I'm interested in your thoughts on this track.

And would The Fall's Chiselers and Radiohead's Paranoid Android exist without it?

I don't think the song itself would have existed without the influence of the pomp rock, the excesses, of the time. It was a throwback then, not a pointer to much in the future, except naff pop videos. That said, I don't hate the song...Freddie Mercury was fun, I think...though this may get me loads of criticism from the milling hoardes!

Chiselers? Yes.

Paranoid Android? No.

Muse? They are Queen, aren't they?

I hope not or I'll have to bin some CDs ;)

At the time it was seminal and groundbreaking
However familiarity breeds contempt
The Chiselers is more akin to a Plague of Lighthouse Keepers
What is Radiohead???

I like it at times - Not every time I turn on the pissin radio, though :banghead:

They are a bit fond of the old ' operatics ' though, aren't they? I can only go by the small amount of their stuff I've heard and, when asked my opinion of them by a friend, the first thing that came to mind was ' The Queen of their time '. I hope that's not gonna get you launching their cd's, frisbee-like out of the nearest window? :rolleyes: :D

Just found out my mate's a Queen fan so am going to give them another go sometime when the whim arises..but my lifelong passionately held belief up to this juncture is that Bohemian Rhapsody is a travesty of a mockery of a farce of a song.

I hate it. It bores me silly.

I like, we are the Champions and a few other Queen songs though.

I don't see how Paranoid andranoid or the chisellers, has anything in common with Bohemian Rhaspody

This sort of sums up how I feel about it.

Mmm...tricky one. Queen were a band of my teens so I still have a soft spot for them. Freddy always brought a smile to my face even when he was doing rubbish.

BR is ok but overplayed like others mentioned. I like a buncha Queen songs and Sheer Heart Attack is a good album.

I hated the Live Killers version of BR as the band played a tape and left the stage during the 'operatic' middle section. Cringe.

Does anyone know why those dicks at Rolling Stone said in their scathing review of "Jazz" that Queen were the first truly fascist band??? I don't think those idiots know the true meaning of the word.

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/_/id/195592

Multi-sectionality.

This is one of those 'resistance is futile' songs. I prefer the Fuzzbox version though.

But there were multi sectional songs before Bohemian Rhapsody. 'A day in the life' for instance and we know that MES is familiar with that.

Awful, awful bollocks. Another classic example of how if enough people tell you it's good for long enough then people come to accept it as a fact. Nobody can find anybody who thought it was good in the first place, but the myth rolls on.

Spot on. I often find that these are the sort of people who only buy greatest hits albums, as then you 'only get the good stuff and not the other crap' (or something like that). These people have small record collections made up of greatest hits collections, various artist collections and 'Classic' albums and only go to arena or stadium gigs - if they go to gigs at all (they probably give up on live music before they reach their 25th birthday).

In the Worst song ever thread, this is the song that I nominated.

A few years ago we had an informal club where I worked that had two rules for membership..

1. You must like Reggae.
2. You must hate Bohemian Rhapsody.

Oh, come on now Harry, get off of the fence and tell us what you really think.

After Alanis Morrisette, Mrs Elderford's second favourite band is Queen (as MES would say "It's a Curse").

She has bought into the "best song in the world ever" mythology, along with Freddie Mercury was Official the Best Entertainer in the World Ever.

Back in the day they were that band who did rubbish albums and good singles.

Then they were that band that did good singles with good videos.

Then they became the best band ever, I must have been off the day that got voted in.

Anyone off to see the Real New Old Queen in Hyde Park later this year with that old man with the really tight face singing (notice they've dropped the queer songs and just going for Bank Manager Rock Nite).

I think its fab :nahnah:

When I was wee i played it over and over on aged Top of The Pops lp (saucy woman in kaftan on cover).

Liked it ever since. They sould've packed it in long, long ago tho.

When you travel down to Brighton from London there used to be a pub called "Freddie Mercury's" or something. Right in the middle of the countryside was this garish tribute theme pub. Is it still there? That is one bar I did not want to go in!

For multi-sectionality, try Supper's Ready.

I hated them when I was at school. I remember one classic occasion when I was threatened and called a pouf (for having a Bowie record with me) by a guy in a Queen T-shirt.

Really confused the pair of us when they did a track together, though...

I've been a huge fan of Queen since about the 6th grade ('76 or so). A Night at the Opera was the first album I purchased. Great stuff.

Extraordinary archive footage

All of the above, depending on how much I've had to drink.

On my last visit to Amsterdam I somehow ended up stood around a piano with a Dutch rugby team (who had became my best friends ever for an hour our two) and we all the sang this together. I knew all the words!

Normally it is an instant channel change when it comes on.

I instantly voted for "Engaging novelty track" but when I saw that it could be partially responsible for inspiring "The Chiselers" I wanted to vote for something more negative.

