Jazz

Amazon wrote: Micrówave wrote:

"Other than it being a bridge between the two different Queens, it's kind of a ho-hum for the most part.  Amazing to me is that a song like Bicycle Race became a hit.  There really wasn't much too it, thought wise.  You could have sang "I want to make a Ham Sandwich.  Ham Sandwich.  Ham Sandwich..." but somehow it was catchy enough to get us hooked.  Dead On Time is my personal favorite off the album.  A few of the songs sound like throwaways from earlier sessions."

I consider Bycicle Race to be a work of genius and one of Queen's very best songs. Freddie is extraordinary, the instrumentation is wonderful (I love the ringing bicycle bells), it is musically complex,  and it's lyrics are crazy, wild, inventive and creative which I think work.

mustapha-  9.5 out of 10
fat bottomed girls- 10 out of 10
jealousy-  9 out of 10
Bicycle race- 10 out of 10
If you can't beat them-  5 out of 10
let me entertain you- 9 out of 10
dead on time- 8 out of 10
in only seven days-  7 out of 10
Dreamer's ball-  9 out of 10
fun it-  3 out of 10  (Horrible song)
leaving home-  7 out of 10
don't stop me now- 10 out of 10
more of that jazz-  5 out of 10

I love the album. Very underrated.

I like the Jazz album. It's not my favorite 70s album, but it's still great.

I also disagree about some of the ratings for If You Can't Beat Them. I think it's a great song!

I would have titled the album Razzmatazz.

Amazon wrote:

Regarding the tracklisting, I would have Let Me Entertain You open the album, Don't Stop Me Now close, and I would delete the two Roger songs. I would also make a few other changes such as having Bicycle Race come straight after Fat Bottomed Girls. 

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Yes!  More specifically, I would have opened the album (retitled Razzmatazz) with an extended version of the "Let Me Entertain You" outro.

kevinhairsineevans wrote: Why are we havin a topic about jazz being a poor album Come on guys if we were to get another queen album with freddies voice would we say its poor. Every queen album is mint because freddie is on it. Bad topic. Make one thats interesting.

A shitty song is a shitty song.  Freddie Mercury's vocals isn't going to save a shitty song.

Every Queen album isn't mint.  Some are better than others.  And some are just garbage.

Egh its all up and down. First four songs are solid enough, If You Can't Beat Them just sounds like a jam session that they decided not to touch and it's pretty poor. I don't mind  Let Me Entertain You but I dont care much for it, likewise with Only Seven Days and Leaving Home Ain't Easy. Overplaying means that I can't listen to Don't Stop Me Now anymore, and Fun It and More Of That Jazz are shocking.

Dead On Time and Dreamer's Ball are great, though. Brian is consistant throughout. The album gets a 6/10 from me. By far the worst album from the 70s, and I reckon it's worse than The Game, AKOM and The Miracle.

"If You Can't Beat Them just sounds like a jam session that they decided not to touch and it's pretty poor."

A "jam session" with a lot of overdubbed vocals and a great extended guitar solo. Works really well live too,

Sorry, Mike Hunt and dougie, was there a particular reason you quoted me? :D (Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered, however I am also curious.)

Ok, after reading this thread I decided to dig out the old Jazz CD and give it a whirl again after so many years.  Definitely not their best album but still some gems on it.  Love the guitar riffs for Dead On Time. Classic Brian May. I also enjoy the riff for More Of That Jazz as well, even though the song is a bit hit and miss.  I don't find any of these songs as bad as Delilah though. A Day At The Races is for me still Queen at their very best!

Amazon wrote: Sorry, Mike Hunt and dougie, was there a particular reason you quoted me? :D (Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered, however I am also curious.)

 I was gonna comment on something you said then changed my mind....i was gonna agree with you on bicycle race and it's genious.

danwhite89 wrote: Egh its all up and down. First four songs are solid enough, If You Can't Beat Them just sounds like a jam session that they decided not to touch and it's pretty poor. I don't mind  Let Me Entertain You but I dont care much for it, likewise with Only Seven Days and Leaving Home Ain't Easy. Overplaying means that I can't listen to Don't Stop Me Now anymore, and Fun It and More Of That Jazz are shocking.

Dead On Time and Dreamer's Ball are great, though. Brian is consistant throughout. The album gets a 6/10 from me. By far the worst album from the 70s, and I reckon it's worse than The Game, AKOM and The Miracle.

no disrespect for you're opinion,   Jazz leaves the works, a kind of magic and the miracle in the dust. Not even close IMO.  The Game?....not sure, alway's change my mind on that one. The game has better direction, production and had fresh sounds for them at the time,  But Jazz has better overall songs I think.  I'll go with jazz I think.  maybe.

I like the album Jazz. I really don't dislike any album except maybe Flash Gordon and that doesn't really count. True, After Hot Space, I found more and more songs I disliked but Jazz was a good album.

My favorites are: Jealousy, If You Can't Beat Them, Let Me Entertain You, Bicycle Race, Dead On Time (Shoulda been a single!), Leaving Home Ain't Easy, Don't Stop Me Now and if i'm in a groovy mood, Fun It.

Could go either way on Mustapha, Fat Bottomed Girls, More Of That Jazz & In Only Seven Days

ABSOLUTELY HATE: Dreamers Ball. Now I know why Roger & Brian came to blows. (Brian was wrong!)

To me, Dreamers Ball is a bad rewriting of My Melancholy Blues. In the sense of the style at least.

If You Can't Beat Them and Dead On Time are great, Wish they had done IYCBT live more often cause it cooked live. DOT was hard to play live apparently so they didn't, but it would have been a hit if released instead of ANY of the singles!

I like Jazz a lot.

Remember this utterly insane review from RS?  Ah haha haha ha!

There's no Jazz on Queen's new record, in case fans of either were worried about the defilement of an icon. Queen hasn't the imagination to play jazz—Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll. Jazz is just more of the same dull pastiche that's dominated all of this British supergroup's work: tight guitar/bass/drums heavy-metal clichés, light-classical pianistics, four-part harmonies that make the Four Freshmen sound funky and Freddie Mercury's throat-scratching lead vocals.

Anyway, it shouldn't be surprising that Queen calls its album "jazz." The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie & Company want, Freddie & Company get. What's most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it's so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.

Take the LP's opening song, "Mustapha." It begins with a parody of a muezzin's shriek and dissolves into an approximation of Arabic music. This is part of Queen's grand design. Freddie Mercury is worldly and sophisticated, a man who knows what the muezzin sounds like. More to the point, you don't. What trips the group up, as usual, is the music. "Mustapha" is merely a clumsy and pretentious rewrite of "Hernando's Hideaway," which has about as much to do with Middle Eastern culture as street-corner souvlaki.

But it's easy to ascribe too much ambition to Queen. "Fat Bottomed Girls" isn't sexist—it regards women not as sex objects but as objects, period (the way the band regards people in general). When Mercury chants, in "Let Me Entertain You," about selling his body and his willingness to use any device to thrill an audience, he isn't talking about a sacrifice for his art. He's just confessing his shamelessness, mostly because he's too much of a boor to feel stupid about it.
Whatever its claims, Queen isn't here just to entertain. This group has come to make it clear exactly who is superior and who is inferior. Its anthem, "We Will Rock You," is a marching order: you will not rock us, we will rock you. Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band. The whole thing makes me wonder why anyone would indulge these creeps and their polluting ideas.

Hilarious review!