gay! way campier than bowie. way more proud of his strutting and preening too. he owned it. and teen boys and girls thought he was the coolest! i always thought that was awesome.

Longshot, but it's also possible Christgau, Marsh, Marcus, and the rest despised Queen's music.

:D scott, you are such a happy writer

xp

what's Tarfumes gonna do with this quote:

"When we lost Freddie, we not only lost a great personality, a man with a great sense of humour, a true showman, but we lost probably the best. The best virtuoso rock 'n' roll singer of all time. He could sing anything in any style. He could change his style from line to line and, God, that's an art. And he was brilliant at it."
Roger Daltrey

christgau and marsh hate or are indifferent to about 80% of the things i love. that's okay though. i will always read xgau even though we are polar opposites. i probably have more in common with greil. he likes a lot of stuff that i like. xgau has always hated metal pretty much.

man its impossible to overstate how huge bohemian rapz was after wayne's world came out. it seemed to really lead to a big queen resurgence—i remember they reissued one of the volumes of their greatest hits and tacked on BR and called it "classic queen"?

was b-raps a huge hit in the day, too? or some weird deep cut?

yeah xgau has little use for anything too european in general (he's admitted as much) which limits appreciation of metal, queen, abba, daft punk, etc

honest q: why do people give much of a shit abt him then? he sounds lame.

lol it was a massive #1 in the UK december 1975. My folks bought me a night at the opera that xmas. I wasnt even 3 yet. I loved that song apparently.
xp

I remember gushing to Chris Karolidis in grade 10 history what a big deal it was that it made #1 in both the U.K. and the States. I thought my memory was faulty when I checked--it only made it to #9 in the States--but it was #1 in Canada, so that must have been what I meant.

(Also, deep cuts didn't exist in the 1970s. We called them "album tracks" or "those other songs.")

in the uk 'bohemian rhapsody' was ridiculously big, a #1 hit and a couple of years after its release it got song of the half century or something like that from the british recording industry (sgt peppers got album iirc to give you some idea of what type of canon it was already in). it did well elsewhere including the us where it hit #9 in 76, and it got some grammy nominations. reissue did better but part of that might've been changes in radio and chart calculation plus it has literally both of the factors that can lead to an old song suddenly becoming a hit again (death, use in other media). i remember occasionally seeing the video along w/ every other ancient pre-mtv video here and there during the 80s but it's profile wasn't remotely what it became. this makes sense though, these songs weren't that old and 8-10 year old hits don't really have a place on radio. 'we will rock you' and 'we are the champions' had lingered by virtue of being jock jams but i didn't know about 'under pressure' until vanilla ice, and wouldn't really have had any reason to. i'd guess there's a difference there w/ the uk where they reached a level higher than simply very successful rock band.

in fairness to xgau he knew they had something; he just couldn't (allow himself to) get a handle on it.

A Night at the Opera [Elektra, 1975]
This is near enough to the reported mishmash to make me doubt that it sells for what's good about it. Which is that it doesn't actually botch any of a half-dozen arty-to-heavy "eclectic" modes--even something called "Prophet's Song" sounds OK--and achieves a parodic tone often enough to suggest more than meets the ear. Maybe if they come up with a coherent masterwork I'll figure out what that more is. Maybe if they come up with a coherent masterwork they'll figure out what that more is. B-

You have no idea how big Queen were. Way bigger and better known than Led Zeppelin. I never heard any zep on uk daytime radio growing up.

I'm really the only person who knew "Bohemian Rhapsody" from classic rock radio pre-92??

xp yep i never knowingly heard zep until my 20s when i befriended a rock/metal guy. i remember specifically thinking "so that's where queen got their sound."

I had to buy Led Zep IV just to hear this stairway to heaven song people spoke of.
Whole Lotta Love was known purely because a cover version of it was the top of the pops theme tune

metal, for Xgau, clearly represented the quotidian american, midwest/south mill-yer that he resented deeply. rather like a lot of people who left NYC for college for 4 years and then came back for the rest of their lives…

it never fails to amaze me that so many of you guys are in thrall to the likes of Xgau and Marsh, to the point where so many of you cite shit they wrote as if it means a goddamn thing…I'm 43, and the amount of guys on this board who reflexively defend those guys makes me think that that alot of you here just a bit older than me and are weirdly hung-up on the bizarre, self-flattering but very much not self-aware shit those guys have perpetrated for decades… but at least Xgau's wife didn't manage Peter Stampfel…

ha ha al these UK guys who just posted…tell us how old you are, if you dare!

I'm really the only person who knew "Bohemian Rhapsody" from classic rock radio pre-92??

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Saturday, May 17, 2014 8:04 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it was def around classic rock stations in metro nyc turn of the 80s, not huge though.

Like "Another one…" did not work on rock radio

this song saturated every kind of radio as far as i recall.

x-post is anyone here really in thrall of Marsh? I did the polls of his stupid list book, but I never detected any love for the man.

i love this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wk9hPubD1Q

Yeah, it was another one I remembered.
xpost re "Another One..."

ha ha al these UK guys who just posted…tell us how old you are, if you dare!

― veronica moser,

41

i'm 42

that is so fuckin' hilarious that UK dudes around my age had to buy a record to hear fuckin "stairway." in the U.S., that song is a fact of life like McDonalds, but the countrymen of the people who made it have to seek it out cuz Morrissey and the NME doesn't like it!

although maybe folks born in the US in 1992 or thereabouts have never heard it.

it never fails to amaze me that so many of you guys are in thrall to the likes of Xgau and Marsh, to the point where so many of you cite shit they wrote as if it means a goddamn thing…I'm 43, and the amount of guys on this board who reflexively defend those guys makes me think that that alot of you here just a bit older than me and are weirdly hung-up on the bizarre, self-flattering but very much not self-aware shit those guys have perpetrated for decades

eh Christgau was a huge influence but like scott said his tastes and mine don't intersect for quite a few things he thought too "British" or "European." But so what? Apart from admiring felicities of style, the point of writers reading writers is often just to follow the course of an argument. Sharing tastes doesn't matter much to me.

xp i live in the us now and it was conversely weird to me to discover classic rock radio and see all these teens into the likes of pink floyd.

to the point where so many of you cite shit they wrote as if it means a goddamn thing

this sorta is a thread about rock critics' attitudes toward queen iirc.

WW reissue of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was so fucking huge in America. Only Vanessa Williams' great "Save the Best For Last" kept it from #1. I always associate spring '92 with those two jams, "I Love Your Smile," and "Jump."

what a great fuckin year

all4 of those songs own

speaking of all4 we also had "All 4 Love" at #1.

For what it's worth, Christgau did come around on Queen when he reviewed something called Barcelona (had this lodged in my memory, had to google "Christgau Mercury"):

I can't deny it because I catch myself grinning--distanced by the years, and with the campy kicks magnified by a heightened awareness of Freddie Mercury's sexuality, the music of Queen has accrued the high gloss of committed kitsch, where that of Journey, say, has assumed the dull shapelessness of utter crap. Although I don't enjoy all of Classic Queen or Queen's Greatest Hits--the material's not quite that deep--they're often funny and they're also pop, oddly reminiscent of top-grade Cheap Trick.

The Cheap Trick lover in me flinches, but there you go.

It's amazing Queen did these kinds of sales in the UK for most of the eighties:

The single reached only the 45th position in the US charts, but reached number 3 in the UK and was certified silver with 200,000+ copies sold

That's for "I Want to Break Free."

as if it means a goddamn thing

As opposed to what? What we say here? They had opinions, we have opinions, some of theirs influenced some of mine.

yeah I don't get veronica moser's position. Critics should resist reading....other critics?

that is so fuckin' hilarious that UK dudes around my age had to buy a record to hear fuckin "stairway." in the U.S., that song is a fact of life like McDonalds, but the countrymen of the people who made it have to seek it out cuz Morrissey and the NME doesn't like it!

although maybe folks born in the US in 1992 or thereabouts have never heard it.

― veronica moser, Saturday, May 17, 2014 7:44 PM Bookmark

I'm an estadounidense and have never heard "Stairway to Heaven" other than of my own volition (and thank god, that song fucking sucks). I've hear Queen all the time tho.

it never fails to amaze me that so many of you guys are in thrall to the likes of Xgau and Marsh, to the point where so many of you cite shit they wrote as if it means a goddamn thing…

i don't get that impression from this thread at all FWIW.

I'm just interested in why the rock-crit establishment (not just those two guys) hated Queen so much. I mean, it's a valid historical question.

xpost

isn't "kitsch" by definition something of poor quality? Queen is not kitsch.

what was the last old song to get a second life like that? was fairly common for a string there during the 80s into early 90s - 'twist and shout', 'stand by me', 'unchained melody', 'bohemian rhapsody', and i'm sure i'm forgetting others (none of these were obscurities to begin w/ either). these were generally all due to use in movies and the uk had a similar phenomenon w/ levi's ads during this time as well.

your beloved "Into the Night." Also: "Send Me An Angel." Bit of a trend in '89.

xpost

motherfucking candle in the wind?

Elvis's "A Little Less Conversation"?

yeah, though that's kinda a different type of trend where you had early 80s hits get second life (and often rerecordings by said acts needing a new record deal), the same happened w/ 'i melt w/ you'.

well I guess I should say that I've been around Xgau a number of times, and he's remarkable for the smug self-satisfaction that he exudes, so yeah that influences the way I think about him. He and Marsh have existed in only occasionally permeable bubbles for 40 years now that no one, not even the most self-impressed rock crit reprobates among you, should ever aspire to. and both of them continue to exude a certain privilege a la "oh I've been doing this for so long no one can fuck with me" that is truly revolting. They are the Clapton-esque elite of the field, and should be regarded as such.

'candle in the wind' was a very different recording though, it wasn't quite the disparity of having an old ben e. king hit pop up between falco and nu shooz. plus the circumstances (referring here to america's infatuation w/ a-side 'something about the way you look tonight', perhaps prompted by a nation unable to stop thinking about heather graham in boogie nights), you could sell me that the charting of a different live version of 'candle in the wind' in 87 ties into this phenomenon somewhat (though that's probably more 'hey here's a live version of some old shit' a la 'maybe i'm amazed' and 'she's got a way'). 'a little less conversation' probably qualifies more though i'm begrudging it cuz remix plus was it that big a hit really. i never got whiplash from it like i did w/ 'unchained melody'.

Let's not forget: "Candle in the Wind" was bigger in America in '87 and '97 than it ever was in the seventies.

well I guess I should say that I've been around Xgau a number of times, and he's remarkable for the smug self-satisfaction that he exudes

never gotten this attitude from him at all -- the contrary actually -- but ok

that is so fuckin' hilarious that UK dudes around my age had to buy a record to hear fuckin "stairway." in the U.S., that song is a fact of life like McDonalds, but the countrymen of the people who made it have to seek it out cuz Morrissey and the NME doesn't like it!

Zep never released singles in the UK so didnt get pop airplay (smiths etc never got airplay either) and UK had no rock radio.
obv peel played zep etc at the time as will have alan fluff freeman. but that was evening/late night.

i actually owned the 87 version 7-inch. was kinda horrified the first time i heard the goodbye yellow brick road version - what's w/ these beach boys touches? and that corny guitar line? WHY ISN'T HE BELLOWING MORE??? just remembered another coelacanth hit - 'daydream believer'. maybe even another monkees rerelease i'm forgetting (most successful state fair reunion ever). this isn't quite isolated to the late 80s, the beatles charted in the top ten in 1976 w/ 'got to get you into my life', but it seems like it flourished more from 86-92.

four kinds i think:

1 - these ancient coelacanth hits popping up due to movie or tv ('stand by me', 'bohemian rhapsody', 'unchained melody')

2 - desperate fucks lucking into some dj somewhere playing their one hit and milking that second chance for all it's worth by rerecording that one hit (benny, modern english, real life)(just found out the guys who did 'send me an angel' were named real life)

3 - someone w/ recent pop success putting out a comp as a stopgap while they work on a followup and throwing out a remix of a song that should've done better on the charts the first time around ('valerie', 'blue monday 88', 'close to me (closest remix)')

4 - hey here's a live version of some old song that wasn't that huge a hit the first time ('she's got a way', 'candle in the wind')

3 & 4 closely related, 2 somewhere between those two and 1, which is the outgroup.

When did they start playing Zep on the radio in the UK? That is so so so weird.