Awful song from an awful band...

Definitely a masterpiece.

I was never a big fan of theirs but I like them more as I get older.

My vote makes it 26-a-piece for the 'yays' and the 'nays'. Interesting split...

Sang along to it after a damn good sesh in Poznan, riding home in back of our hosts car.

I have always thought it was awful, but I think it is good that a band could have have such a major hit with a song which must have sounded very bizarre at the time.

If Queen had never done it and it was released tomorrow by Oasis it would be the end of their careers and they would be ridiculed. Are the listening public more conservative now than they were in the 70's?

It must have been fairly brave of Queen to release it as a single at the time.

B Bumble and the Stingers[bored sessions cats, I bet], in the early 60s, had a hit called Nutcracker[I think] based on some classical ditty and they didn't get all pompous and overweening like the bunch in question. Both are to be avoided, imo.

I agree with every post on this thread...........I voted "novelty" but that is technically a lie isnt it, no matter what your opinion.
It was 1977. I had my first crush on .......a Queen fan. At the risk of sounding stalker-esque (no such thing back then...), I had to do my research. Like Matt Dillon in "Theres Something About Mary" I ended up with a corner of my collection that was metaphorically BIG TEETH (I'm not referring to fabbo Freddy dahhllings, but if you have seen "Mary" you will know what I mean about the metaphorical diabolical "teeth").

During this debacle of buying some of the worst rock music imaginable and (brrrrr) listening to it, on a school trip I sang a couple of verses of BR to an unsuspecting Queen-ignorant fellow fan of "cool" rock music of the early teen moment (we were into Deep Purple, Sabbath, Floyd, Genesis and yes.....Yes...cough). He thought my Bohemian rhapsody was brill....but then I I did tell him I wrote it. ahem.
Not sure if he's forgiven me yet, but he is into musicals in a big way these days...oh the guilt....

The thing is....it's better than most flamboyant rock, but most Queen songs are shite, they really are. Imagine ANYONE else outside of Andrew Cloyed Webber ending with an instrumental of God Save the Queen.

Did I get the girl? WEll, she lent me "Hotel California" as an icebreaker after she had heard we shared an interst in Queen but I hadnt actually approached her personally about it yet (ohh, the sleepless, self-loathing Brian May Not nights) and I never spoke to her again after learning of her Eagles fetish I'm afraid, despite the fact that her family "bred motorbikes". No regrets. "I HATE THE FUCKIN EAGLES" saideth The Dude. Runneth away, thought I.

>>>FFWD 30 years. Different female, not actually born during prior "anecdote" and no relation to former temporary Love Of Life. .

I played a couple of Darkness trax I like to a devout Queen fan last summer, thinking she'd think they were great.
"Turn it off", she yelled. Why, asketh I.
Cos they're so........GAY!!!!

Probably played her the Eagles to punish her, I can't remember.

creepy. :zip:

Great story tho Rex - sorry to take it out of context.

Our music teacher uesd to play Bohemian Rhapsody every lesson, without fail.

Fun at the time, but it has aged badly! :huh:

Yeah I creeped even myself out. In 70s flares competing with a homo with a severe overbite and speech impediment in dayglo leotards is not a proud memory.
You have to put something in to keep people reading though: "I used to like a pasty faced 14 year old irish girl with spotty legs and lesbo friends who liked poodle headed Brian May songs" isnt going to cut it is it?

You're still thinking about the lesbo friends arent you?

If only we knew enough to request John Cage's "3 minutes" be recited throughout each and every lesson.
If only......................(sigh)...............

(a pedant writes) It's 4'33" -_- and yes, it WOULD be good to play in every lesson because it would sound different every time.

Credit to Queen: there's some thing/sound quite unconventional in almost every song I can think of - the feedback solo in 'Sheer Heart Attack'; the ending of 'We Will Rock You'; the synth weeeeeeEEEP! in 'Body Language' etc.

I bought A Night at the Opera as a youth.

Must have had more money than sense, and should have spent it on cigarettes and vodka.

The horrible overkill of that wretched single flogged to death that Xmas everywhere i went did it for me.

The album and sleeve got blasted to pieces by my air pistol.

Everything about the band stank.

All the crap hair/clothes, Mercury's buck-teeth, vest and moustache.

Brian May's guitar made out of an old shed, a telescope up his arse and the total wankery of it all.

The "other Two".

Dwarves with silver platters laden with coke.

Dahlings.

If ever a tour bus needed to drive over a cliff it was theirs. I would have willingly driven it just to be released from those bores.

Didn't those fraudulent cunts play Sun City too?

I hated Boney M less.

Fred is dead baby, deal with it. :finger:

:applaud::nahnah:
Sorry for the edit but too many words have been used on fred already.

certain music i can tlisten to

queen is one

hate the whole sound, the singing, the guitar playing, you name it