I agree. An EX recording of 4/12/1979 Newcastle would be a dream. I think that must be Freddie's best vocal performance caught on tape.
[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, that would indeed be a dream! When reading Greg's Queen live book the most interesting part for me was that they have recordings of several Crazy tour gigs(2 Manchester nights, Liverpool 2nd night, Brighton, maybe also Alexandra palace). I don't understand why they can't release Hammy'79 on DVD coupled with another Crazy tour gig. It would not only make Queen fans happy, it would show the world how amazing Queen in concert could be.
on my way up · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Sunshine wrote: [/b]
Interesting to read:)
I disagree with Yara regarding his voice during Innuendo and later.
I think it is a different voice but it grabs me. You hear his pain and still, he is performing to give everything he has. The Show Must Go On is a nice example but also Dont Try So Hard and Mother Love.
Besides that, the whole Barcelona album is breathtaking! Guide me Home is so amazing beautiful.[/QUOTE]
The show must go on is for me the ultimate Freddie moment. The power, the range, the expression in his voice. It's all there!
And Barcelona, do you have the big set with the rarities discs? for some time I was addicted to those discs:-) Hearing Freddie creating his works is just awesome. The Barcelona disc shows how motivated Freddie was to create something magical with Montsy, and in my view he did.
Sunshine · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]on my way up wrote: [/b]
[QUOTE]
[b]Sunshine wrote: [/b]
Interesting to read:)
I disagree with Yara regarding his voice during Innuendo and later.
I think it is a different voice but it grabs me. You hear his pain and still, he is performing to give everything he has. The Show Must Go On is a nice example but also Dont Try So Hard and Mother Love.
Besides that, the whole Barcelona album is breathtaking! Guide me Home is so amazing beautiful.
[/QUOTE]
The show must go on is for me the ultimate Freddie moment. The power, the range, the expression in his voice. It's all there!
And Barcelona, do you have the big set with the rarities discs? for some time I was addicted to those discs:-) Hearing Freddie creating his works is just awesome. The Barcelona disc shows how motivated Freddie was to create something magical with Montsy, and in my view he did.
[/QUOTE]
No unfortunately, i play Barcelona to death as well....what a great way to wake up with:)
I'd love to hear those tapes but i cant find them anywhere:(
TSMGO brings tears in my eyes...
john bodega · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka's Tiny Ding-a-ling wrote:[/b]
Would he have had that same rawness and power in mid 80s if it hadn't been for cigarettes?
[/QUOTE]
Power, he always had. It was really the tone, the colour if you will, that was changing in his voice. Cigarettes had a huge impact on that of course but then if you look at his voice once he'd stopped smoking (I'm thinking of The Miracle here) he really had the best of both worlds - that big, mid 80's sound, and the potential to do very fiddly, lyrical lines. The Innuendo and Made In Heaven tracks are another thing altogether because he'd gotten quite ill by then.
koldweather123 · Member since
I'm not sure about the power thing to be honest, his earlier concerts don't seem to be powerful if you compare them to most of the 80s concerts. His voice did get stronger in that respect but as others have said he loses his delicate tone to his voice.
I really enjoy the Kopenhagen 1978 show (best Spread your wings till the crazy tour) The Crazy tour is probably Freddie's best overall and its amazing to watch Freddie getting ever more daring with those high notes during the Newcastle 4th show to the point where by Now I'm here he was going pretty much hitting every single high note. Most of the 1980 shows are amazing, the first leg of the South America tour is IMO the most under rated tour, he has some stunning shows there, the highlighting being the C5 Freddie hits in WATC. The 82 European tour is divided into 2 really, the first half wasn't too stunning but from about Frankfurt onwards his voice became stunning again. The 84 tour saw his voice become powerful but he suffered, possibly because of a rather tight tour list. The highlight of 1985 has to be the first two shows from the Japan leg where his voice seems to be very open, its like the high notes aren't any real effort and there is no strain, almost completely in contrast to the magic tour. Saying that the first 7 dates or so of the Magic tour are great, and indeed Stockholm and Leiden are up there with some of his best 80s shows.
on my way up · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]koldweather123 wrote: [/b]
I'm not sure about the power thing to be honest, his earlier concerts don't seem to be powerful if you compare them to most of the 80s concerts. His voice did get stronger in that respect but as others have said he loses his delicate tone to his voice.
