cosmos rocks not enough promotion

Sir GH wrote: I think a lot of Queen fans revealed themselves to be "Freddie fans" after TCR was released.

It may not be an excellent record, but it is still a very good record.  There are 4 or 5 very strong tracks on the album.

It was doomed to fail with the general public, but I honestly expected a lot more from Queen fans, as I thought they'd appreciate the fact that Brian and Roger were still creating new music, and decided not to work with another Freddie wannabe when it was finally time to make a new Queen record.  It's what they had wanted for 15 years, and as always, some people can never be pleased and will find something to complain about.

Most Queen fans have chosen to create a box for what Queen music should be, and as a result they set themselves up for disappointment on this one.  If fans can't get past the fact that the singer didn't sound like Freddie Mercury and that there wasn't another Innuendo in the bag, then it's their own fault as they're missing out on a lot of great, fresh-sounding music made by three legends. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________

I don't think I fall into any of those categories, yet I still found the album disappointing. Only Some Things That Glitter really stands out, with some good but forgetable songs like Time to Shine. But overall it's just not very good. It is so underwhelming to hear a guitar legend play simple 12-bar riffs or generic heavy metal drudge like Still Burning. Rodgers is a pretty good singer in his own genre of blues-rock, but he doesn't have the range to sing the Queen catalogue. In concert, he instead tried to create blues-rock versions of every Queen song he was asked to sing, with mixed results. They had badly-chosen set lists, designed to bring in the punters, instead of picking songs best suited to Rodgers' voice. But that's another story, I suppose.

Cosmos Rocks is better than the 80's crap Queen put out. The only thing I miss is a real bombastic old-style Queentrack - which they still had on No-One But You in 1997. People complaining about the setlist seem to forget that Queen in the old days played 90% the same setlists for months on an end - and did not throw in tracks for 1 or 2 nights only - like QPR did with Las Palabras, Warboys, Time To Shine, The Stealer and many other tracks during this tour.

Pim Derks wrote: Cosmos Rocks is better than the 80's crap Queen put out. The only thing I miss is a real bombastic old-style Queentrack - which they still had on No-One But You in 1997. People complaining about the setlist seem to forget that Queen in the old days played 90% the same setlists for months on an end - and did not throw in tracks for 1 or 2 nights only - like QPR did with Las Palabras, Warboys, Time To Shine, The Stealer and many other tracks during this tour.
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Err... that's not my 'complaint' about setlists. I quite enjoyed some of the live stuff with Rodgers singing, especially when he did his own songs. However, his voice wasn't suited to many of Queen's hits.

I think it's probably a GOOD thing the album didn't get much promotion... they should've at least sat on that egg an extra 8 months... so they'd clip the dull bits out and thrown in some solo tracks... no one would mind if roger or bri sang a complete song ...

rog tends to be more inventive... sadly i'm inclined to agree that a lot of it treads on "MOR" rock...

:-/

however, i think their LIVE IN UKRAINE should have gotten a fair deal of more attention and promotion. That was exceptional and showed beyond a doubt that they WERE in fact a powerful force even as QPR.

matt z wrote: I think it's probably a GOOD thing the album didn't get much promotion... they should've at least sat on that egg an extra 8 months... so they'd clip the dull bits out and thrown in some solo tracks... no one would mind if roger or bri sang a complete song ...

rog tends to be more inventive... sadly i'm inclined to agree that a lot of it treads on "MOR" rock...

:-/

however, i think their LIVE IN UKRAINE should have gotten a fair deal of more attention and promotion. That was exceptional and showed beyond a doubt that they WERE in fact a powerful force even as QPR.

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Except it should be called  'Live sounds recorded in Ukraine and later in a studio somewhere'

I love The Cosmos Rocks...shoot me.

There are two tracks(in particular) that are classics that i will always play...We Believe and Small...love most of the others too.

OIf course it isn't on the level of Queens' albums with Freddie...but it's all we've got...and I love the album anyways.

When you look at the album from a Radio Friendly perspective, though, there's not much on there worth promoting.  Frankly, I'm not sure who they would be promoting it to.   You're certainly not going to be able to put the cardboard QPR standup in front of Lady Gaga... unless you want to go out of business quicker than most music stores seem to be heading.

So if you can't get any visibility in a store like Best Buy, the only other way to promote it is directly to the fans, which is the road they took.  More people are gonna buy the Santana duet guitar-doodling 101 album before they pick up what's left of Queen twenty years later.

