QUEEN – Queen’s First E.P. (1988 EMI, originally 1976)
While there’s nothing on this EP that is exclusive, I’m a sucker for this release. Why? Three reasons:
All four songs rule.
It’s an historical release in a sense. I mean, it’s Queen’s first EP!
The CD version is a 3″ CD, and they’re just so damn cute.
The songs:
“Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” is an irresistible piano bopper from A Day At The Races. If you don’t like this song, then you don’t like Queen. It’s that simple. When I think of Queen, “quintessential” Queen, I think of happy piano songs like this with lush vocal arrangements. Catchy as hell.
Up next is “Death On Two Legs”, one of Queen’s harder rockers, and the opening number from A Night At The Opera. I love this tune, it’s aggressive with great Brian May guitars.
“Tenement Funster” is a Roger Taylor vocal, from Sheer Heart Attack. I’ve always been fond of Taylor’s vocal stylings. I consider this one of his trademark songs, like “I’m In Love With My Car”. It may start slow with some sparse acoustic guitar and vocals, but it sure amps up with layers of May’s guitar and thundering drums!
Lastly, “White Queen (As It Began)” from Queen II is a brief (but epic) May tune, sung by Freddy. This one is most notable for Brian’s intricate soloing. It sounds like sitar, but it’s actually a guitar that Brian modified himself to sound that way.
Queen’s First E.P. is not an essential purchase, obviously, because all these tunes are available on albums. However as a fun little collectible, I love it. I love things like this that duplicate classic vinyl releases, and I love 3″ singles because they are so hard to come by. Gotta love it.
QUEEN + PAUL RODGERS – The Cosmos Rocks (2008 Hollywood Records, iTunes + Amazon bonus tracks)
I was surprised as anyone else when, in 1997, Queen continued on as a three-piece (sans the retired John Deacon) with a new track called “Only The Good Die Young” (Queen Rocks). Since then, Queen has continued on with one-offs under the name “Queen +” with the name of the singer. (Adam Lambert, you can fuck right off.)
When they started touring with Paul Rodgers, I salivated! I loved the live album Return Of The Champions, and I was chomping at the bit to hear some new music. Would I, as a long-time Queen fan, be let down?
Not really.
There have always been Queen albums, particularly in the 80’s, that I felt had filler on them. Cosmos Rocks is like that. Some songs are awesome, worthy of the Queen legacy and a proud addition to the canon. Others are limp are dull. And, the best song didn’t even make the CD release! Read on….
The CD kicks off with what I consider to be some cheesy sound effects, similar to but not as good as “One Vision”. Then, Brian May’s guitar kicks in, and the first track “Cosmos Rockin'” really starts. This is a great track, a hard and fast rocker with May’s licks as fluid as ever. Paul Rodgers, perpetually young, is in fine voice. What a great start to a comeback album! Rogers and May ably handle all bass duties on this album.
Rodgers sings most leads on his own, with familiar sounding backing vocals by Roger Taylor and Brian May. On some songs, the lead vocal is split three ways, such as “Say It’s Not True” which is actually an older song from 2003. I like this touch, as it keeps the sound a little more rooted in old-school Queen which always had Taylor and May singing lead. When Rodgers sings, however, with his voice in full power, it is a brand new beast.
I have to say I was very happy with the choice of Paul Rodgers as lead singer, as he is simply one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, up there with Daltrey or Plant. He is also a gifted writer, although I’m not sure his writing really gelled with Queen. Still, he is vastly different from Freddie, and nobody could ever replace Freddie, so I think this was definitely the way to go. Certainly much better than picking up some guy who lost American Idol…
Some of the other highlights on this album were the heavy-handed first single “C-lebrity” which seems to disparage the reality TV that Queen would later embrace! I prefer the disparaging sentiment! “Surf’s Up…School’s Out!” is another rocker that blows the doors off most younger bands. “Say It’s Not True” is a highlight, as it is the most Queen-like. Of course, with Freddie gone, his dramatic flourishes and piano was also gone, leaving Queen as a straightforward rock band with May & Taylor firmly in charge. What they once had in unique operatic flourishes has been replaced by hard rocking guitars, for better or for worse. It is what it is, and nobody can be Freddie.