I mean, i understand Queen's ubiquitousness in the UK, but the seemingly deliberate blacklisting of Zep like they were Insane Clown Posse or something...

yeah 'stairway' is atop peel's festive fifty for 76, whole list is like a glimpse of a possible model for what uk classic rock could've been -

1. Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven
2. Derek & the Dominoes - Layla
3. Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
4. Pink Floyd - Echoes
5. Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
6. Free - Alright Now
7. Racing Cars - They Shoot Horses Don't They?
8. Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond
9. Beatles - A Day In The Life
10. Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone
11. Poco - Rose of Cimarron
12. Neil Young - Cortez the killer
13. Rolling Stones - Brown sugar
14. Beatles - Hey Jude
15. Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralysed
16. Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo chile
17. Beatles - Strawberry fields forever
18. Captain Beefheart - Big eyed beans from Venus
19. Led Zeppelin - Whole lotta love
20. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird
21. Van Morrison - Madame George
22. Doors - Riders on the storm
23. Bob Dylan - Visions of Johanna
24. Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit
25. Deep Purple - Child in time
26. Little Feat - Long distance love
27. Grinderswitch - Pickin' the blues
28. Joe Walsh - Rocky mountain way
29. Who - Won't get fooled again
30. Misunderstood - I can take you to the sun
31. Genesis - Supper's ready
32. Bob Marley and the Wailers - No woman, no cry
33. Jonathan Richman - Roadrunner
34. Rod Stewart - Maggie May
35. Jackson Browne - Late for the sky
36. Led Zeppelin - Kashmir
37. Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe
38. Allman Brothers band - Jessica
39. Rolling Stones - Jumping Jack flash
40. Grateful Dead - Dark Star
41. Richard Thompson - I wanna see the bright lights
42. Family - The weaver's answer
43. Jackson Browne - Fountain of sorrow
44. Bob Dylan - Hurricane
45. Doors - Light my fire
46. Matching Mole - O Caroline
47. Roy Harper - When an old cricketer leaves the crease
48. Wild Man Fischer - Go to Rhino records
49. Little Feat - Willin'
50. Yes - And you and I

that jonathan richman is like seeing a little microbe that's about to wipe out every organism around it

Good call on "Valerie."It and "Higher Love" and to a lessee extent "While You See a Chance" are the only Winwoods I hear.

lol i play arc of a diver like five times a summer. 'spanish dancer' is what i want playing when i'm gliding past the fans to jessica lange's embrace.

"Hold on" from the his first solo album is what I wish the rest of his solo career leaned towards, not that I would want to live without his zippy 80s synth lead style. Him and D'angelo should make an album together.

"Baby Blue" made a couple of Billboard charts after the Breaking Bad episode ("it blasts onto Rock Digital Songs at No. 8"--the tremors are still being felt).

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/5755383/chart-moves-badfingers-baby-blue-enters-hot-rock-songs-paramore-scores-a

I think the launch of virgin radio was when stairway got played on daytime radio (early on before it became just another 80s station)

Older people obv had heard zep as they were huge but i guess they sought out the records themselves. But i never heard them once during the 80s on radio.

re. peel's festive 50 for 76:

it's funny, some of that stuff was no doubt cutting-edge at the time but I begin looking through that list and I can barely keep my eyes open. i mean a lot of the music on it is great but—with a few notable exceptions, the equivalent of someone pouring water on you while you're napping—seeing zeppelin/floyd/hendrix/beatles/dylan/free in succession triggers some sleep mechanism in my brain.

seemingly half of those songs are from late 60s/early 70s--what gives?

the list is also WHITE AS FUCK. jesus, did peel never listen to R&B?

i mean i feel like half of my faves from 76 would be miami or philly r&b

that will be voted by his listeners

The first Festive Fifty was broadcast in 1976 and differed in format to later charts in that it was not restricted to songs from that year. It was topped by Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", first released in 1971, and also contained many older songs.

Despite Peel's eclectic play list, the Festive Fifty tended to be composed largely of "white boys with guitars", as Peel complained in 1988.

yeah rock show listeners voting for rock songs isn't that crazy, there's enough there (beefheart, richman) to make me wonder how much of that listenership was still there a year later

77 festive 50*

1. Dancing The Night Away' The Motors
2. Uptown Top Ranking' Althia & Donna
3. You Beat The Hell Out of Me' The Motors
4. I Can't Stand My Baby' The Rezillos
5. Suspended Sentence' John Cooper Clarke
6. Smokescreen' Desperate Bicycles
7. Right Track - Marlene Webber
8. Like a Hurricane' Neil Young
9. Complete Control' The Clash
10. Be Good To Yourself' Frankie Miller
11. Holidays In The Sun' The Sex Pistols
12. Shadow' The Lurkers
13. Truly' J. Ayes and Ranking Trevor
14. Pigs' Pink Floyd
15. Incendiary Device' Johnny Moped
16. New Religion' Some Chicken
17. See Them Come' Culture
18. Emergency' The Motors
19. The Worm Song' The Yobs
20. Box Number' The Boys
21. London Lady' The Stranglers
22. I Don't Wanna' Sham 69
23. Pinhead' The Ramones
24. Freedom Connection' Jah Woosh
25. Can't Give You More' Status Quo
26. Blue Wind' Jeff Beck with Jan Hammer
27. White Riot' The Clash
28. Success' Iggy Pop
29. Your Generation' Generation X
30. Nobody Go Run Me' King Short Shirt
31. Love Story' The Lurkers
32. Waiting in Vain' Bob Marley & The Wailers
33. Paradise' Dr Feelgood
34. Cruel Brother' Five Hand Reel
35. I'm Stranded' The Saints
36. Heroes' David Bowie
37. Sick On You' The Users
38. Oh Bondage Up Yours!' X Ray Spex
39. Lookin' After Number 1' The Boomtown Rats
40. No Man's Land' June Tabor
41. Neat Neat Neat' The Damned
42. The Dark End Of The Street' Ry Cooder
43. Questions' Suburban Studs
44. Feel Like Making Love' Elizabeth Archer & The Equators
45. I Knew The Bride' Dave Edmunds
46. Away From The Numbers' The Jam
47. Whole Wide World' Wreckless Eric
48. Green Onions' Roy Buchanan
49. Wild Dub' Generation X
50. I.R.T.' Snatch
51. Pretty Vacant' The Sex Pistols
52. John Willie's Ferret' The Oldham Tinkers
53 'Stepping Razor' Peter Tosh
54. Capital Radio' The Clash
55. Watching The Detectives' Elvis Costello and The Attractions
56. Bringing In The Morning Light' The Motors
57. Beginning of The End' Eddie & The Hot Rods
58. Jocko Homo' Devo
59. Whatever Happened To' The Buzzcocks
60. Rocket In My Pocket' Little Feat
...& 61..God Save The Queen' The Sex Pistols

77's was all chosen by peel.

then

The following years' returned to a listener poll and listed mostly contemporary songs - "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols topped three consecutive charts from 1978 and came second in the 1981. This marked a period of domination of the upper reaches of the chart by punk artists as the genre was embraced by Peel and his listeners, though other genres were represented further down the list, and the continuing presence in the list of "Stairway to Heaven" until 1979 showed that the older generation of Peel listeners had not completely abandoned the show.

a lot of punks liked the old rock/metal but just werent allowed to admit it. Ive lost count of people who got into punk and sold their rock records and regretted it.
Plus led zep were known punk fans. Id wager most of the early punk bands were zep fans previously.

peels beloved faces were loved by punks

ah, i didn't realize that (76 festive 50) was a listeners' poll. that explains a lot. peel's own poll is still amazingly white—athea & donna almost feels like a token in that context. i mean, fuck, how much great jamaican music was released in the late 70s (much of it on UK labels)? I can't even begin to count...

anyway

QUEEN

When did "Redemption Song" become a signature Bob Marley tune?

the day the music died IMO

in all seriousness: probably shortly after it first appeared on that "Legend" comp in mid-80s?

song came out in 1980, last song on last album to come out during his lifetime

what's Tarfumes gonna do with this quote:

Point out that Louis Armstrong's favorite bandleader -- over Ellington and Basie -- was Guy Lombardo. Some brilliant artists have lapses in taste.

(Although I'll grant that Mercury was the only other UK singer at the time who could've/should've posed as a centaur on a record cover.)

Queen is aggressively showoffy music major nonsense and that's something that some people cannot tolerate.

From my perspective I just wish the guitar solos were longer on the hits.

xgau has always hated metal pretty much.

― scott seward, Saturday, May 17, 2014 9:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is true, and Marsh called him out on it:

I think he hates rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t even think he makes much of a secret about it. If you actually look at his reviews, he doesn’t like rock bands. He said some miserably – I can’t think of a better way to put it but bigoted things about, for instance, the heavy metal audience.

what was the last old song to get a second life like that? was fairly common for a string there during the 80s into early 90s - 'twist and shout', 'stand by me', 'unchained melody', 'bohemian rhapsody', and i'm sure i'm forgetting others (none of these were obscurities to begin w/ either). these were generally all due to use in movies and the uk had a similar phenomenon w/ levi's ads during this time as well.

― balls, Saturday, May 17, 2014 11:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"I Got You (I Feel Good)" had a resurgence in interest after Good Morning, Vietnam, as did Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" (which hit #32 in 1988).

This convo happening like "Don't Stop Believing" never got played on the Sopranos.

remind me again how that's relevant here

that armstrong one is interesting cuz it wasn't a hit originally in the us. did well in the uk at the time but it did much better in 88 than 67 in the us. part of me wonders - were boomers buying singles? obv radio pandering to boomers played a huge role (though not as much w/ queen i think) but were these hits again purely off airplay?

That's a good question. I can't imagine boomers being too into that era of Armstrong; in the late 60s, he was considered to be strictly squaresville. A bunch of kids in my high school in '88 were into that record, which I found kind of strange and interesting. I think for them it was just a fascinating (and lovely) relic of a bygone era, but that era wasn't necessarily the 60s -- I think they assumed the song dated from the 40s or 50s.

WW reissue of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was so fucking huge in America. Only Vanessa Williams' great "Save the Best For Last" kept it from #1. I always associate spring '92 with those two jams, "I Love Your Smile," and "Jump."

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, May 17, 2014 9:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was 13 when Wayne's World came out (and hence in its prime demographic). Had never before heard "Bohemian's Rhapsody" and loved it. Loved, too, that it was being played on Top 40 radio, even on the local rhythmic-top-40 station that was otherwise playing, like, "Remember the Time" and "I'm Too Sexy" and CeCe Peniston.

"You have no idea how big Queen were. Way bigger and better known than Led Zeppelin. I never heard any zep on uk daytime radio growing up."

This is interesting. I always knew the US was totally crazy over The Who by comparison to the UK, especially say by the late 80s and beyond. The Who could just camp outside of Chicago and probably sell out a whole tour at one point. I really never realized that Led Zep's profile was that less in the UK. I don't know if it is a big feature on radio now, but pretty much from the 80s on I can remember many radio stations doing a "get the led out" set either over 30-60 minutes over a weekend or some kind of thing where they state they roll a dice like at 9pm and then play 2-6 Led Zep tunes in a row.

The Who could just camp outside of Chicago and probably sell out a whole tour at one point.

This was definitely true through 1989. But they played to a lot of half-empty arenas here in 1996 and 1997. The Schlitz sponsorship on the '82 tour and the '89 "The Who On Ice" reunion cash-grab did serious damage to their image in the US for a number of years.

of interest to this tangent: a couple years ago I started a thread that was dedicated to figuring out what TV/movie placement or random pop culture bump caused whatever old songs are currently showing up on digital sales charts

rolling "why is this old song suddenly on a digital sales chart" thread

http://danielnester2.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/itmap2.jpg?w=213&h=426

a brave look in '77

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/06/28/196678642/the-slow-hit-movement-year-old-songs-on-the-pop-charts

The Re-Issue Movement of '88-'89. Others:

UB40 - Red Red Wine
Sheriff - When I'm With You
Jimmy Harnen and Synch - Where Are You Now?

The thing that needs to be emphasised here is that, in the UK, Queen are about as establishment as they come, only Elton John and Paul McCartney share that position as the absolute ubiquitous centrepieces of the most granny-friendly of mainstream popular culture. They may have emerged from the same world as Zeppelin or Floyd or whoever but in the popular consciousness they eclipse all of them, they probably even eclipse the Rolling Stones.