I really enjoy the Kopenhagen 1978 show (best Spread your wings till the crazy tour) The Crazy tour is probably Freddie's best overall and its amazing to watch Freddie getting ever more daring with those high notes during the Newcastle 4th show to the point where by Now I'm here he was going pretty much hitting every single high note. Most of the 1980 shows are amazing, the first leg of the South America tour is IMO the most under rated tour, he has some stunning shows there, the highlighting being the C5 Freddie hits in WATC. The 82 European tour is divided into 2 really, the first half wasn't too stunning but from about Frankfurt onwards his voice became stunning again. The 84 tour saw his voice become powerful but he suffered, possibly because of a rather tight tour list. The highlight of 1985 has to be the first two shows from the Japan leg where his voice seems to be very open, its like the high notes aren't any real effort and there is no strain, almost completely in contrast to the magic tour. Saying that the first 7 dates or so of the Magic tour are great, and indeed Stockholm and Leiden are up there with some of his best 80s shows.[/QUOTE]
I agree with your comments about the power of his voice.Copenhagen'78 is a stunning, stunning show. The entire band is in brilliant shape. Their vocal harmonies are great that night too. I'm sure that is Queen at their best musically. Newcastle 4/12/79 is a famous one(among fans) and rightfully so. He does some astounding stuff throughout that show. I'd like to point out that all Crazy tour gigs have him in brilliant voice, if only those recordings would be a bit better!
In 1980 he was indeed in fantastic shape too. And SA 1981 is indeed very very good. My favourite show is Buenos Aires 8/3/81. Unique atmosphere too. Puebla 17/10/81 is another very unique Queen show. Freddie's comments to the crazy atmosphere are wonderful ;-) And his voice was in top shape(check out somebody to love).
I understand your comment about the 1982 European tour being divided in 2 but I do not entirely agree. Drammen or Stockholm were not as good as later shows but still very good and the Leiden shows were great too. More dutch recordings should surface(with better quality!) Wasn't he great in Zurich too? Long time since I listened to those!
The first 2 Japanese shows are indeed one of a kind(I already talked about Tokyo 9/5/85 but it's realy THAT good!).
And you're very right about the Magic tour. I like the Magic tour very much. Freddie had some really great nights. The first 7 or so shows indeed but also shows later in the tour. Think about Cologne, Budapest or Knebworth:-). I should check out the Spanish shows again but I believe he was quite good during those too.
Shows like Newcastle, also the officially released Wembley unfortunately and especially Zurich 2/7/86 were a lot less good(in Zurich he was really quite weak).
That being said, I'd still like to check out the complete Zurich 2/7/86 tape. It's listed on queenconcerts but strictly not for trade unfortunately:-(
Legy · Member since
Freddie had awesome power and range for being a baritone. Some say his power rivaled the greatest tenors of the time. What's amazing to me is even when he was really ill he was still able to hit some pretty high notes. Notes baritones don't normally reach. Either way, I love his voice period. It was very powerful.
Yara · Member since
Do you think that? I don't know, there's been this baritone theory over there for some time, it does make sense if you listen to him talking in some interviews, but his more natural singing fell already within the low tenor range and he was very comfortable with open G notes in the higher tenor register. Anything drifting apart from it was kind of hard for him to do - the countertenor-like - it's important to distinguish the tune and the color and impression added to it - C5 in the beginning of "Let Me Entertain You" is a good example ("Isles...") - he never matched that note live, even when he did try it - he usually fell to the more traditional, comfortable and natural B4 when did want to get to the higher note.
But that's only a very unaccurate notation because, in fact, he doesn't reach [i]a countertenor [/i]C5 in the studio either - [i]he simulates the sound of it[/i], which is something very different when it comes to singing. Some musical theorists use the expression "false-baritone", "false-tenor", to distinguish the sound produced by people who comfortably sing in those ranges.
The concept of "comfortable" is not restricted to effort. It encompasses, too, the "openness", the clearness of a tune - if the tune of a singer, when he's going for higher notes, begin to sound too "close", even if high-pitched, it's very likely that he'll end up going out of tune.