“Small” is a fantastic ballad, worthy of the Queen back catalogue. May and Taylor join Rodgers on the lush outro. I absolutely adore this song. But then when you think Queen have lightened up, “Wayboys” assaults the speakers, a rare political statement with a military drumbeat. “Call Me” is another great tune, very vintage Queen in style, sort of an electric campfire singalong.
There is, unfortunately, a lot of filler on this CD, slow-paced plodders that don’t go anywhere or stay in your memory. The thing about the Queen of old is that they were very diverse. You could have a nice jaunty flamenco song like “Who Needs You” on the same album as an epic like “It’s Late”. Queen + Paul Rodgers lacks that diversity. Well, it would have had more diversity if the best song had been included….
That best track I mentioned, that isn’t even on the CD, is available as an iTunes download only. It is a cover of Del Shannon’s “Runaway”, and it is worth the purchase, because it is amazing. I love the oldies, and clearly these guys do too. I wish it had been included on the CD. There is no shame in having a cover tune on your CD, especially when you also have over a dozen originals as well! The iTunes download also came with a new live version of “The Show Must Go On”, but I have no idea when or where it was recorded, except it is a different version from the one on Return Of The Champions. Maybe it is from one of the Queen instant live CDs, of which there are plenty, or maybe it is from the Super Live in Japan DVD that comes with some editions?
There was another bonus track too, one I haven’t heard, because only American residents can get it from the Amazon.com site. Canadians are SOL! “Fire And Water” (a live version), originally by Paul in Free, is that bonus track. Come on, Amazon! Let Canadians buy it too!
The Cosmos Rocks is not a perfect Queen album, but one that stands up in the back catalogue as an interesting and entertaining sideroad. The big difference is that The Cosmos Rocks has more, and bigger, guitars than many Queen albums of the recent past.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 161: The Woman Who Got Her Bike Stoled
The date: July 15, 2005
The location: My store
Straight from my journal, here’s the tale.
One weird thing happened today. This strange woman came in to sell CDs, but left her bike outside unlocked, and it had been stolen. Now, instead of blaming it on the lack of a lock on her bike, she decided to blame the lack of surveillance cameras outside. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any CD store that has cameras OUTSIDE. But apparently that’s “dumb”.
She came back later in the day, telling me that she ran into two guys drinking beers in the woods. She had a beer with them. She came back into the store saying “Now I have a ‘cheap’ buzz on.”
Now I’m wondering, does she mean “cheap” as in “free”? Or did these two mysterious woodsmen charge her for the beer? The mind reels.
My journal does not say if the woman ever found the bicycle or not. Typical day on the shady side of town!
I have 31 discs of music to listen to now. And a whole lotta other goodies. Here we go!
First up – books. Peter Criss’ Makeup To Breakup, and the latest from Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Guiness’ Book of World Records. I’ve leafed through Peter’s book — all he seems to do is bitch about Paul and Gene. Review will come.
Next, Queen. A total of 8 discs of awesome remastered Queen to listen to: The Miracle, Jazz, A Night at the Opera, and Live Killers!
Next up, Rush. 6 discs in each of these two Sector box sets, including 2 DVD’s in 5.1 surround, plus 2 discs of 2112. Awesome. (I already have Sector 2 and have a review of that coming in the next few days.)
And the rest: The 4 disc Cult Love Omnibus Edition. Thin Lizzy’s Life Live (2 discs), Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra, and the new Rage Against The Machine XX edition (2 discs plus a DVD).
But that’s not all. Check out this Kiss lunchbox, these movies and vintage G1 Transformers 1988 “Bugly” action figure.
Lastly my folks got me this neat Joby camera tripod. This is going to come in handy when I make my next Transformers stop motion animated movie. I did a brief 15 second screen test — check that out too!