Although to illustrate their position in pop culture over here the closest comparison point is probably Abba rather than any other rock band. There wassn't a shred of bohemianism or danger to them even when they were being weird.

yeah Queen seem to be seen in the UK the way the Eagles are seen in the US (fittings, since those bands' respective greatest hits collections are the top selling albums of all time in their home country)

That's a good comparison, yeah.

The other thing is that Queen (or Freddie Mercury really) fit squarely into a very mainstream kind of camp, dudes in dresses are at the centre of British culture in a way they just aren't in the US, so Mercury could pull off a lot of stuff that wouldn't even code as particularly weird even among people who would be otherwise homophobic. Like he was obviously flamboyant as hell but as far as I know he never explicitly came out and that just wouldn't have been a contradiction in 70s or 80s Britain. Compare that to the gestures that Bowie made.

i think Freddie and some other British rock stars got away with a lot of stuff with American audiences that American artists wouldn't have because there was always a sense of "well, he's British, it's a different culture over there"

Like obviously Britain was a way more homophobic society back then but there was this weird thing where the British public was perfectly willing to accept and treasure people who acted as camp as possible as long as they didn't actively talk about being gay or outwardly show any physical affection to another dude.

Even Neil Tennant didn't come out publicly until 1994. Neil Tennant!

It's worth noting that in America Elton's decision to admit his bisexuality coincided with the beginning of his artistic decline. Bowie on the other hand got the declaration out of the way immediately, which allowed the public and music press to marinate in the concept for a few years while programmers eventually started playing his records enough so that Young Americans and Station to Station became huge hits.

With Mercury he didn't change a fraction of an inch: he was flamboyant and remained so as he watched times change.

i think Freddie and some other British rock stars got away with a lot of stuff with American audiences that American artists wouldn't have because there was always a sense of "well, he's British, it's a different culture over there"

http://youtu.be/7dKpHtc9F9M?t=1m23s

I guess I grew up sheltered, in an extremely liberal environment...I was a kid, but at the time I saw "We are the Champions" as ironic. I thought everyone knew Freddie was gay. As a music geek I really enjoyed Brian May. My brother's favorite band, we were so sheltered we thought being gay was natural to the rock culture.

A lot of those critics came from a Vietnam-era mentality, where there was an "us versus them" (imagined reactionary elements) mentality.

Also kids' opinions didn't count for anything in the seventies...it was something used to disparage bands.

Can you plz point out to me where the irony is in We Are The Champions

I dont think sporting events crowds use it ironically but maybe the joke us on them.

I always got an ironic feeling from "no time for losers"

The thing with the Eagles in the UK though is that they sold out stadiums in 1976 here and again in 96 and beyond when they reformed.
Did Queen ever play stadiums in the US?
Plus you did hear a couple of Eagles songs on radio now and again unlike zep.

They never played outdoor sports stadiums here, but starting around 1976 they were playing arenas (Madison Square Garden, LA Forum and the like).

Even Neil Tennant didn't come out publicly until 1994. Neil Tennant!

Neil Tennant is gay!?!

Led Zep never released any singles, so obviously you never heard them on (daytime) radio, the Eagles did.

already said that upthread, tom

but youre a bit older than me tom, so how big actually was zep here? who was into them? I assume NME/MM didn't care for them? How about Sounds?

I always assume Sounds was the reason certain bands got popular but is that fair?

Big. But not in that slightly ridiculous way they are in the States... but then the same could probably be said of the Beatles! In the UK I'm sure they were considered the biggest rock band of the 70s, who else was there, Pink Floyd maybe.

The UK public (and radio) just never did rock, did they? Probably explains why there was not much disco sucks over here. Queen pretty much did rock for the UK and thats all it wanted.

I don't know about that

just imagining rock music coming over the airwaves in England and people shrieking in the streets a la Godzilla

Metal, not exactly unpopular in the UK? Well I don't know about now. If it got onthe Top 40, it would be played.

once a week.
Now if it gets in the top 40 the run down show doesnt even play it or anything else it hasnt playlisted

I always got an ironic feeling from "no time for losers"

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Sunday, May 18, 2014 10:33 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same here. there's far too much humor and camp and playfulness in their catalog for me to hear that song as 100% serious.

I tried listening to a Queen album a while back and there were like THREE 20s/30s pastiches on it - I thought, fuck this McCartneyesque empty eclecticism tbh.

eff that, their 20s/30s tunes were gr8 (esp "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon").

I don't like Queen I at all, other than the opener, but Queen II through News of the World is pretty unimpeachable.

Playful fascism possibly the worst kind

I mean, "We Will Rock You" -- he's playing a drill sergeant, not being a drill sergeant.

Replace drill sergeant w racist in that sentence, would you be as accepting? Shitty aesthetics are shitty aesthetics. I have more nuanced thoughts about this but am typing on phone sorry.

When were Queen fascists?? A gay not really white guy singing camp. Please, "we'll keep on fighting 'till the end"...it's very blue-collar leather man. Stadiums playing it is a testament to the stupidity /naïveté of the programmer.

Are sports crowds fascist too?? Like basketball crowds - I bet they're all racist.

Flowery Beatles shit, funk tracks getting played in the disco, opera singing....dude if you want crypto-fascism try hardcore music!

Are sports crowds fascist too??

ask this man

http://nonsite.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Adorno.jpg

Large groups of people shouting triumphalist nonsense is pretty fascist yeah. And I'm not talking politically about the band here (sun city thing upthread aside I dont know anything about their personal politics), they were artists not party leaders. I am talking about aesthetics here, generally speaking, and those aesthetics tie into and are related to and reminiscent of the aesthetics promoted and developed by actual fascist political parties. I dont know if "irony" excuses this really.

"We were quite excessive, but in a fairly harmless way," says May, for the defence as it were. "I don't think we ever did anyone a great disservice. I can understand some people saying We Are The Champions was bombastic. But it wasn't saying Queen are the champions, it was saying all of us are. It made the concert like a football match but with everyone on the same side.

http://www.deaky.net/rain/q91E.html

Except the losers, that is. Fascism is always monomaniacal, people that don't belong don't exist/shouldn't exist, they are an afterthought.

That's largely true. But I don't hear it in Queen's music.

I hear it in their biggest hits. Another One Bites the Dust, We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions. Bohemian Rhapsody could be sung by Hitler.

The self pity and ego of a murderer blown up to monstrous proportions, ending in adolescent nihilism.

We're still talking about Queen rite

Our Band Could Be Hitler's Life

I can actually understand how someone could find the message of "We Are the Champions" a little off-putting/uncomfortable. However, an introspective song from the pov of a self-pitying murderer (with a goofy, blatantly ironic quasi-operatic break) is really not the same thing imo.

It was better when the Bee Gees did it tbh

Adorno tripped over this shit too. I don't like sports or sports events but it takes warped imagination to construct an analogy between the Heat alongside thousands and cheering for a little man in a mustache with bad breath who's yelling about annexing Austria.

*between cheering for the Heat

Replace drill sergeant w racist in that sentence, would you be as accepting?

I mean, these two things are not equivalent imo, unless you're pretty radically pacifist! Drill sergeants are useful in the right time and place, especially if they just want to rock you.

I am a radical pacifist I guess.

Please dont rock me

drill instructor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQFYJXMVxTc

Is Phillippe Wynne a fascist?

Not my favorite George Clinton concept tbh, but I do find commands to dance inherently less objectionable than commands to accept being rocked by pompous rich narcissists.

George Clinton isn't rich?

There is actual violence ("blood on your face") in the Queen material that is not present in Funkadelic, which is just exhorting everyone to dance and party.

Clinton's wealth has never approached Queen levels. Plus there's the whole being black thing, which automatically puts him in opposition to existing class structure of the 70s. this was not some white guys claiming to be and acting like royalty. They were claiming to be aliens etc.

There is actual violence ("blood on your face") in the Queen material that is not present in Funkadelic, which is just exhorting everyone to dance and party.

"actual" violence in a song. Do you literally shit in your pants when you watch a scary movie?

plus, Funkadelic music is often fraught and queasy, never mind the lyrics.

I think a lyrical exhortation to dance is fundamentally different from one that threatens violence yes.

this was not some white guys claiming to be and acting like royalty.

claiming? You mean they weren't actually queens?

Even moreso when the latter is accompanied by stomping jackboot
xp

Gotta go now, more later

When did they start playing Zep on the radio in the UK? That is so so so weird.

― brimstead, Sunday, May 18, 2014 3:39 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the 30 years I've been alive, I've only ever heard 'Stairway To Heaven' played on the radio twice. I can't recall any other Zeppelin song getting any airplay.

I think a lyrical exhortation to dance is fundamentally different from one that threatens violence yes.

― Οὖτις, Sunday, May 18, 2014 2:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we will we will rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone

we need trigger warnings on Queen songs

WARNING: You may get blood on your face from listening to this song.

we will we will rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your face til there´s no teeth left.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your face til your face flows red.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
boks in your bollox now your seed don´t spread.
stomp, stomp left, stomp, stomp right.
i´m happy standing toe to toe trading blows,
but if you fall i´m gonna make your arse READ THESE BOKS
i´ll smack you in the mouth, show you what a real mans about,
when you drop you´re gonna READ THESE BOKS
heel to your jaw, blood spils on the floor,
i viciously ensure you READ THESE BOKS
stomping on your head til your brains brown bread,
as i´m kicking you dead, READ THESE BOKS

Queen's "Don't Try Suicide" is probably more pro-suicide than Ozzy's "Suicide Solution," which came out the same year, where were the PMRC on that one

I kind of alluded to this earlier, but as someone who was never exposed to classic rock radio as a kid, some of the bands here that are being mentioned as being on a similar/larger level (Zep/Eagles/Who) were completely foreign to me as a kid, even while Queen felt like they were always around? I've still never knowingly heard the Who other than "My Generation".

fwiw, the Who are by far the worst-sellers out of those four: only one top 10 single ("I Can See For Miles" topped out at #9 in 1967), and no #1 albums.

Queen was definitely 'pop' on some level that the Beatles were and a lot of those bands kinda weren't

This was alluded to earlier in this thread but it's worth noting, given previous statements about Nazis and "white guys,": it seems unlikely that Hitler would have considered Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) to be a "white guy"

some dude otm re:Queen and pop

I was an obsessive Queen fan for most of my childhood and still love the first four albums unreservedly. I don't think it's a coincidence that my checking out as fan and the intense critical backlash came around Jazz and later: Brian May stopped playing distorted rhythmic electric guitar nearly as much, which made Roger Taylor's failings as a drummer (which are many and huge -- as a drummer, Roger Taylor has a startling falsetto voice) much more obvious when drum machines or heavy Freddie rhythm piano were not present; and, I think more importantly, they started getting lazy with their songwriting, doing it in the studio more and more, with more and more group credit. There is no question that homophobia played a huge part in the TONE of the backlash against them, but they were a band with lots of flaws, and I think it's hard to love both "March of the Black Queen" AND "Crazy Little Thing Called Love".

I love both

OK, but you are a weird creep with a strange obsession for me.

Queen's "Don't Try Suicide" is probably more pro-suicide than Ozzy's "Suicide Solution," which came out the same year, where were the PMRC on that one

― some dude, Sunday, May 18, 2014 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sample lyrics: "Don't try suicide, you're just gonna hate it!", "So you think it's the easy way out? Think you're gonna slash your wrists this time? Babe, when you do it all you do is get on my tits", "You can't be a prick teaser all of your life"... etc.

Lol xpost

Funny, but it's probably Animal House, Stripes, and Private Benjamin that convinced 9-year-old U.S.-kid me that the "We Will Rock You" drill sergeant was American. So never felt the fascist overtones.

Then again, I thought the schoolkids in "Another Brick in the Wall" were Japanese, so...

Queen (ft. Eileen Brennan)

don't stop believin' was played on the Sopranos

am i the only person who loves this? i might be...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONWGmu84TnE

marsh's 'fascist' criticism is ludicrous hyperbole and i'm honestly surprised to see anyone defending it. it's along the same lines as bangs saying he wanted to track down and kill james taylor, except that bangs's hyperbole is funny and marsh's just seems uptight and prissy.

Its anthem, "We Will Rock You," is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band.

No, this is funny.

So is Queen. They're not a great band by most objective measure, but they're funny on occasion, which is more than a lot of bands have been able to manage. So Queen should be proud of their accomplishments.

*measures

curious to know what a few of the objective measures to which you refer might be, Mr MBJ (ttEG).

