Am Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:08:23 +0100 schrieb andrel:

> On 01-Jan-09 16:40, Warp wrote:
>> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>> 1       Queen                   Bohemian rhapsody
>> 
>>   I must wonder about that choice myself as well. IMO Queen had much
>>   more
>> epic songs, such as "I want it all", "I want to break free", "The show
>> must go on" and perhaps the best known one, "We will rock you"
>> (although that one has been abused way too much).
> 
> I am not a Queen fan, but I think all of these are straight and standard
> pop songs. Chorus refrain chorus refrain repeat until bored. Bohemian
> rhapsody is different and when it came out and was first shown on TV it
> touched a great many people. I know it was one of the few songs that my
> father was really impressed by, my wife told me that in the weeks after
> she had seen it the first time she tried to watch every music program
> hoping they would show it again. I think i did the same and so were
> many, many others. So, if there is one Queen song that stands out from
> all other Queen material it is this one. At least for my generation. As
> I remarked to Andy, if you weren't there you will not be able to
> understand what an impact this song had. Just as that I won't be able to
> experience the shock of hearing Beethoven's fifth or Heartbreak Hotel or
> Hey Jude for the first time.

It was also long before my time and maybe I'm totally of, but I would 
just put Queen in the category of commercially succesful glamrock. 
Musically there has been much more experimental stuff in progressive rock 
before and afterwards - from german perspective with its variant called 
"Krautrock" - highly experimental music, which blended rock, classical 
music and electronic music (a lot of musicians in progrock came from a 
classic background - for example two members of the Krautrock group "Can" 
were students of Stockhausen). What is comercial succesful and succesful 
in bringing certain styles of music to the masses (which is a very good 
thing) is sometimes not the latest stage of developement of music. For 
example take a band like Gentle Giant, which is quite difficult to 
understand musically. Nevertheless I think, they influenced also rock 
musicians outside of progrock quite considerable.

If you never heard of them, this recording is might be good to get a 
first impression (maybe it will just sound like noise the first time, but 
I think it is quite intelligent music):

 http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-4781222750582852771

I don't want to take the elitist opinion of the "stupid masses", but 
there are some pearls, which didn't make it in the charts, but were 
important nevertheless.

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