I'd say that he did a good, sustainable singing keeping himself to two octaves, or maybe two and a half, that's it - the rest is either simulation, which is not bad per se but redefines the vocal range of a singer, or very sporadical moments in which the singer gets both the note, the color and the texture: there's dispute over the final, official studio version of We Are The Champions, but regardless of how the vocals have been layered and pulled together, his "FiGH-intg..." was not within his vocal habilities - it was a sound produced with much effort, after many tries, the volume of which was then leveled up to pull the song together - it's as much an industrial - commercial, conceptual, so on - and engineering product as a music one: he wouldn't sing that live even in his wildest dreams. This is a song he usually had a lot of trouble with because many times he broke the barrier between singing and shouting - and that's something people notice.
So if someone tells me: "I don't find this Mercury all that good", I fully understand, it's not as if he were a miracle in terms of live performance. He was interesting singer for those who appreciate many other aspects of singing other than vocal range - the fun, the humor, the hability to play around with his timber, which helped him simulate many notes convincingly, his wonderful musical intelligence, the way he made things happen on spot, having great ideas; not keeping to strict traditional harmonic structures in live concerts and allowing himself to improvise on the melody: that took talent, and then some!!!
I like many My Melancholy Blues live versions than the studio one. Because it's so clever. In some performances, because he didn't want to hold the falsetto "soooooon", quite risky, he used some fantastic ideas: he'd beginning trying to get a very low note - "my guess is I'm in for a cloudy overcast" - but doing variations on the timber, and then he went [b]to really[/b] sing very high notes taking into account his range: he went up, hit notes higher than in the recording - because the closing darker sound of parts of his falsetto actually dropped and mascaraded the range - and instead of closing or darkening the sound with falsettos or other techniques, he sang it very openly "Stormy Weather...": in some gigs, it was done very high-pitched and, what's great, tenderly, with delicacy and well, clear-sounding. So he builds all this tension because he's going very high, and then he just speaks the following note, dropping the tune: "soon". Hahahaha. It's wonderful. It creates a contrast that it's emotionally very moving and touching, and there's a bit of cleverness there: "Why should I stretch "soon"? "Soon" has to end...soon", isn't it? Haha.
It's, really, these things are hugely entertaining. It takes musicianship more than physical prowess or acrobatics with vocal muscles.
That made him so different and so addictive - once you listen to a song performed by him, especially live, it's very hard to take it off your head because he builds it all in such a beautiful, inteligent way.
Now, I think the guy was a genius. Really. A musician, a great musician. If he's reduced to vocal range, even if his singing is reduced to it, I think we lose the best part of it all - I mean, there's a huge amount of sophistication in his live singing, and that's something I can't deny - I listen to it and notice it. I was not bound to be a Queen fan - it were these kinds of things which attracted me to the band.
Freddie was musical. He had this way of transforming even swearing rants into sweet melodies, he had it all: a precise control over tempo, which was hard because the band was naturally very uneven in this regard, the talent to manipulate color and timber, which is very important and takes a huge amount of creativity, and a good knowledge of some very important composers - it may sound nonsense at first, but the fact the guy listened to Chopin is actually very important, because it's not only an essential part of the piano repertoire, but also very musically appealling - mutatis mutandis, of course, just like Freddie. Chopin was no Liszt in terms of virtuosity, as Freddie was no Christina Aguilera (!), but both, Chopin and Freddie, were musically more accomplished than respectivelly Liszt and Christina Aguilera.
Of course, Christina Aguilera is a virtuose and so on, but the Liszt comparation is just that - a lousy comparation. Liszt was himself a wonderful musician, but again, he had not only someone he came to hate afterwards (lol), but a mentor in Chopin, when it came to composition and musicianship.
GEEZ! I just kept writting and look the SHEER SIZE of this POST. Damn. I go on writting and forget that people don't have all the time in the world to read such extensive posts, especially in internet forums.
Well, hope it's been helpful someway. Hahaha. Damn, this is huge, I don't think it's even going to show up.
Winter Land Man · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka12 wrote: [/b]
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka's Tiny Ding-a-ling wrote:[/b]
Would he have had that same rawness and power in mid 80s if it hadn't been for cigarettes?
[/QUOTE]
Power, he always had. It was really the tone, the colour if you will, that was changing in his voice. Cigarettes had a huge impact on that of course but then if you look at his voice once he'd stopped smoking (I'm thinking of The Miracle here) he really had the best of both worlds - that big, mid 80's sound, and the potential to do very fiddly, lyrical lines. The Innuendo and Made In Heaven tracks are another thing altogether because he'd gotten quite ill by then.