As I posted upthread,

Queen for me was always a workmanlike (at their absolute pinnacle) rhythm section, a not-wholly-uninteresting guitarist (the apolitical Tom Morello of his day), and a singer who, to paraphrase one musician's view of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, exemplified "the Rolls-Royce aesthetic, but without the Rolls-Royce."

I'll grant that ymmv, but nothing in their most universally celebrated work suggests any deep or lasting influence.

(I should also note that I'm coming around a bit on Freddie Hubbard, but still think he can't hold a candle to Lee Morgan, among others.)

Yeah I think it would have been quite easy to ignore Zeppelin if you weren't actively paying attention, I mean obviously they were huge but the kind of huge where you also needed to be looking in the right direction? Obviously I wasn't around at the time but I've never got the sense that they crashed into the centre of the popular consciousness in the way that Bowie or Queen or even the glam bands did.

Part of it was that if a band really wanted to make an impact on the non-music-obsessing public then you had to appear on TOTP and that was pretty much the one TV show through which British pop culture was filtered, and Zeppelin basically opted out of that. Ironically if there was one bit of Zeppelin music that most people would have been familiar with it was the riff from Whole Lotta Love by virtue of being the TOTP theme tune.

x-post no deep or lasting influence?

Katy Perry: "Freddie Mercury was - and remains - my biggest influence. The combination of his sarcastic approach to writing lyrics and his 'I don't give a fuck' attitude really inspired my music.

Why is influence important?

Queen influenced a tooooooon of people from hard rockers to pop singers and everywhere in between.

I don't know Queen albums well, but Brian May definitely strikes me as a genuinely interesting guitarist. His sound is very unique.

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy, and Taylor's habit of opening the hi hat on the snare provokes a similar reaction.

Unique to Queen, no doubt, but not for me

it is absolutely true that Taylor is notorious among drummers for the "Pea Soup" faux pas M of T describes.

I don't know Queen albums well, but Brian May definitely strikes me as a genuinely interesting guitarist. His sound is very unique.

― timellison

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy...

― Master of Treacle

(cf. "Toniiiiight / we are yoooooung")

I was also thinking about the "fascist" accusations. From the very beginning, Queen produced what i'm tempted to call triumphalist cheese. Their music seems to strive for this sense of soaring (yes) supremacy, proud and erect atop a mountain's peak, the wind flowing through our golden hair. The vibe is intrinsically collective, it invites us into a shared feeling: "Here, comrade. Stand with us atop this mountain in joyful unity. The view is incredible." The appollonian strain of prog often seem to reach for this, a sense of almost superhuman majesty in acheivement, optimistic, insistent on excellence, truly olympian - and Queen took that theme further than any of their peers.

I can see why some might see in this an echo of fascist triumphalism, especially when turned to singalong pop, but the key difference is that it isn't fascist. It's not dedicated to the eradication or suppression of anything. No group is damned or othered, no obedience enforced. I suppose it could conceivably be put to use by fascists, but that's true of a great many not-particularly-offensive things. Some people enjoy the feeling of minty-fresh athletic ecstacy invoked, while others don't. Iused to reject this sort of music on general principle, insisting on filth-dripping nihilist vulgarity, but I was never tempted to view Queen-style operatic grandeur as evil. I just thought it was sort of gross, too easy, lacking the violent thrill of negation.

it seems unlikely that Hitler would have considered Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara) to be a "white guy"

Well, yeah, tbh, it's particularly striking that the first South Asian man to become this successful as a musician in the Empire's language should be charged with things like "Aryan/Nordic supremacy", especially at a time when so many actually white rock musicians were playing with explicitly racist or fascist ideas.

For me Freddie is maybe the least annoying thing about Queen - May is a good guitarist but his tone drives me crazy, and Taylor's habit of opening the hi hat on the snare provokes a similar reaction.

Unique to Queen, no doubt, but not for me

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, May 18, 2014 10:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's one of my favourite things about his drumming. Couldn't imagine 'Brighton Rock' or 'Liar', to name two, without it.

I never knew May was a Vox AC30 guy! Apparently, he went from using nine of them on stage to using twelve in the early '80s.

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

The influence thing is a red herring - people like Pat Smear were devotees. And the likes of Shudder To Think are probably more obvious but even so, I would suspect you would find a lot of Queen fans in bands without an obvious trace of Queen influence.

sund4r otm

That NME "Is This Man A Prat?" interview circa '77 makes for some great reading. There's hostility there from both sides.

"Darling, if everything you read in the press about me was true then I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today, because I would be so worried about my ego. Actually, if it was all accurate, I would have burnt myself out by now. I really would have."

But you do appreciate the mystique which has developed around you.

"I think I need it. I like all that. It's my character. Certainly I'm a flamboyant person. I like to live life. I certainly work hard for it, and I want to have a good time. Don't deny me that. It might not come again and I want to enjoy myself a little."

"I hope," he adds, tilting his head and quietly smirking, "that when you better yourself in your profession you enjoy yourself too."

The influence thing is a red herring - people like Pat Smear were devotees. And the likes of Shudder To Think are probably more obvious but even so, I would suspect you would find a lot of Queen fans in bands without an obvious trace of Queen influence.

― Master of Treacle, Sunday, May 18, 2014 7:54 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i totally agree. Fugazi, for instance, worship Queen.

http://www.queenonline.com/en/the-band/interviews/freddie-mercury-1/is-this-man-a-prat-/

As incredible as it is to believe, the indie band Field Music are massive Queen fans. In the inlay to their second album, Tones Of Town, there's a picture of them sitting around their studio. On the floor is a copy of Queen's Jazz.

i think it's probably impossible to come off as Queen-influenced unless you have a really skilled/bold singer who can pull off even a hint of what Freddie does, and/or a guitarist who's unafraid to rip off May's distinctive tone. without one of those 2 things, you can pretty much pillage Queen songs for ideas and influences without anyone noticing it or pointing it out.

All this talk of influence and this obvious one hasn't come up?:
http://www.queenzone.com/articles/open-letter-to-brian-from-joe-elliot-def-leppard.aspx

I dunno, man, Muse's 'United States Of Eurasia' features a very obvious Queen rip!

well, Muse are a good example of a band who use enough Queen-style vocal and guitar sounds to make it obvious

I heard a ton of Queen in Jellyfish's music.

Jellyfish were well known Queen fans

I'd wager Redd Kross were too

I hear a hint of Queen in some Smashing Pumpkins' tracks, too.

Totally. Also, obvious, but Lady Gaga is named after "Radio Ga Ga" and certainly picks up (sometimes) on the kind of collective-redemption-through-joining-a-pop-anthem thing that people are articulating here.

re: high profile queen fans and 'influence'

http://a5.mzstatic.com/us/r30/Features/2a/da/92/dj.tkzccjcu.227x170-99.jpg

Totally. Also, obvious, but Lady Gaga is named after "Radio Ga Ga" and certainly picks up (sometimes) on the kind of collective-redemption-through-joining-a-pop-anthem thing that people are articulating here.

― Doctor Casino, Sunday, May 18, 2014 8:34 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she also had Brian May play on a top 10 single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9YMU0WeBwU&feature=kp

so yeah, queen

Yeah re, smashing pumpkins "Thru the eyes of ruby", the main riff anyway is very soaring brian may style

yeah but Queen didn't influence anyone shh

Citing Mercury's ethnicity as if it is some evidence that the band could not possibly have engaged in fascist aesthetics is nonsensical. Aesthetics exist to be appropriated and used by anyone. Whether or not they are employed well or not is the issue. I find Queen's employment of them creepy and troublesome, both because of the response they invoke in the audience and the sort of nausea that comes with seeing something employed in the service of genocide and oppression repurposed as something to be blithely enjoyed and accepted as "fun" or "theater".

Many xposts

And this isnt mel brooks we're talking about here. Champions/Rock You is not about taking the piss out of the self-proclaimed champions.

I didn't dispute that part of your argument. I just wanted to point out that it's a little more complicated than "Queen are white guys." I also wanted to point out that if you're going to invoke Hitler, it's probably worth mentioning that Hitler maybe wouldn't be supportive of a gay man of South Asian descent.

That said, I don't necessarily agree with your argument. My goal wasn't to bring up Mercury's ethnic identify as a slam-dunk point against your argument, but rather as a noteworthy fact that I think does stand in contrast to "Queen are white guys whose music invokes fascism"

Do I need to point out there were gay nazis, the swastika is south asian, parsis are technically aryan etc. All this is beside the point really but whatever.

What is important is that we all agree that Ernst Rohm would have loved Queen shows.

Joeks

And I guess my question is: what response did they invoke in their audience? I feel like the argument is actually moving away from actual evidence here. If Queen concerts were notorious for hate crimes and riots, then yeah, I think you'd have a great point there. And if that happened a lot and I'm just unaware of it, I'm happy to be learn more.

well, to be fair, freddie mercury DID have a moustache.

As a Jew I find it just a little unnerving to see crowds of Europeans screaming We Will Rock You to the rhythm of marching jackboots. Mercury could say that it wasnt his intention for it to sound threatening til the cows came home, all that would mean is that they were comfortable playing w alienating forms without a care for their implications. Which goes back to the narcissusm, monomania etc.

"killer queen" obviously about gay nazis.

haha how did i forget to bring up Yoü and I, i am definitely one of its bigger stans around here

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130329111113/glee/images/4/4f/Cas-shake-head.gif

how come this is the only fuckin band that ever gets their pomp and grandeur called "fascistic" though? maybe maybe zeppelin gets it some but it's real fishy that Queen is like NOPE I HEAR ME SOME FASCISM when that's just the stadium rock feel: giant, triumphalist tunes aiming for a communal, gigantic feeling. it's like, is Ibiza also fascist? whole lotta people hittin' those peak music moments together and shouting at the same time!

Be happy to label some other bands aesthetics as fascist if itll make u feel better. This thread is about Queen tho.

Ibiza stuff is more pagan than fascist. Does that stuff even have lyrics?

oh for god's sake

Alfred otm.

"bohemian rhapsody" obviously a wagnerian epic celebrating hitler's annexation of bohemia.

yeah but it's not just you. Queen got this rep hung on them back then when others didn't. Def Lepperd sold more records with a way more fascistic sound but Queen's the band who OH NO STOMPING JACKBOOTS. When, like...the music of fascism is rather more the Carpenters than Queen.

Ibiza stuff is more pagan than fascist.

ha, this is exactly the point of what I'm saying. you'll re-cast Ibiza to your liking, but Queen - genuinely bacchanalian by all accounts, long, generous concerts and afterparties that dragged on for days, sentimental balladry at the piano amidst the pomp, and resolutely cross-pollinating musically, incorporating disco into their supposedly fascist groove - nossir, that's fascism straight down the line all right

Oddly one of the only other examples I can think of with the marching boots as rhythm thing is Lennon's Power to the People. Which is more socialist I suppose what with the lyrics.

I dont really know anything about Ibiza tbh

Please leave the Carpenters alone.

fascists are into paganism fwiw they consider themselves true connoisseurs of the pagan soul

clemenza I love the Carpenters and will defend them all day but you know and I know that they would have annexed Norwalk and the City of Commerce in a New York minute

I share aero's love of the Carpenters. Not sure I wanna know what he means.

Lol xp

Maybe it's just the sports associations, but I've always heard the rhythm of "We Will Rock You" as stomping on bleachers.

And yes I am familiar w fascisms historical connection to paganism (peron kind of a funny exceptuon iirc)

we will we will shakey

new thread idea: comparing fascist subtexts in the carpenters' "top of the world" and queen's "we are the champions."

Aesthetics exist to be appropriated and used by anyone. Whether or not they are employed well or not is the issue. I find Queen's employment of them creepy and troublesome, both because of the response they invoke in the audience and the sort of nausea that comes with seeing something employed in the service of genocide and oppression repurposed as something to be blithely enjoyed and accepted as "fun" or "theater".

grandstanding, populist triumphalism seems far too broad a category to be summarily dismissed as "fascist aesthetics". the fact that fascists are/were attracted to heroic pomp not render it intrinsically fascist. as i see it, abstract things like a particular artistic approach can be meaningfully fascist only in function or intent. it's not like they were writing songs that specifically recall nazi marches, or that enlist the listener in any even quasi-fascist purpose. seems more sensible to criticize their cultivation of a self-satisfying grandeur. the sound is gluttonous, decadent. not fascist.