Hope your Christmas was filled with happiness, love, joy, and rock!
In alphabetical order, here’s Part 3: 88 albums that meant the world to me in the 1990′s but never got the respect I felt they deserved.
King’s X – Faith Hope Love (most KX discs didn’t get the attention they deserved!)
King’s X – Dogman
King’s X – Ear Candy
King’s X – Tape Head
Kiss – Carnival of Souls (while you can’t argue it wasn’t a sellout, it sure wasn’t wimpy!)
Leadfoot – Bring It On (Karl Agell and Phil Swisher ex-COC)
Marillion – Brave (what a brave, brave album)
Marillion – Radiation (a lot of people don’t like this one, but I consider it a highlight for them)
Duff McKagan – Believe In Me (diverse, fun and pissed off)
Kim Mitchell – Aural Fixations (a little soft, but Kim in the 1990’s was scarce indeed)
Kim Mitchell – Kimosabe
Motley Crue – Motley Crue (they were better without Vince, honestly)
Vince Neil – Exposed (…and Vince wasn’t doing too badly himself)
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (it sold by the buckets, but I think today it’s ignored which is a shame)
Poison – Native Tongue (Ritchie Kotzen took them to a new level of maturity and virtuosity)
Pride & Glory – Pride & Glory (Zakk Wykde’s first album without Ozzy, and one of the best)
Queen – Innuendo (in North America, most of what Queen did went ignored before Freddie passed)
Queensryche – Promised Land (spacey and mature)
Queensryche – Q2k (riffy)
Quiet Riot – Terrified (the only thing they’ve done since the 80’s worth playing)
David Lee Roth – Your Filthy Little Mouth (I didn’t need to hear Dave do reggae but it ain’t bad)
David Lee Roth – DLR Band (John 5 on lead guitar…crank it up)
The Bargain Bin was where we sold our overstock — discs we had three or more copies of — at $5.99 per disc. Which was cheap by 1996 prices. New discs went from $16.99 to $24.99 at the time.
I think it was Trev who made the sign for the Bargain Bin. Trevor was the resident sign-maker because he had some artistic ability, where my boss couldn’t read my handwriting let alone my signs. It was originally called the “Bin O’ Bargains”. It was a big red sign, and it looked something like this:
Bin ‘O Bargains. But yet 90% of customers couldn’t read it. They would always say, “What’s in your Bin Bargains?”
“Bin Bargains”? That doesn’t even make sense!
The Bin O’ Bargains, as mentioned, was a hodgepodge of overstock. Any type of music was fair game, from Alan Jackson to Hammer to Lionel Richie to Hole to the Pumpkins. $5.99 each. We later lowered this, but at the start everything in there was basically the same price. We figured, that was simplest.
Simple to us, but not to everyone else. The Bin O’ Bargains created many questions and problems for both customers and staff! I mentioned that it was for stuff we had three or more copies of. That’s an oversimplification of things, but there were also things that we’d NEVER throw in the bargain bin. For example, if by some weird coincidence, we had four copies of a Queen album: Staff would think maybe, “OK, that’s plenty of copies, I’ll put this copy of The Miracle in the Bin.”
Nooooo! No no nononono!
Queen, Metallica, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Lightfoot, …doesn’t matter how many copies we have or what we paid for them. You never, ever, ever bargain bin bands like that. If we happened to have a bunch of used copies, that’s just pure chance!
You’d also never throw a greatest hits CD in there, because they were good sellers.
Err…except those cheapie greatest hits discs that you can get new at the grocery store for around $5.
Try teaching all that to a highschool kid who just wants to work at a record store to be cool. We ended up selling all kinds of stuff for $5.99, by mistake, instead of stockpiling it. I remember once a kid handed me a copy of Metallica’s Black Album that he found in the bin at $5.99. Lucky kid! That CD never should have been in there, since it was a regular easy sale at full price. (It doesn’t matter what you think of that album, it was huge, people wanted it all the time.)