[/QUOTE]
Wasn't that Freddie having a smoke on the behind the scenes of the video to Breakthru'??? Isn't there a photo from 1990, of Freddie having a smoke, while in his Garden?
Legy · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Yara wrote: [/b]
Do you think that? I don't know, there's been this baritone theory over there for some time, it does make sense if you listen to him talking in some interviews, but his more natural singing fell already within the low tenor range and he was very comfortable with open G notes in the higher tenor register. Anything drifting apart from it was kind of hard for him to do - the countertenor-like - it's important to distinguish the tune and the color and impression added to it - C5 in the beginning of "Let Me Entertain You" is a good example ("Isles...") - he never matched that note live, even when he did try it - he usually fell to the more traditional, comfortable and natural B4 when did want to get to the higher note.
But that's only a very unaccurate notation because, in fact, he doesn't reach [i]a countertenor [/i]C5 in the studio either - [i]he simulates the sound of it[/i], which is something very different when it comes to singing. Some musical theorists use the expression "false-baritone", "false-tenor", to distinguish the sound produced by people who comfortably sing in those ranges.
The concept of "comfortable" is not restricted to effort. It encompasses, too, the "openness", the clearness of a tune - if the tune of a singer, when he's going for higher notes, begin to sound too "close", even if high-pitched, it's very likely that he'll end up going out of tune.
I'd say that he did a good, sustainable singing keeping himself to two octaves, or maybe two and a half, that's it - the rest is either simulation, which is not bad per se but redefines the vocal range of a singer, or very sporadical moments in which the singer gets both the note, the color and the texture: there's dispute over the final, official studio version of We Are The Champions, but regardless of how the vocals have been layered and pulled together, his "FiGH-intg..." was not within his vocal habilities - it was a sound produced with much effort, after many tries, the volume of which was then leveled up to pull the song together - it's as much an industrial - commercial, conceptual, so on - and engineering product as a music one: he wouldn't sing that live even in his wildest dreams. This is a song he usually had a lot of trouble with because many times he broke the barrier between singing and shouting - and that's something people notice.
So if someone tells me: "I don't find this Mercury all that good", I fully understand, it's not as if he were a miracle in terms of live performance. He was interesting singer for those who appreciate many other aspects of singing other than vocal range - the fun, the humor, the hability to play around with his timber, which helped him simulate many notes convincingly, his wonderful musical intelligence, the way he made things happen on spot, having great ideas; not keeping to strict traditional harmonic structures in live concerts and allowing himself to improvise on the melody: that took talent, and then some!!!
I like many My Melancholy Blues live versions than the studio one. Because it's so clever. In some performances, because he didn't want to hold the falsetto "soooooon", quite risky, he used some fantastic ideas: he'd beginning trying to get a very low note - "my guess is I'm in for a cloudy overcast" - but doing variations on the timber, and then he went [b]to really[/b] sing very high notes taking into account his range: he went up, hit notes higher than in the recording - because the closing darker sound of parts of his falsetto actually dropped and mascaraded the range - and instead of closing or darkening the sound with falsettos or other techniques, he sang it very openly "Stormy Weather...": in some gigs, it was done very high-pitched and, what's great, tenderly, with delicacy and well, clear-sounding. So he builds all this tension because he's going very high, and then he just speaks the following note, dropping the tune: "soon". Hahahaha. It's wonderful. It creates a contrast that it's emotionally very moving and touching, and there's a bit of cleverness there: "Why should I stretch "soon"? "Soon" has to end...soon", isn't it? Haha.
It's, really, these things are hugely entertaining. It takes musicianship more than physical prowess or acrobatics with vocal muscles.
That made him so different and so addictive - once you listen to a song performed by him, especially live, it's very hard to take it off your head because he builds it all in such a beautiful, inteligent way.
Now, I think the guy was a genius. Really. A musician, a great musician. If he's reduced to vocal range, even if his singing is reduced to it, I think we lose the best part of it all - I mean, there's a huge amount of sophistication in his live singing, and that's something I can't deny - I listen to it and notice it. I was not bound to be a Queen fan - it were these kinds of things which attracted me to the band.