^ ...does not render it...

also, it seems weird to discuss queen's use of vainglorious, macho, vaguely military pomp without figuring certain other factors into the equation...

were rush called fascists?

of course -- look at their mustaches and Ayn Rands

@contenderizer I think what you were getting at was covered in this statement from above:

Do I need to point out there were gay nazis

i'm suggesting that gay aesthetics might be worth considering, not simply excusing apparent fascism by pointing out mercury's orientation

No, I'm in total agreement with you; I was trying to make a point and failed. When I see an image like this:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/24/1322150712400/Freddie-Mercury-of-Queen-007.jpg

...it definitely complicates any fascist aesthetic attributed to Queen.

shakey do you like sparks?

is Οὖτις for fucking real itt or have I eaten mushrooms without knowing

I get it that sparks are queen's ur-text and I do love them. The irony and humor seem way more in the foreground w them. Not as bombastic either.

xp

I mean ffs the verse of We Will Rock You = "stomp, stomp, clap", not the 1-2 1-2 goosestep of an imposing fascist military ready to annex yr city.

fuck, what next, is the hand jive a Goebbels-ian Nazi recruitment tool?

this aggression must not stand. "Ogre Battle"? "Father to Son"? "You're My Best Friend?" for crying out loud? The longer I love Queen, the more incredible the early albums sound to me.

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, May 17, 2014 11:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm and I'll raise you "Seven Seas of Rhye" (from Queen II, not the instrumental), "March of the Black Queen", and "Prophet's Song"

how come this is the only fuckin band that ever gets their pomp and grandeur called "fascistic" though? maybe maybe zeppelin gets it

Nonono -- Zep is Satanic.

Queen were infinitely better (or at least more interested in) understanding and responding to crowd dynamics / psychology. They knew how to make tens of thousands of people stomp their feet / cheer / pump their fists in unison and the songs that have subsequently been adopted as jock jams were clearly written to have this effect.

The criticisms may sound daft, and they maybe daft, but it's worth remembering that the context the writers were working in was different. There are 37 years between We Will Rock You and today, 32 between the song and the end of WW2. They didn't also have four decades of people doing the same thing to get used to it.

on the seemingly-settled question of influence, occurs to me that power metal as a genre owes a hell of a lot to queen

contenderizer, god bless you for this, which I think answers my thread question as good as anyone ever will:

I was also thinking about the "fascist" accusations. From the very beginning, Queen produced what i'm tempted to call triumphalist cheese. Their music seems to strive for this sense of soaring (yes) supremacy, proud and erect atop a mountain's peak, the wind flowing through our golden hair. The vibe is intrinsically collective, it invites us into a shared feeling: "Here, comrade. Stand with us atop this mountain in joyful unity. The view is incredible." The appollonian strain of prog often seem to reach for this, a sense of almost superhuman majesty in acheivement, optimistic, insistent on excellence, truly olympian - and Queen took that theme further than any of their peers.
I can see why some might see in this an echo of fascist triumphalism, especially when turned to singalong pop, but the key difference is that it isn't fascist. It's not dedicated to the eradication or suppression of anything. No group is damned or othered, no obedience enforced. I suppose it could conceivably be put to use by fascists, but that's true of a great many not-particularly-offensive things. Some people enjoy the feeling of minty-fresh athletic ecstacy invoked, while others don't. Iused to reject this sort of music on general principle, insisting on filth-dripping nihilist vulgarity, but I was never tempted to view Queen-style operatic grandeur as evil. I just thought it was sort of gross, too easy, lacking the violent thrill of negation.
― katsu kittens (contenderizer), Sunday, May 18, 2014 6:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Queen was definitely 'pop' on some level that the Beatles were and a lot of those bands kinda weren't
― some dude, Sunday, May 18, 2014 2:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. as I note in first few posts, i appreciate them as a pop band. i mean, they are obviously also a rock band by any reasonable measure, but the qualities I most appreciate in them are mostly qualities that I associate with pop music. there's a concision combined w/ a density of hooks in their records that strikes me as very poppy. dense, that is, like a really fucking good cake. i don't mean that to disparage, or even to damn with faint praise. that's high praise. i love cake. would i want to subsist on it exclusively? of course not, but i can't think of anything i would want to subsist on exclusively. (which makes me wonder, is Muzak the Soylent© of music?)

finally, on "influence," where is mark s when you need him?

it's hard not to see homophobia here "these creeps and their polluting ideas"

― relentlessly pecking at peace (President Keyes), Friday, May 16, 2014 7:55 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to a lesser degree, same deal in all the slams on yes and rush; jon a and geddy sing like girls, you know

plus, real men don't practice their instruments

What a fascinating turn this has taken. Seems to easy to criticize Queen...Okay, so fascism is supposed to be a mass phenomenon...so...the first Queen songs I heard on the radio "Killer Queen"..."You're My Best Friend". Okay but this is not fascism...

Don't get me started on the evil lurking in other seventies groups...let's start with The Carpenters. Karen Carpenter is a brilliant singer, I consider myself a fan. But Carpenters had a similar critical response because....they were popular among the "beautiful music" crowd who, at the time, were semi-fascist. Those people got their own radio stations on FM radio!! This was in US suburbia at the time. Every white American suburb had at least one Nazi. What did they enjoy? The Carpenters and Ray Conniff!

Every white American suburb had at least one Nazi.

::pulls up 1980 census statistics::

re: influence, I don't know that I'd necessarily consider Lady Gaga (whom I like) or Smashing Pumpkins (whom I don't) reflective of a particularly "deep or lasting influence," despite what the artists themselves claim. They say Queen, I hear Zep, they say Freddie, I hear Bowie, you say Corgan, I say hey man, the Pumpkins were never my scene, and I don't like Cobain.

Def Lepperd sold more records with a way more fascistic sound

UABIHO could you explain in what ways you think ver Lep's sound was more fascistic that Queen's? I'm still trying to get which elements of sonic elements of this stuff people find fascistic (partly because I sort of understand why people would say it about Queen but I can't articulate why).

I was going to say something about Hitler actually having decent taste in music but tbh I'm not the biggest fan of late Romanticism. Seriously, though, 'Nazi musical aesthetics' were mostly just a celebration of the Germanic symphonic tradition, right?

In Julian Cope's book he talks about the Teardrop Explodes supporting Queen at some big outdoors shows in the UK in the early '80s, and being confronted with Queen fans screaming homophobic insults at him; some took the trouble to underline their hatred by lobbing bottles of piss in Cope's direction.

The members of Queen were not to blame for that behaviour, for sure, but (as Matt mentions way upthread) there was something strange about the way Freddie M's sexuality was thought about in the UK in the 70s and 80s. Although he was as camp as tuppence, and the lead singer of a band called Queen, I reckon a really substantial part of the band's fan base at that time would have sworn that FM was not gay; that's if they ever thought about it at all.

I was going to say something about Hitler actually having decent taste in music but tbh I'm not the biggest fan of late Romanticism. Seriously, though, 'Nazi musical aesthetics' were mostly just a celebration of the Germanic symphonic tradition, right?― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 19, 2014 8:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Adorno asserted that in reality the Nazis (and/or the German public) found much of the German symphonic tradition indigestible, and instead leaned on latter-day regurgitations of its forms if not its struggles (etc. etc, insert Adorno here), by composers no one has bothered with since. Obviously he has his biases but I found this interesting. I think it's in ''The Arts Under National Socialism,'' can go look it up later but this is ILM so I suspect y'all know it better than I do.

the idea of a "fascistic sound" is pretty hilarious in this context IMO. does rush have an "anarcho-libertarian sound"? would you classify leonard cohen's sound as more of a "welfare state" sound? what about ABBA?

honestly, it seems like a red herring applied to queen or led zeppelin or whomever. who gives a shit what hitler listened to, or what adorno had to say about it? it has nothing whatever to do with queen. it's not as though those accusing them of "fascism" had some nuanced historical understanding of fascist aesthetics. it's not a grounded accusation; marsh wasn't likening "killer queen" to any particular style of music or composer, or even analogizing it to speer or riefenstahl or something.

Tim, that's quite true about Queen's fans—Mercury managed to connote hetero-macho to some, camp to others in a way that probably seemed mutually exclusive to all but a few who were paying close attention.

I can't decide

Which to go for

(side note: IDK why ILX seems to be deflecting to adorno so often these days—or maybe it's just threads I'm on—when about half of the time he was clearly talking out of his ass.)

(often enough it seems like an appeal to authority fallacy.)

it seems to me that my chemical romance borrowed the most 'fascistic' aesthetic elements of queen in stuff like "black parade" which practically sounds like a marching song?

hey it doesn't make any more sense when you put it in scare quotes!

marching songs don't mean fascist songs, are we still arguing this?

i think fascist like an aestheticization of politics vis-a-vis benjamin

are you trolling? now you bring benjamin into this? oy vey!

queen isn't an "aestheticization of politics" in the sense you mean because it's difficult to say they have an intrinsic politics at all, much less a fascist one.

also all politics is aestheticized! big deal.

sorry for overposting, i'm just sick of people throwing the frankfurt school in my face. gives me grad-school seminar flashbacks.

i agree the political element is inchoate but some kind of stylized bombastic populism maybe. idk about all politics being aestheticized tho.

well, when you're talking about pop culture and fascism it only makes sense to talk about frankfurt school

like the opposite condition is the politicization of aesthetics (aka Communism)

good soundbites, mordy

also you're not "talking about" the frankfurt school you're just name-dropping

it's not necessarily a bad thing that the music evokes fascism for ppl. it could even be a good thing if you think of it as somehow resisting or undermining the aestheticization - or divorcing it from the true political context. i think you're going about this the wrong way tho. instead of saying, 'i don't see how it's fascist therefore anyone who sees that is wrong,' doesn't it make more sense to ask what people are seeing in it that lead to that (possibly fallacious) conclusion?

ok i'm out for 24 hours. i think contenderizer had the last word anyway.

i just quoted a direct line from a benjamin essay so i'm not just "name-dropping"

jesus, tarfumes, queen had a HUGE influence on metal.

I can see why some might see in this an echo of fascist triumphalism, especially when turned to singalong pop, but the key difference is that it isn't fascist. It's not dedicated to the eradication or suppression of anything. No group is damned or othered, no obedience enforced. I suppose it could conceivably be put to use by fascists, but that's true of a great many not-particularly-offensive things. Some people enjoy the feeling of minty-fresh athletic ecstacy invoked, while others don't.

I think this is pretty insightful fwiw, it touches on the center of the disagreement being whether or not aesthetics can be tied to politics absent any direct political engagement by the artist. I would hope it was clear from my half-assed phone-typing over the weekend (a period during which I am never at a computer btw, amateurist) that I don't actually think that Queen had an explicit political agenda, or that they were a literal arm of Mosely's brownshirts or somthing. I just find those echoes of fascist triumphalism disturbing, the associations with some of the aesthetic choices they made are unappetizing to me, especially when they are deployed in that kind of stadium-rally milieu. I don't find it communal, I find it alienating. It reminds me of Nuremburg rallies. This is all on me and my baggage, I will happily admit that, but the associations are there because of Queen's appropriation of and eagerness to exploit that kind of button-pushing, mass hysteria-inducing grandiosity - they want that effect on the crowd, which is also something fascists were explicitly after. In that sense Queen and fascists shared a common goal, they both wanted to affect huge crowds of people in this particular way, and they used similar tools to do it - the martial rhythms, the classical pretensions to "high culture" that were simultaneously made out as populist, the soaring imagery, the vanity. When I'm exposed to that dynamic in action I find it creepy (and no Queen is not unique in this regard, I find a lot of huge sporting events creepy and fascistic in a similar way; I'm sure they've inspired more violence than Queen shows). So it's a kind of dismissive shorthand to call Queen fascist and it's a quick way to call attention to these similarities, even though I am well aware that Queen is not particularly interested in political ideology. I dunno how much about Adorno or how deep he went into this (I haven't read him since college) maybe I am just unwittingly agreeing with him on this point.

many xposts

tbf adorno was more of a mott the hoople fan

i feel like the clever adorno read of queen isn't about fascism at all but maybe about how stripping the politics from fascism leaves this empty theatrical capitalist shell that titillates but is totally divorced from any political ramifications. it's the selling of fascism within capitalism. by contrast benjamin would be more concerned about actual fascism i think.

the idea of a "fascistic sound" is pretty hilarious in this context IMO. does rush have an "anarcho-libertarian sound"? would you classify leonard cohen's sound as more of a "welfare state" sound? what about ABBA?

honestly, it seems like a red herring applied to queen or led zeppelin or whomever. who gives a shit what hitler listened to, or what adorno had to say about it? it has nothing whatever to do with queen. it's not as though those accusing them of "fascism" had some nuanced historical understanding of fascist aesthetics. it's not a grounded accusation; marsh wasn't likening "killer queen" to any particular style of music or composer, or even analogizing it to speer or riefenstahl or something.