So, there was that. There was always the confusing aspect that since our Bargain Bin was overstock, you’d find the same album on our regular shelves for $11.99. So people would logically ask:
“This copy is $5.99, and this copy is $11.99. Is that because one is scratched more?”
Oooh. Hated that question. It required a set response that both stated our quality policy (all discs are guaranteed and scratch free) and a quick explanation of overstock. People were often confused and who could blame them?
After you explained the Bin O’ Bargains to them, they’d hold up the $5.99 copy. “So…I should buy this one, right?”
Yes. Yes you should.
Since the bargain bin was a hodgepodge, we just threw stuff in there — nothing was alphabetized. Which caused us problems with lazy customers who didn’t want to flip through the treasures within.
“The other day you had Bryan Adams in here. Can you help me find him?”
ARGH! Why didn’t you buy him the other day? Yeah, I’ll help you find him. Flip flip flip. Flip flip flip. Flip flip flip. I could flip the whole bin in around 5-10 minutes, but still…tedious.
We did brisk business out of the bin. The markup was decent and we might have sold 20 out of there each day. Some people used it to take chances on new music, others to pick up long-ignored albums. It just boggled my mind how many people complained about such a great deal!
“I can’t search through this bin…it’s completely random! I’m not wasting my time.”
“Can you give me a deal if I buy 5?”
We also had this frequent buyer card like a buy-10-get-one-free type of card, but it specifically said, “Not applicable with any other special deals.” The Bin O’ Bargains was already a special deal, so we weren’t allowed to stamp the card with it. Which pissed people off. Which made me wonder, “What are you complaining about? You’re already getting a CD for a quarter of its regular price.”
When the Bin O’ Bargain was full to the brim, and sales were slow, we’d have a Bargain Bin sale. Something like buy two from the bin, get one free. We were still making money and stuff cleared out of there quickly. It was one good way to get rid of all those Lionel Richie Louder Than Words discs.
But don’t worry, the Bin would fill up again in short order. There were always people looking to get rid of their Lionel Richie.
THE POLYPHONIC SPREE – Together We’re Heavy (2004 Hollywood Records)
Together We’re Heavy= The Beatles + Queen on ‘roids. I can’t think of a better distillation of The Polyphonic Spree. I usually hate it when people describe albums as, “Take band A, mix in band B, add a sprinkle of C, and you get this!” It’s a lazy explanation, but in this case I think it works. If early-middle period Queen took the fearlessness of the Beatles to explore multiple genres and call it rock, then the Polyphonic Spree is the logical next step beyond that.
It’s not that simple though. The Polyphonic Spree, all dressed in colourful robes like some sort of rock choir revival, barely use rock instruments. Oh sure, Tim DeLaughter (ex-Tripping Daisy frontman) plays guitar as do other members of this band, but the dominant instruments in the mix are the horns and strings: Trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, viola, french horn, double bass. At times it can be a cacophony, mixed very loudly in the speakers, but it seems controlled. Every blast of a trumpet sounds like it was labored over to be there at that exact moment.
How are the songs? Well the band seems to call them “sections”. Each one is catchy and memorable, and melodies recur throughout the album, rhyming like poetry. My favourite section is 12, “Hold Me Now” (actually track 2 on the CD, but let’s not get into that). From that familiar piano riff that you think you’ve heard before, to the dense, intense and plaintive chorus. This song is a keeper. Dramatic.
And that’s a word to use: dramatic! If you like a flair for drama in your rock music, and aren’t afraid of a lil’ french horn, then pick up Together We’re Heavy by The Polyphonic Spree. For what it is, this album is absolutely perfect, flawless, a gem merely waiting for your discovery. It came with a bonus DVD too, The Adventure of Listening, with live stuff and Tim DeLaughter talking about the Spree.
Back in 2003, I was working with this…fucking idiot. We’ll call him Dandy. Easily the most superficial person I’ve ever had the displeasure of associating with. We’ll be talking more about him later on, believe me.