Freddie was musical. He had this way of transforming even swearing rants into sweet melodies, he had it all: a precise control over tempo, which was hard because the band was naturally very uneven in this regard, the talent to manipulate color and timber, which is very important and takes a huge amount of creativity, and a good knowledge of some very important composers - it may sound nonsense at first, but the fact the guy listened to Chopin is actually very important, because it's not only an essential part of the piano repertoire, but also very musically appealling - mutatis mutandis, of course, just like Freddie. Chopin was no Liszt in terms of virtuosity, as Freddie was no Christina Aguilera (!), but both, Chopin and Freddie, were musically more accomplished than respectivelly Liszt and Christina Aguilera.
Of course, Christina Aguilera is a virtuose and so on, but the Liszt comparation is just that - a lousy comparation. Liszt was himself a wonderful musician, but again, he had not only someone he came to hate afterwards (lol), but a mentor in Chopin, when it came to composition and musicianship.
GEEZ! I just kept writting and look the SHEER SIZE of this POST. Damn. I go on writting and forget that people don't have all the time in the world to read such extensive posts, especially in internet forums.
Well, hope it's been helpful someway. Hahaha. Damn, this is huge, I don't think it's even going to show up. [/QUOTE]
Fred had this wonderful ability to switch to his falsetto without out being detected by the untrained ear. It's a wonderful thing to be able to do that. And you have to remember, what you hear on record is completely different than what you hear live. There are various recording tricks you can use to "sing higher". Not to mention you can do the take over and over until you get it right.
Listen to some of his live performances, you'll hear he plays it safe and when he didn't he cracked a lot. I'm not saying he's not a great singer because he is my favorite singer of all time. But, he wasn't a real tenor. Montserrat Caballé has even mentioned Fred was a baritone. Not to many baritones have the range Fred had. He was unique and will always be missed.
4 x Vision · Member since
Doesn't Fred sound so much better with the higher notes on the Barcelona Rarities than he did on say, BR multi track stuff (which in parts sounded like someone straining a cat... but still great to hear!)? So even with the heavy cigarette use he still had great control with higher note material.
Do you think he could have handled the Barcelona songs live?
john bodega · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka's Tiny Ding-a-ling wrote:[/b]
Do you think he could have handled the Barcelona songs live?
[/QUOTE]
Ooooh... yes and no?
During the short appearance he did with Cliff Richard, it's quite obvious that he had a pretty good live range, having not performed in a while. It's just a pity we don't get to hear more of him as opposed to Cliff....
I don't know if he could've done it over a tour (health notwithstanding of course). But I think his voice would've held up for a splendid one off show. It's too bad that the Barcelona songs only got a mimed appearance.
4 x Vision · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka12 wrote: [/b]
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka's Tiny Ding-a-ling wrote:[/b]
Do you think he could have handled the Barcelona songs live?
[/QUOTE]
Ooooh... yes and no?
During the short appearance he did with Cliff Richard, it's quite obvious that he had a pretty good live range, having not performed in a while. It's just a pity we don't get to hear more of him as opposed to Cliff....
I don't know if he could've done it over a tour (health notwithstanding of course). But I think his voice would've held up for a splendid one off show. It's too bad that the Barcelona songs only got a mimed appearance.
[/QUOTE]
So if he hadn't been ill, do you think his voice would have sustained a full tour with Monst?
I have a tribute CD I got from amazon where the album is sung live in it's entirety and although the guy is no Freddie, they do make a decent stab at it.
It only made me more sad that Freddie didn't at least attempt one or two of them live!
Would I be able to share this album in the Announce section?
ITSM · Member since
I think he sounded great all along!
From My Fairy King to I'm going slightly mad and Delilah. Great songs and a great voice!
At least that's my opinion...
No-one could have done it any better than Freddie!
Yara · Member since
[QUOTE]
[b]Zebonka's Tiny Ding-a-ling wrote: [/b]
Doesn't Fred sound so much better with the higher notes on the Barcelona Rarities than he did on say, BR multi track stuff (which in parts sounded like someone straining a cat... but still great to hear!)? So even with the heavy cigarette use he still had great control with higher note material.
Do you think he could have handled the Barcelona songs live?
[/QUOTE]
But I'm afraid those were the very best slices of a bulk of material - they got tracks that could have already made it into the album, a good amount of work was done on studio, and so on. It's different.
I think is very unlikely he'd ever be able to perform the Barcelona songs live. Because he just couldn't do it in a single shot, one take, and make it sound even close to the recording.