Actually, this was more or less the point I was trying to make when considering what Hitler actually listened to (not stadium rock), although the irony probably didn't come across in print. Also, at that point, it seemed like a more interesting question than continuing to debate the fascist overtones of "We Will Rock You".

By that definition any crowd that reacts to an artist's exhortations is fascist. That's bullshit.

If you want to say you're creeped out by large crowds of people exhibiting hive mind reactions, that's cool. I find it uncomfortable, too. But it's not fascist.

xposts to the philosopher wank

jesus, tarfumes, queen had a HUGE influence on metal.

― scott seward, Monday, May 19, 2014 12:14 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I always assumed it was Zep or Sabbath rather than Queen that was the influence.

But I don't listen to much metal anyway. The snare sounds are usually awful.

and they have been influencing the sound of rap since 1979!

always liked this one:

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

By that definition any crowd that reacts to an artist's exhortations is fascist.

well in Queen's case it's exhortations to put people back in their place, keep on fighting til the end etc. that put it over the line for me. these are different (as I said before) from exhortations to dance or have a good time or wave your hands like you don't care.

This whole thing brought to mind an article by the film writer Jonathan Rosenbaum, reviewing two documentaries about Leni Riefenstahl. The article itself is kind of long, but the quote below is the relevant one, I think, in this discussion:

As Brian Winston put it on the BBC program, "I don't think you can make a moral judgment about Riefenstahl's work on the basis that it embodies fascist aesthetics, because I don't think there's any such thing. I think she stands in the mainstream of Western aesthetics, and I think that Western aesthetics can be, on occasion, fascist. That's the problem with the whole phenomenon of fascism--that we want somehow to treat it as a virus. It isn't; it's part of us. It's the dark side of the European tradition, and she represents that dark side perfectly."

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/can-film-be-fascist/Content?oid=884841

(side note: IDK why ILX seems to be deflecting to adorno so often these days—or maybe it's just threads I'm on—when about half of the time he was clearly talking out of his ass.)

― display name changed. (amateurist), Monday, May 19, 2014 11:56 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(often enough it seems like an appeal to authority fallacy.)

― display name changed. (amateurist), Monday, May 19, 2014 11:56 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jesus, dude. Sund4r posed an open-ended question about what Nazi musical culture was actually about, it reminded me of Adorno's essay on that subject, so I brought it up. It wasn't an appeal to Adorno's authority to settle the issue on Queen, it was basically: here's one (biased) firsthand account of music in Nazi Germany, from someone who was there and knew a lot about symphonic music. And yeah - one area where Frankfurt School analysis might be pertinent would be "let's figure out what fascist aesthetics were like and how they operated," but that wasn't what I was going for right there.

Still, if anyone's interested - I was thinking of "What National Socialism Has Done To The Arts" (1945). He does address Wagner, but finds that Strauss is closer to the mark, then claims, in his way, that:

...a number of new names appeared but what they actually achieved largely amounted to a feeble and diluted imitation of some of the better known composers of the Weimar era, particularly of those collectivist composers who had exercised a certain appeal to larger audiences, such as Hindemith or Kurt Weill. The latter's Jewish descent was no obstacle to one of the more successful Nazi opera composers, Mr. Wagner-Regeny, who copied Weill's style with all its mannerisms almost entirely. (...) Musical stagnation as well as that of art as a whole did not remain unnoticed by the more intelligent Nazis and even Herr Rosenberg, who generally had to take an attitude of official optimism once suggested the idea that there was no time for great artistic production today and that the energies formerly invested in the arts were now properly absorbed by technical and military ventures. This amounts to a forthright admission of artistic bankruptcy. As soon, however, as the Party allowed any bolder work to make its public appearance, the official Nazi critics spoke threateningly of Kulturbolschewismus. Thus an atmosphere of total insecurity was brought about, comparable to the strange amalgamation of strictly enforced laws and arbitrary illegality so characteristic of the Third Reich. It exercised a paralyzing effect.

I think this is interesting, not because we have to buy Adorno's standards for great/difficult art, but because it follows Sund4r's implication that we might look for fascist musical aesthetics not in the aestheticization of politics directly, or the aesthetics of events like mass rallies, but, indeed, musical aesthetics under fascism. That's in Adorno's wheelhouse and if he's a snob, he's at least on firmer ground than he might be if he were discussing fascist stamp collecting.

I don't find Queen fascistic but it's all pretty interesting to me as an architectural nerd/historian because it parallels a rather lively debate, also of the late 70s and 80s, as to whether architectural classicism (your Doric columns, your grand marble staircases, your symmetry, etc.) could be revived, that is, rescued from its associations with the monumental Nazi projects of Werner March and Albert Speer. That debate had all sorts of things at stake (the 'critical modernist' project, whether a 20th century Zeitgeist still dictated certain moves, whether certain architectural forms could 'communicate' better than others, whether the attempts by modernist architects to do 'monumentality' since the Forties had succeeded, failed, or been misguided to begin with, etc.) but claims were explicitly made: it's okay to do this now because it's been 35 years since WW2. Or: or it's okay to do this now because regimes other than Hitler's, Stalin's, and to a lesser extent Mussolini's have associated themselves closely with Classicism (see: Greece, Thomas Jefferson). Or: it's okay to do this now because those regimes never went 100% in on classicism anyway. Or: when those regimes used classicism it was a mis-fit to begin with, as it's the architecture of democracy (or could be). Whether certain sounds, effects, aesthetic moves can be turned to different purposes than the evil to which they've been turned, and what kinds of associations might still rub off (to a survivor of the political violence, say) are all pretty interesting questions.

Personally, I find the idea of getting everybody in a stadium to chant together frightening and yes, proto-fascistic. I know people might disagree, but it creeps me out, always has. I don't think it's healthy for a culture to have a lot of practice and training in chanting along to things, or learning to relish the satisfaction of belonging to one gigantic mass. I don't think for a second that Mercury and co. thought that's what they were doing, but forming the mass of love and affirmation is still forming the mass. Probably the reason I like Queen is that I don't associate them with that setting at all: rather, the groups chanting along are ad-hoc micro-collectives, usually voluntary: the audience at a karaoke bar, or the equivalent of the Elton John bus scene in Almost Famous. If Queen can be re-deployed to help form the multitude instead, then, yeah, okay, I'm back on board. I dunno.

when i think of fascism in music i think of only one name: SOUSA!

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/10376071_10153056099752137_3624085591531252784_n.jpg

Queen never made the fascist list but Sparks and AC/DC did

http://i.imgur.com/CRL4oqr.jpg

oh, 10CC and JULIO IGLESIAS

I don't think it's healthy for a culture to have a lot of practice and training in chanting along to things

if they're attending Peron-esque rallies, sure. if they all plopped down $50 to see a band they love and are enjoying each other's company as a communal experience, what's unhealthy about it? ffs, one of the best elements of attending sports fans are group chants of solidarity. this isn't an Ayn Rand novel.

maybe, on the other hand, that's why libertarians hate rap concerts so much - I'll put my hands in the air when I damn well please, thank you.

i don't think it's healthy for a bunch of horns to get together and play the same note, all i'm sayin xxxxpost

sousa was half portuguese and half bavarian. his portuguese side invented jazz and his bavarian side invented nazism.

۩, i just saw that on my friend's facebook and was considering it for a poll, has it been done?

neanderthal - YMMV but to me it feels like practice, training the body and the heart to find responding to exhortations natural and satisfying etc etc. I find this aspect of sports totally totally alienating and I do also have this problem at concerts: C or D: Bands not shutting up about how they can't hear the crowd, how their hands aren't waving in the air like they just don't care, et cetera - - - so maybe I am just a hypersensitive effete outsider who needs to 'get over' high school but it all just reminds me of being made to say the Pledge of Allegiance and rise at pep rallies and all that shit.

yup

Since you brought up the Pledge of Allegiance, a weird piece of history is that the pledge, originally written in the 1890s, was supposed to be done with a Bellamy salute. The salute was eventually discarded 40 years later because it's basically identical to the Nazi salute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance#Salute

Mercury managed to connote hetero-macho to some, camp to others in a way that probably seemed mutually exclusive to all but a few who were paying close attention.

See also Rob Halford in Judas Priest.

And somebody clearly heard fascism in Queen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwdOX19_ETI

That's really about all I have to say about this topic. I hate Queen's music. Always have.

۩, i just saw that on my friend's facebook and was considering it for a poll, has it been done?

I dont think so. You should do it! I wonder what else is on that list. Pretty sure Queen must be on it (probably Fbi - The Fugs style)

xxxpost well, but there's a stark difference between the two activities - for one, you don't have much of a choice re: attending school and mandating the recitation Pledge of Allegiance is fucking revolting as a concept because you're giving unconditional fealty to a piece of cloth. I pretty much never said the pledge my last year of high school for that reason, and nobody gave a fuck, but had I lived in say, Alabama or Louisiana, I'm sure that woulda been different.

I mean, with a concert or a football game, you're choosing to be there, and you're typically just shouting lyrics/song titles or various 'hype up' phrases, you aren't swearing your undying allegiance to the band or team or indicating you'd lay down your life for them.

unless you're a Juggalo, in which case fuck you

if anything, the main reason I get annoyed w/ various "make some noise" requests in the air is that A) I hate people who beg for positive validation from their crowds as I think it should be earned, and B) I just wanna hear more music

Also worth noting that if we're talking about a "wave your hands in the air" or call-and-response at a rap concert, maybe it's worth considering the origins of those things and whether or not that lines up with a proto-fascist impulse.

I remember my high school history teacher invoking Freddie Mercury at Live Aid when describing Hitler's charisma in front of large audiences, and saying that Mercury was the only other figure of the 20th century who could match Hitler's abilities in this regard. I thought echoes of fascism in Queen was a fairly common observation tbh, I'm surprised people find it so controversial, I mean incorporating footage from Metropolis into your pop videos!

http://eil.com/Gallery/359906b.jpg

wave your hands in the air like you just don't care

lol

haha ok um

how have we gone this long without linking this thread
Is Queen's "One Vision" actually a demand for fascism?

contenderizer otm to situate queen in a larger constellation of wind-in-the-hair stand-with-us-comrade ideology-reinforcement pop which every 20c system is overflowing with (love this song) and also to point out that fascism fundamentally needs a diseased other to call for the purgative destruction of, which queen were not interested in--but if it has a second equally fundamental plank it is the rejuvenating, transcendent power of unified expressions of mass tumescence. clap-clap-chant is not just an empty vessel a fascist fills with Badness: it is a natural expression of some of the most fundamental fascist values (unity and strength). it's not crazy or a category error to be wary of it or to ask questions about it, and certainly not crazy to mistrust the capitalist faith in the meaninglessness and resaleability of everything. but yes there is probably nothing fascist about queen that isn't also fascist about football, and neither is A Fascist Enterprise™ (although the latter would have zero trouble adapting). still i think it is better to be aware of echoes of this stuff and the way it can become part of and serve a purpose in ostensibly antifascist ideologies than to assume we made it all go away and now the only thing anything means is that you spent $50. in conclusion under pressure is the best song ever.

I remember my high school history teacher invoking Freddie Mercury at Live Aid when describing Hitler's charisma in front of large audiences, and saying that Mercury was the only other figure of the 20th century who could match Hitler's abilities in this regard.

I thought he and Queen were spectacular too but uh was it a "had to be there" moment? Bowie and (if you like them more than I do) were spectacular too but no one will compare their charisma to Hitler's unless you mean Bono himself and yes he is Hitler.

