brianmay.com - Love it or hate it?

A few thoughts on brianmay.com for my first post. :)

I think Brian's website is in most of the key ways a perfect incarnation of an artist site for fans. It strikes an exceptional balance between product promotion that benefits him primarily and fans secondarily, and the sharing of information and views and anecdotes that benefit fans first and him only tangentially if at all.  Being intimately involved in your own web project on a near daily basis and investing time to be open and accessible to fans means you're willing to trade some mystique for a chance at influence. At his stage in life, there must be some pull to do something meaningful with the celebrity you've earned. 

I love that he puts so much of himself out there, and it takes equal parts courage, gratitude and ego to do it.  Because he says so much about so many things, he will never please everyone. I love the music, the time he devotes to personal correspondence with fans, the stories and Queen minutae, the stereo photography and the science stuff.  I dislike the tenor of his animal rights efforts and think he'll never be effective unless he learns to be less strident and dismissive and more curious about those who disagree or who are on the fence.  I am sometimes put off  by his thin skin for criticism. Because I love Queen so shamelessly, his own tastes in music sometimes baffle me. Chickenfoot is boring, largely because Sammy Hagar is boring, and Adam Lambert is boring and emotionally depthless.  I have no interest in hearing Queen songs interpreted on broadway, or by Kerry Ellis, ever again.  I think comparing Journey to Queen is pretty absurd.  And so on.  But the only reason I know what he thinks at all is that he's bothered to tell us. And that is a delightful and comparatively rare thing.

Wonderful post.

Welcome to the forum.

To answer the topic question:

Love it.

Love brianmay.com. I think his rants are entertaining at least, but agree with the animal welfare stuff, and agree with him about Adam Lambert.

Loving brianmay.com,

but not loving you´re not loving Chickenfoot,  as I´m really loving them so much :)

I think it's fantastic.  Brian May's soapbox and Pete Townshend's handheld studio videos are some of my favourite celebrity output in that it's just two old musicians showing what they do ... without the pretense of celebrity or ego, it's fuckin' marvellous.  It could be any old mate of mine just goofing off in his house, only they happen to be the guys who wrote my favourite songs.  It's great.

My answer: love it.  However the way Brian scolded the people involved in the school which did not allow the students to perform the WWRY musical, really scared me.

Thanks to all for the welcome and the replies. :)


[QUOTE]

[b]Vali wrote: [/b]


Loving brianmay.com,

but not loving you´re not loving Chickenfoot,  as I´m really loving them so much :)[/QUOTE]
I wanted to love them so badly!  I mean how cool is the name 'Chickenfoot'!  But, alas, my reaction was yawn-this-is-forgettable-sammy-hagar-yawn-whatever. Or something like that.

[QUOTE]

[b]tcc wrote: [/b]


My answer: love it.  However the way Brian scolded the people involved in the school which did not allow the students to perform the WWRY musical, really scared me.


[/QUOTE]
Hi rants are funny in an uncomfortable, glad he's not talking to me kind of  way.  One of the recent ones that freaked me out was the way he went off on that poor schmuck who complained about the physics problems in 'Don't Stop Me Now'.  Sometimes I can't believe he even takes notice of stuff like that, never mind responding to it.  Just the other day he's went all passive agressive on some obscure web article on canada.com that contained about 3 and a half negative words on WWRY London.  I mean, who cares?  DSMN is a classic and WWRY hardly suffers from attendance problems. It's just odd, and I'm not sure what purpose it serves other than to set him up for stuff like the Dr. Brian the Wise thing.

[QUOTE]

[b]Zebonka12 wrote: [/b]

I think it's fantastic.  Brian May's soapbox and Pete Townshend's handheld studio videos are some of my favourite celebrity output in that it's just two old musicians showing what they do ... without the pretense of celebrity or ego, it's fuckin' marvellous.  It could be any old mate of mine just goofing off in his house, only they happen to be the guys who wrote my favourite songs.  It's great.[/QUOTE]

I know!  We fans are exceedingly lucky to have our guys be so inclined.

i love the site, and the SOAPBOX!

I often go onto his site.

Yes it is entertaining in a peculiar sort of way.I love it when he goes off in one of his "grumpy old man"rants.

But thats the way we love our Dr Bri.Always the entertainer.

I love it, he is not afraid to speak his mind and I don't really care whether I agree with him or not, it's very nice to know what makes the man tick

I think it's a great site. We can know his opinions about several topics and also can keep a contact with him.