He couldn't do it, even when he wanted to, with Let Me Entertain You. He liked to give himself a challenge there - in the 1980s, which is probably where we find him in best shape, he fails to finish the song the way he starts it. I have listened to the Phoenix, 1980, performance, which Dafty_the_Duck kindly uploaded for me.
He starts the songs trying to go to the fake-countertenor note of the studio recording, and of course he falls, as always, on Bb4, just like pretty much most male singers would have done - it's the natural way of resolving many ascending lines. Then, he tries to do exactly the same in the end, as in the recording - "Chicago..." and then ascending - he stops the ascention. You can listen to it on the recording - he starts the verse very high-pitched - "Chicago..." - but then notices that he's, first, not sounding very good and, second, that he's not going to be able to make it in the end, so he drops the towel and does a standard, unispiring unison-based coda.
In Hammy '79, he tries it too - he goes up in the beginning, reaches a G#4 in the beginning (Isles...) and tries to go for the high notes in the last verses: "Chicago...", and he ends up dropping the tune, yes, but not like in Phoenix: he does let the tune drop, but he keeps the color of the note, which was one of his main and most important techniques to put on a great show.
Let Me Entertain You first and final verses are a lithmus test, so to speak.
But let's take Killer Queen. Could he have performed Barcelona live? No, just like he never managed to perform Killer Queen live - the song was played hasty, sometimes with a lot of erros in tempo, just like Roger notices in the Montreal DVD, the last part was missing - mistery, because it was a huge hit and...a tiny song, very short already - and his renditions are the opposite of the [b]studio[/b] album - that is, full of air in his voice, devoided of delicacy, in short: boring.
Take a look at my post above and the example I gave with "My Melancholy Blues" - he deliberately avoided the long, falsetto line - sooooon - and went for something else. He avoided because...he couldn't do it, and then he had to find another way to deliver it - and that's where his musical intelligence comes in. If one loses this aspect of his musicianship, there's not much to Freddie, really. He was a great musician, and a fantastic frontman, and as Elton John very aptly put in an interview, a very "inventive singer", that is, someone who manages to make his way through the song sounding beautifully without trying to do things he just couldn't do.
The studio is the realm of magic, fantasy, where all seems to happen perfectly at the same time, it's the selling of a dream, a dream-like sound that we, as Queen fans, are all addicted to.
But one has to distinguish this magic from the stage magic, which was based on other premises - and not because they just wanted to do different, but because, given the fact they couldn't perform the songs just like in the recording, they had to be inventive and put on shows that were much MORE than the studio recordings at the same time - they were fun, exciting, full of lights and stuff, Freddie was a fantastic frontman...
If they could have the best of both worlds, of course they'd have gone for it, but they couldn't, and that's not a shame.
It's just the way it is in music. In classical music, in popular music, anything: studio recordings allow for failures, and many failures, and for sound engineering wonders. They do it with live albums too, of course, but not at such an extent: I mean, usually. Sometimes the band plays the whole concert again to be overdubbed in the recording, but that's not usual, I think.
So Freddie was a good singer? The question doesn't even come to my mind. But the reason why I think he was a genius is his musical cleverness, the beauty and versatility of his tune, his creativity. In terms of reaching notes and range, I mean, in my humble opinion, one can establish his about two, two and a half octaves, which is already too much. He had a spetacular range, but not as great and flawless as some people present it.
Sopranos in Orchestras usually call people who can sing well, clearly and powerfully in the low-tenor register as "baritones" - it's just a way of distinguishing two different kinds of tenors, with different range and skills.
I see it everyday. It's so because the tenor register is the most common among males, so one has to make distinctions among them, see what they're able to do, and do a rough classification just for organizing the performance, for the sake of arranging the performance and organizing the sound structure.
We, and I saw that in other countries as well, have a lot of problem in finding real bass voices - they are rare and the impressions is that it's getting more and more difficult and hard to find a bass voice with musical skill, able to sing, because there are many people who just can't sing although they study their whole lives - if one has a problem with tuning, volume and/or tempo, that's it, it's finished.
It's cruel. That's why so many people get "thrown away" at audictions. People you'd think could make it...
Rock bands don't have to audiction in this sense. They have to give people a good time and create exciting music. When they do, just as Queen did, they have success; when they fail to, well, it's cruel too...!!!