*U2 were spectacular too

surely Morrissey is as charismatic as Hitler

The thing is, I could understand - not agree but understand - where someone (a follower of Adorno maybe?) would be coming from if they were to make that point about pop music more generally, or even of the more specific category of stadium rock, as opposed to, say, avant-garde classical music or communitarian folk music. It seems harder to take seriously when people who listened to pop music for a living were making these criticisms about Queen's stadium rock (or the explicitly individualistic Rush's stadium rock) but not about Springsteen's stadium rock or the Clash's stadium rock etc

xpost to dlh

Keeping audiences captive 3+ hours at show is fascist.

yeah, i get that xp. the dave marsh stuff upthread reads hysterical to me. "we will rock you" is much more completely a Strength Chant than anything by springsteen or the clash or john cage but it's also much more completely one than anything else by queen, so it distorts. but yes, i think this is a quality you often find in pop music, not one that's just in queen. i think what probably happened is that critics who disliked the band anyway for being theatrical/tacky/inauthentic/GAY picked up the most respectable club to hand. but there was a reason it was to hand.

"we will rock you" is much more completely a Strength Chant than anything by springsteen

50,000 people pumping their firsts in unison and shouting "born in the usa" may choose to disagree with you.

it is 100% possible that i had never noticed that the verses of we will rock you are bleak denunciations of the lies and unkept promises of rock

(but you are saying that regardless of the artistic nuance, what we have here [by my definition] is behavior of the fascist type. i agree i guess. these are still very different songs tho.)

(reagan to thread.)

what i'm saying is that, for the purposes of this particular argument, it doesn't matter what the verses say. if we're going to hold an artist responsible for how his fans respond to his music, it should be noted that a lot of people pumping their first to "born in the usa" are pumping them for very different reasons than springsteen might have had in mind when he wrote the song or when he sang any of those verses.

also -- and i say this as a huge fan -- "theatrical/tacky/inauthentic" could easily be applied to springsteen, too, and has in fact been applied by more than a few critics over the years. don't recall "gay" ever being brought in connection with the boss, though.

pumping their *fists*

don't recall "gay" ever being brought in connection with the boss

what do you think that handkerchief in the back pocket was meant to symbolize

Actually, the message of the verses in "We Will Rock You" doesn't seem that straightforward to me!

you're a loser, we're going to rock you, lay back and enjoy it cuz soon you're going to be dead anyway

well, they're right!

and after you have been rocked, we will goredance on your corpse while singing We Are the Champions

I always viewed the verses as at least somewhat sympathetic, the "put you back into your place" line notwithstanding. And I always found the connection between the verses and the refrain to be abstract, in the tradition I guess of post-psychedelic, prog rock aesthetics, etc.

also -- and i say this as a huge fan -- "theatrical/tacky/inauthentic" could easily be applied to springsteen, too, and has in fact been applied by more than a few critics over the years. don't recall "gay" ever being brought in connection with the boss, though.

i'm sure someone's called him a "cryptofascist"

so was Bill Buckley.

Wait, wait, wait, if we sing/stomp along with "We Will Rock You" then don't we become part of the "we" rather than the rocked? I mean, of all songs, we're not complacently sitting there and listening to it!

so was Bill Buckley.

we will rock you and you'll stay plastered

nearly 500 posts on this. Amazing.

if only it had been a poll

Let's get rocked!

xxxpost well, but there's a stark difference between the two activities - for one, you don't have much of a choice re: attending school and mandating the recitation Pledge of Allegiance is fucking revolting as a concept because you're giving unconditional fealty to a piece of cloth. I pretty much never said the pledge my last year of high school for that reason, and nobody gave a fuck, but had I lived in say, Alabama or Louisiana, I'm sure that woulda been different.

I was in Georgia and got sent to the assistant principal's office for refusing to do the pledge! This was in the late 90s. So maybe I am more sensitive to these things, not necessarily rationally so.

contenderizer otm to situate queen in a larger constellation of wind-in-the-hair stand-with-us-comrade ideology-reinforcement pop which every 20c system is overflowing with (love this song) and also to point out that fascism fundamentally needs a diseased other to call for the purgative destruction of, which queen were not interested in--but if it has a second equally fundamental plank it is the rejuvenating,

transcendent power of unified expressions of mass tumescence. clap-clap-chant is not just an empty vessel a fascist fills with Badness: it is a natural expression of some of the most fundamental fascist values (unity and strength). it's not crazy or a category error to be wary of it or to ask questions about it, and certainly not crazy to mistrust the capitalist faith in the meaninglessness and resaleability of everything. but yes there is probably nothing fascist about queen that isn't also fascist about football, and neither is A Fascist Enterprise™ (although the latter would have zero trouble adapting). still i think it is better to be aware of echoes of this stuff and the way it can become part of and serve a purpose in ostensibly antifascist ideologies than to assume we made it all go away and now the only thing anything means is that you spent $50. in conclusion under pressure is the best song ever.

― difficult listening hour, Monday, May 19, 2014 2:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

booming post, thanks.

Wait, wait, wait, if we sing/stomp along with "We Will Rock You" then don't we become part of the "we" rather than the rocked? I mean, of all songs, we're not complacently sitting there and listening to it!

― That's So (Eazy), Monday, May 19, 2014 12:06 PM (1 hour ago)

it's kind of sly tho, because if we sing/stomp along, get our fascist groove thing on, we become the boy make a big noise, young man wavin our banner, human cargo on the way to mudfaced, place-lacking old manhood. to rock wit is to become those about to be rocked (because, yeah, AC/DC deserves a seat at this table at least as much as Queen).

I was in Georgia and got sent to the assistant principal's office for refusing to do the pledge! This was in the late 90s.

well THAT is some outright bullllllllllshit - kind of curious as to how it's legal, either, but in this context I can understand yr feelings about the other stuff a lil better.

But AC/DC salutes us for being about to rock; Queen, on the other hand, does not give us an option as to whether or not we will be rocked by them, nor do they honor us in any way.

xp

In hindsight, Def Leppard worked this out much more thoroughly - both band and audience can join equally in getting rocked, going all the way, getting it night and day, and of course, getting the rock out of here.

kind of curious as to how it's legal,

lol students don't have rights.

this happened to me too.

in California. in the 80s.

everyone else was like "America is awesome dude just stop whining and say it what are you a commie"

xxxpost also, i'm aware that m yown personal experience plays into why I view these scenarios as communal and fun. I grew up a social outcast so when I would wind up at these type of things I felt less weird and more comforted that other people were including me in something.

some of it is still due to that years later, due to remaining chips on shoulder. also it's hard not to get excited when shouting "RAINING BLOOOOOOOD" with hundreds of other dudes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BJjsgxgQoU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BJjsgxgQoU

and as for the pledge, I knew it was bullshit, but it's amazing how much "Yeah, the Supreme Court says I don't have to do this" doesn't fly when you're in 11th grade and the math teacher is sending you out of the classroom. IIRC the line was "The Supreme Court can have their policy, but this is my classroom, and I have my policy."

iirc mussolini started off just clapping and three weeks later rome had been well and truly marched on

lol students don't have rights.

this happened to me too.

― Οὖτις, Monday, May 19, 2014 5:01 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah they do. In fact, this was deemed unconstitutional years ago (http://aclu-or.org/blog/students-not-required-participate-pledge-allegiance). it's just that they don't always know they have these rights and even if they do, it's difficult to desire to act on them when they're getting shit on by administrative officials and their own peers simultaneously.

and as for the pledge, I knew it was bullshit, but it's amazing how much "Yeah, the Supreme Court says I don't have to do this" doesn't fly when you're in 11th grade and the math teacher is sending you out of the classroom. IIRC the line was "The Supreme Court can have their policy, but this is my classroom, and I have my policy."

― Doctor Casino, Monday, May 19, 2014 5:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah yes, sadly this is OTM. I was in a fairly liberal-esque school in Florida but even there I remember we were all taken to an assembly once - wasn't one of these 'voluntary' things we were informed we could attend, we were all taken to it. and gospel choirs started singing about Jesus to us. a few kids left, and the teachers watched them with an eager eye but neglected to act because they knew the school had fucked up in making this a required assembly. presumably they didn't vet what the show was about in advance.

this whole notion of "PA announcer as exercise instructor" doesn't really exist in U.S. pro sports with the sorta exception of the Miami Heat, who have a notoriously dispassionate fanbase (daniel esq excepted, of course). The communal eurphoria in sports events is all about what's happening in the game, I'm not sure I would call it fascist because it's not being contrived. It's more like mob rule.

perhaps my irony was not apparent there but as Dr. Casino points out unless you're taking a lawyer to school with you and threatening a lawsuit on the daily your rights don't count for shit with school administrators. they will do what they want with you, including punishing you for not saying the pledge of allegiance, hitting you, saying offensive things to you, belittling you in class etc etc all of which happened to me in high school.

but this is off-topic...

xp

iirc mussolini started off just clapping and three weeks later rome had been well and truly marched on

― james lipton and his francs (darraghmac), Monday, May 19, 2014 2:06 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

need a thread for reductio ad absurdums you appreciated anyway

۩, i just saw that on my friend's facebook and was considering it for a poll, has it been done?

I dont think so. You should do it! I wonder what else is on that list. Pretty sure Queen must be on it (probably Fbi - The Fugs style)

― ۩, Monday, May 19, 2014 1:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bands NOT RECOMMENDED in old Soviet-era Estonian KGB Museum list

We should have a thread for bullshit assemblies (political, religious, or just shitty and stupid) you had to go to in high school. I remember one time we had to see THE POWER TEAM, who are bodybuilder/stunt magic types - pumped-up WWF clowns shattering cinderblocks and ripping phone books for Jesus. But the school-assembly version didn't have any Jesus stuff - presumably it was meant to act as a promo for their normal show. This is not exactly what I think of when I listen to Queen but I would be sympathetic if somebody else felt that way.

once a guy had volunteers come up to the auditorium stage to eat white-bread sandwiches he prepared in front of us with mayonnaise, sugar, and iceberg lettuce, claiming this was all he had eaten on meth

Kids in the elementary district where I work say a "peace builder" pledge every morning, where they agree to give up bullying, to have personal accountability, and to be a positive element in the community. I often feel like it's one of the most profound things we do!

kids are all right imo

also i hate sporting events, pledge saying, and such as much as anyone, but i still reject as simplistic the "call to collective unity and strength = fascism" equation. that sort of thing can be fascist, sure, in a legitimately fascist larger context, and true fascism does depend on it. we have reason to be wary, but also to be sensible. maybe in some alternate universe queen became the cheering section for genocide, but here, they're just a tongue-in-cheek pop band. nor do i think they reasonably seemed part of any legitimately looming threat even in their moment of greatest popularity.

some itt suggest that fascism is so poisonous that we must remain forever vigilant against anything that smacks of a high-school pep rally, lest we become too comfortable as a synchronized units in an iron-willed group. i get that argument, but it seems excessive to me, sort of absurd. i'm trying to imagine a new world order authored by promise keepers, nfl fans and stadium rockers. and, well...it's not too hard and not too pretty. i dunno, maybe i'm coming around on that one.

fundamentally, i'm troubled by the condemnatory overreach of the word "fascist", so laden with apocalyptic implication. it's too big, too terrible for the use to which it's being put. it minimizes real fascism, overamplifies the threat posed by peacock glam rock, and radically unbalances the discourse. we need a word for "reminiscent in some troubling way of fascism, but not really fascist."

speaking of personal accountability, I know no gays who like Queen and few gays who like queens.

i prob listened to queen on headphones in an assembly at some point

^^^ postmodernism

lol, i got threatened with disciplinary action for pledge refusal, too. strength in unity!

we need a word for "reminiscent in some troubling way of fascism, but not really fascist."

sure. I don't know what this word is though. cryptofascist still pretty condemnatory.

contenderizer otm. Would say the same thing to the people who think Michelle Obama's fitness campaign is secret fascism.

we need a word for "reminiscent in some troubling way of fascism, but not really fascist."

Rockist.

"reminiscent in some troubling way of fascism, but not really fascist."

"jackbooted thug-rock"

seriously, that's a great post, contenderizer.

As someone who works in education, these disciplinary actions for the pledge bum me out even as they don't surprise me. So many people in the field are so afraid that they will lose control of their classroom that they'd rather overreact to any issue of "noncompliance" than try to handle a "situation" with any level of finesse.

FCC otm with the coinage.

fascisexualist

i still reject as simplistic the "call to collective unity and strength = fascism" equation. that sort of thing can be fascist, sure, in a legitimately fascist larger context, and true fascism does depend on it.

i mean it is called fascism. but i agree that one should not call a non-purity-obsessed glam rock band fascist without a paragraph of explanation which yes can hopefully someday be compressed into a word.

lol, i got threatened with disciplinary action for pledge refusal, too. strength in unity!

