Thursday 22 January 2015

41 ½


The Safari used to go round to MG’s house after school, or in the hols if the weather wasn’t good enough to play footy, cricket or go out wildlifing round the local farms and woods, to doss round playing board games, cards or table footy while listening to the latest 45s and LPs on his little record play. In the early 70s when we were about a year older than FW is now he put on this LP by a new fangled group we’d not heard of he’d borrowed from another frien
It was different, deffo not heavy rock like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin, and not really progressive like Genesis or Yes and certainly not glam rock-poppy like Sweet or Slade nor was it 12 bar bluesy like Status Quo and yet it had elements of all these genres but was certainly in it’s own little musical niche.
When we finally saw them on Top of the Pops some months later by eck did we think they were a bit weird especially that lead singer.
So who is this mystery pop group? Queen of course. We followed them for a few years buying all their albums up to A Day At The Races and then we went to Uni and had a slight musical taste change and ignored them but still continued to hear the singles on the radio through the years. We never did get to go to see them in those early years and then sadly Freddie Mercury died and that too many people was the end of Queen. But not to the other band members who, after a while, began to tour again with ‘guest’ lead singers including Free’s incomparable vocalist Paul Rodgers (who we saw in his Bad Company incarnation along time ago) and then went on to recruit American Idol runner up Adam Lambert.
A new world tour began this year after last year’s success and we just had to grab a ticket or two.


Well were they any good? You betcha! A set list of 24 of the old favourites, Freddy even put in a posthumous appearance through the magic of digital media but you know what they don't really need him anymore - the new boy done real good. This no tribute band, this is the real deal with a different lead singer.
Where to next? Got some stuff from today to tell you about tomoz.
In the meantime let us know who's belting out the tunes in your outback



1 comment:

Stuart Price said...

Sacha Baron Cohen was supposed to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic, he would have been a great replacement lead singer!