When Dandy told me there was this new band that would be right up my alley called The Darkness, I wanted nothing to do with it. Not only did I hate pretty much everything he raved about, but he meant it sort of as a joke. Like, “Watch me get Mike into a shitty band like The Darkness.”
Anyway, the way he decribed them to me sounded spoofy, and I hate 96.5% of spoofy music. I take my hair rock seriously.
A few months later, we opened another franchise in St. Catharines (a shitty hour and a half long drive in the mornings), and I was assigned training duty for their new manager. We worked side by side daily for a couple weeks and I found him to be a good guy. When he put The Darkness on, I was skeptical, but by no means opposed, because he obviously wasn’t a shitface like Dandy. He wasn’t trying to yank my chain.
Yet, I’d never heard this band before…who the hell were they? Some new band from England that looked like a cross between Queen and Aerosmith. And sounded something like a cross between Queen, AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses. Yet was nothing at all like anything that was coming out at the time. And they could play.
I like bands with unique singers, and Justin Hawkins is definitely unique. I was into it! Dandy was wrong — this wasn’t a spoof. These guys were serious.
We played that album any time we could get away with it — which wasn’t often since Permission To Land is loaded with “fucks”. I grew to love every song. Great songs like “Growing On Me” and “Friday Night” kept me going on the really bad days, like a shot of Liquid Schwartz in the ol’ engine. They quickly became my Favourite New Band, and pretty much have remained that for the last ten years!
When the second album came out, I remember one of the head office people made a point of telling me how much she hated it.
“The new Darkness…sucks.”
“Oh yeah?” I responded, not really surprised I’d hear that from this person. They loved to rain on my musical parades. They thought they were doing me a favour, trying to get me out of “cheesey” music, and onto “good” music.
“There’s this one song where all he does is sing, ‘I love what you’ve done with your hair,’ over and over again,” they complained. (Note: The song is called “Knockers”, of course.)
Predictably, I loved the second album, although it took a few listens to absorb. Today I find myself leaning more towards the second Darkness album. I think their ambition got the better of them in a lot of ways though. I think One Way Ticket was more appropriate as a fourth album, but as a second, a little shocking for the masses to absorb. And so, in my store at least, they ignored it in droves!
I followed them through the breakup, Hot Leg and Stone Gods, and now cannot wait to hear the long awaited third record, Hot Cakes, on August 21. Welcome back, The Darkness!
Shortly after we kicked off our website, we ran into a brand new breed of customer. This breed was probably accidentally created in a lab when scientists cross the “annoying customer” with the “computer” and tossed in some DNA from “the internet”.
These guys bought the same titles, over and over and over again. Then they would re-sell them on eBay and double their money. The problem is these guys would get up early in the morning, check the website updates, and snag them before sane people wake up.
Some of the titles they were always hunting for:
Alanis Morissette – Alanis
Alanis Morissette – Now is the Time
These were Alanis’ first two dance-pop discs that have never been reissued. For obvious reasons.
Another:
Last of the Mohicans – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
This classic score was out of print for a long time. That, and it’s dramatic quality, made it a classic for eBaying.
The Traveling Wilburys – Vol 1
The Traveling Wilburys – Vol 3
Before these two albums were reissued recently with bonus material, they were completely unavailable. People were willing to pay up to and over $50 for the first one on eBay.
There were pretty strict company rules about staff buying product for resale on eBay for their own personal profit. You can see why this would be so, the store is not there to supply an employee’s personal eBay business.
However before that rule kicked in, and eBay was new to the world, a few of us tried selling some stuff as an experiment. I remember getting good good money for the following, which I sold multiple times:
Freddie Mercury – Mr. Bad Guy
The Tea Party – Release (EP)
Now it’s almost impossible to imagine a time when you couldn’t get (almost) anything on eBay, if you can afford it. Yet there are still some things I’m hunting for, and I have not found yet on eBay. If you have either of these, drop me a line!
The Cult – Capsule 2
The Sultans of Ping F.C. – Casual Sex in the Cineplex
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