― katsu kittens (contenderizer), Monday, May 19, 2014 5:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my school was kinda preppy and I think our administrators were either aloof or too busy dealing with the more violent delinquents that we had an abundance of to worry about punishing those of us who were doing menial shit.

Hell, in my anxiety-racked senior year, I remember regularly skipping the first part of 6th period to go into the catwalk to destroy furniture with a 2x4. not once did the teacher ask me why I was late or why I was bleeding.

then again, this is the English teacher who volunteered that she hadn't read Les Miserables as I waltzed my way to an A+ on my book report after making up 75% of the details.

a non-purity obsessed glam band = "Alice Cooper"

i guess i reject as simplistic the operator "=".

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

fascistey

i don't think we need a new word for fascism-lite. i think we really just need to rehabilitate fascism.

guess the question for me here involves "there is power in a union"

but i feel like fascism does more than just use united strength towards an end the same way socialism does (destruction of demonized element vs emancipation of the working class); it aestheticizes and adores it for itself, which is why it names itself after it. in fact that's exactly why supposedly empty and apolitical capitalist uses of the same emotions/impulses trouble me more than may day rallies do: because they too are simply presenting the feeling to be enjoyed for itself. i think the emotional/sexual rush of this feeling, even before it is weaponized against the jews/gays/commies, is rly fundamental to fascism (partially rooted, iirc, in an italian futurist aesthetic love of vigor and strength and power, right?). this feeling existed before fascism of course and will always exist; it's just that fascism was, we learned, what happens when you devote yourself to it.

fascy

even before it is weaponized against the jews/gays/commies

Does this inevitably follow? Legitimately curious if you think that this is an inevitable or logical end result.

Fauxcist

i think it's more than that. i go with "this feeling existed before fascism and will always exist" over the conception of fascism's adoration of strength through unity as some uniquely seed of evil. the problem wasn't the celebration, it was the way the celebration combined with a great many other things: nationalism, purity fetishism, hysterical othering, utopian idealism, ideological fundamentalism, militarism, buried grudges, nostalgia for lost glory, authoritarianism to the point of tyranny, etc. it's the combination of all these things with the pep-rally-style strength through unity cheerleading that made fascism so dangerous.

"more than that" in response to DLH

plus "some uniquely evil seed", not that it matters

"they too are simply presenting the feeling to be enjoyed for itself"

But music is always presenting some type of feeling to be enjoyed for itself. Is this an allegation that this particular feeling is empty?

Fascism demands self-regard, an aestheticizing of national strength and beauty. I don't quite make the connection between it and a response to music.

Does this inevitably follow?

like contenderizer said i think it requires other ingredients: a sense of group humiliation that first leads people to seek a feeling of power and then having found it to wonder why, if they have such potential, whose fault it is that they do not have actual power. but there are other answers to this question, supplied by other ideologies: you do not have power because the capitalist class oppresses you; you do not have power because white supremacy permeates your society; you do not have power because you have sinned against god; whatever. by focusing on beauty and strength and unity fascism answers: because of the people who are not beautiful, not strong, not alike. so yes i do think there is a seed in those aesthetics, even if it needs lots of soil to grow into national socialism.

Equating chanting in a stadium with fascism seems a little disingenuous. Chanting in a large group appeals to something to a base human or proto-human tribal instinct. Something that is baked in. TO some it is exhilarating and to some it is deeply troubling. Appealing to this base instinct has been done throughout history, it predates queen and fascism. It has been used as a means of control, an expression of strength or to give a sense of unity and belonging. The football terrace, the mob, the barricade, the army, Queen all harness this.

I reckon, given the rest of Queen's aesthetic that making a stadium of 50,000 go stomp-stomp-clap, was about feeding the ego of the band members and engendering that tribal exhilaration of the shared experience. Sure the Nazi's used the same tools but I don't see Queen turning blending that with anger and retoric and turning it into hate.

I understand the fee and unease because it is a fine line between the cheering crowd and the angry mob.

I'm not sure Queen is more about ego than any other music I could name. If I'm supposed to think that they're about ego, then it seems to me that I could just as easily say that less athletic music is merely passive-aggressive.

fairly liberal-esque school in Florida

lol

Lol relatively speaking of course

Wait, wait, wait, if we sing/stomp along with "We Will Rock You" then don't we become part of the "we" rather than the rocked? I mean, of all songs, we're not complacently sitting there and listening to it!

― That's So (Eazy), Monday, May 19, 2014 12:06 PM (1 hour ago)

I'm still catching up with this thread, but this part reminds me of an article I read (but can't currently find) that pinpointed white feminists who thought Beyonce's "Bow Down" was anti-feminist were identifying with the subject of the song, whereas the black feminists who found power in it were identifying with its narrator.

Chanting in a large group appeals to something to a base human or proto-human tribal instinct. Something that is baked in.

Cite your sources please? I kind of disagree. Don't see any reason we should assert this as "human" or "tribal" instinct as opposed to a bunch of different socially constructed and/or institutionalized phenomena which do, or don't, exist in various cultures.

i'm think people singing together pre-dates spoken language. it's pretty basic. in pretty much every culture.

http://www2.lawrence.edu/fast/KOOPMAJO/antiquity.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg-5_KHR-ZE

As far back as the 1990s, primitive humans have enjoyed the music of Kid Rock. It's just in our genes.

hey y'all I picked up a cheap LP copy of Queen II thank to this thread and the recommendations therein, will report back

xp lol

i do tentatively agree (unsourced/cited) w scott that chanting in a group does seem to feed a very basic, togetherness-forming sense of inclusion and "usness" in human beings. it's put to various uses culturally, but the basic category of doing and its use in social bonding both seem pretty universal. would love to hear from anyone who knows more abt this...

Here's something sourced and cited

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12814197

There's a lot of research to show that singing, chanting and group activities releases oxytocin and other pleasurable hormones. The oxytocin response is found across mammals so it is pretty fundamental in our evolutionary makeup. Stress and trauma can suppress the oxytocin response, so someone who is stressed by the experience of being in a crowd might not get the same pleasurable response.

Interestingly oxytocin increases trust, so by engaging in the group activity is likely to engender trust in other members or leaders of the group.

http://dept.wofford.edu/neuroscience/neuroseminar/pdffall2008/oxy-human.pdf

This is why I feel able to say that mass ritualised chanting is instinctual and proto-human.

beware searching for 'singing and oxytocin' in google scholar a lot of phasic research is done on singing mice

insert one direction joke here

The thing is, Marsh called "We Will Rock You" fascist before it had been performed live or sung with however many thousands of fans.

the only thing that really bugs me about the marsh thing is when he says they don't have any imagination. queen! no imagination! with 50 million boogie rock bands playing 20 minute blooze jams night after night in the 70's. seems really unfair. but he never really worried about being fair.

i mean NONE of their albums are typical rock albums. you might think they fail when they squeeze 20 different genres into one album, but you can't say they weren't THINKING. you know? i'm pretty sure they could have written 10 normal rockers an album and called it a day. brian may could have written all of them himself.

with 50 million boogie rock bands playing 20 minute blooze jams night after night in the 70's.

This phenomenon was pretty much done by '77 though, wasn't it?

Bottom line from this thread: Dave Marsh is a fucking idiot.

if they had been The Brian May Band they might have just been the British Boston. in fact you can probably blame Queen for Boston. if you want to blame them for something. i like Boston okay so i'm not gonna blame them. or i like the first Boston album anyway.

southern rock boogie was not done by 1977. not by a long shot. atlanta rhythm section, 38 special, blackfoot, etc, etc, etc...

molly hatchet were just getting started!

Skynyrd died in October so they enjoyed 10 full months of '77 and put out one of their best albums that year.

if they had been The Brian May Band they might have just been the British Boston.

^ i would have loved this.

Dave Marsh is still a fucking idiot.

left to his own devices...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf9KkVktRKU

which is basically bad AOR and a 20 minute blues jam with eddie van halen.

Rock critics didn't like Queen because Queen didn't give a shit what rock critics thought. They made music which SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POPULAR but was, SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ROCK but was, SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN TAKEN SERIOUSLY but was. The "fascist" comment is ridiculous, because it strikes me as coming from an obviously insecure place by the critic. i.e., any band who doesn't care what I think, who flaunts their greatness and says they are going to "rock" me = fascist. Queen are hardly the only band to get these criticisms either, but I think because they were so popular, and because they wore their love of drama and rococo flair on their sleeves, it made it easy to insult them. And why not? They seemed immune to criticism anyway. That in retrospect it's been shown to be entirely off base is kind of funny, but to fans, completely unsurprising.

apparently it was more of a thing than i remember, throwing around the term "fascist" in 70s arts criticism. here's xgau in '77, under the subheading "Fascism, Sexism, and Old Farts":

In a world where lib-rad goody-goodies compare rock concerts to Nuremberg rallies and dismiss all electric guitarists as phallic narcissists, it's not hard to understand why so many bright young avant-punk musicians and fans consider abstractions like "fascism" and "sexism" squarer than love beads.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/avantpunk-77.php

Also this on the use of the term in 70s film criticism:

http://s-usih.org/2014/05/fascinating-fascism-the-other-f-word-in-seventies-cultural-criticism.html

did Marsh ever review The Wall? must have blown his mind...

Yeah, NME called Rush "fascist", Bangs called ELP "war criminals", etc

http://davemarsh.us/wp-content/themes/marsh/images/hearing.png

i think this is dave marsh's list from 1979:

1. "Summer, Donna" Bad Girls
2. "Petty, Tom And The Heartbreakers" Damn The Torpedoes
3. "Costello, Elvis" Armed Forces
4. "Jackson, Michael" Off The Wall
5. Cheap Trick Cheap Trick At Budokan
6. "Wonder, Stevie" Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants
7. Chic Risque
8. Fleetwood Mac Tusk
9. Pink Floyd The Wall
10. Led Zeppelin In Through The Out Door

"Summer, Donna" was definitely Bad Girls' best song

What a strangely formatted "list"

i like his all-time singles list. i didn't read the book but as a list it's cool. lots of great stuff. props for including "mama used to say". that would definitely make any list i made.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fixbutte/dave_marshs_heart_of_rock_and_soul__the_1001_greatest_singles_ever_made__1989_/

Armed Forces, Damn the Torpedoes, Off the Wall, and Journey Through the Secret Life Of Plants are all good to great band names IMO

did Marsh ever review The Wall? must have blown his mind...

― scott seward, Tuesday, May 20, 2014 12:49 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He gave it 5 stars in the (blue/1983) RS Record Guide, called it their best album ("although the story is one of its more pompous ones," iirc).

Bangs called ELP "war criminals",

well...

http://futurismic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/tarkus-emerson-lake-palmer.jpg

armed forces, damn the torpedos, and the wall? what is this guy some fascist military nut?

The original title of Armed Forces was Emotional Fascism.

It's all a rich tapestry.

him liking the wall kinda blows my theory about him not liking stuff aimed at 16 year old boys.

tusk also features a fascist sousaphone-heavy marching band of course...

He also loved Cheap Trick -- gave At Budokan five stars.

and he placed "Jam On It" in his 1001 singles list

these additions are…eclectic:

Close My Eyes Forever, Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne
Closer to Free, The BoDeans
Cream, Prince
Daughter, Pearl Jam
Dear Mama, Tupac
Doggy Dogg World, Snoop Doggy Dogg
Doll Parts, Hole
Dre Day, Dr. Dre

when you have to come up with a thousand singles even the bodeans have a shot.

Ugh, that "update" has some problems. I more-or-less part ways with Marsh when his Pearl Jam love kicks in.

marsh's singles book is really useful just as a list of things you should listen to. the problem is that his actual writing is never really particularly insightful or interesting.

him liking the wall kinda blows my theory about him not liking stuff aimed at 16 year old boys.

― scott seward

Marsh didn't write that bluebook review, just edited. 5 star review isn't his.

Pretty sure he wrote that one; he's co-credited in the attribution. Everything up to The Wall (or possibly Animals, I'd have to check) was written by the other reviewer; it appears word-for-word in the red/1979 edition, where it's only credited to that reviewer. Only thing added to the blue edition is The Wall, and the Floyd section is then appended with Marsh's initials.

Well, that would suggest to me that other reviewer (David McGee?) wrote that bit too, but who knows?

Thanks for the due diligence!

Ha, no problem; it stuck in my memory because I found it odd that Marsh would dig The Wall that much.

(that said, I'll double-check when I get home)

jesus, a fact checkin' goat...