Who knows?  Maybe if Brian and Roger took the Santana Supernatural approach years ago, we'd be having Nas rapping to Play The Game instead of Back In Black.  The new Santana album sucks, but it has already sold more than Cosmos and it's only been out a month!!!

dont get me wrong.i liked the album.
thought cosmos rokin was great.
but feel the album was not pushed enough.

Listened for a week, never played since and will never play it again.

You guys must have ALOT of spare time to still be giving this a spin.
I flip open my CD storage drawer and thumb through the real Queen albums and could never bring myself to waste listening time on Cosmos. 

C'mon, you can't seriously like it?
It's what happens when a bunch of old rockers, way past their creative prime, sit in a room with people telling them how good they are. It's simply an atrocious waste of time.
Unfortunately Brian still thinks he's creative and Roger just could never shake off the rock and roll lifestyle so they continue to delude themselves that they can create a "Queen" album. It's embarrassing quite frankly. They're entitled to do it of course, it's their life and their band, but you can't say it was justifiably under promoted!!! What is there to promote?

yes, I'm a little curious how Queen fans think this should have been promoted.

We've already determined that Queen doesn't sell in todays market...  just look at how well the last few releases have done.  What kind of "promotion" do you guys think Cosmos should have had?  The free T-Shirt at Sam Goody didn't work out too well...  I wore mine once but didn't feel any different.   Where was the Queen "street team" we heard about.  Anybody run into them?

"I think a lot of Queen fans revealed themselves to be "Freddie fans" after TCR was released."

I ain't one.  How can you speak so generally??  Speaking as someone who's as big a fan of Brian as he is of Freddie, I just can't understand a statement as vague and inaccurate as this...

It's entirely possible that the album just wasn't that outstanding and that not everyone liked it.  As I've said, I liked some of the songs.  There was nice moments.

The big issue here, as endlessly debated, is the use of the name "Queen". I´m among those who didn´t care Brian and Roger using it and, as said above, I really liked the album.

But, on the other hand, I´d really have prefered they had gone a different direction and considered starting this adventure, as Brian said, "like a new band". Audioslave, Chickenfoot and Them Crooked Vultures are the most recognizable examples of this kind of supergroups.

In that case, I think they could have promoted the band much easier, gaining the respect much media, Queen fans and general public automatically denied them just for the use of the name "Queen" and the inevitable comparisions between Paul and Freddie.

Rog and Brian were caught in a difficult situation from wich they knew they could never succeed:

A - still call themselves "Queen" -> audience guaranteed at gigs in big arenas... but press/many fans criticism guaranteed.

B - bill themselves as ie: May-Rodgers-Taylor -> the band had been automatically condemned to (very much) smaller halls and much less press coverage... but they´d have earned respect from the very start just for the fact of being Brian May, Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers joining in a new and unexpected supergroup.

They tried "A", I guess, just for the pleasure of feeling and enjoying again the big crowds as in the old times. The recording of TCR could have fitted in "B", but the decision of using the Queen brand was already decided, so ....

sorry double post

I just listened to it last night with my girlfriend. She told me I used to play that album a lot a couple of years ago and she even sang along to "Small" and "Say it's not true".
I genuinely like it, the way I like "Fun in Space" and "Hot Space". It's personal preference, I guess.

I have to admit that I expected more from Brian on that album. His playing was sub par on a few tracks. Also, the lack of a proper bass player hurt some songs.

Overall, the album actually exceeded my expectations. I thought they were going to release a 10 track album with 12-bar blues and corporate rock songs about Paul Rodgers having a hard on (like Bad Co.)

Instead we got a 14 track album, with rock n' roll tracks, some ballads, one country flavored song, a straight-up bluesy number and an instrumental reprise which I think closes the album beautifully. Surf's Up... School's Out is THE LAST THING I thought I would hear from Queen and Paul Rodgers. I think that song was an indication of good things to come, had they chosen continuing working together.

I'll second what Zebonka wrote (and then add some).

The first 45 I ever purchased was 'Movin' On' (pity QPR only did this during soundchecks).  I've taken the Paul tracks from ROTC and placed them as bonus tracks on my 'Bad Company' cdr (my only Bad Co. purchase).  TCR provided him with the best backing band in the history of rock music.

More promotion wouldn't have done a thing.  More dual LVs, trade off LVs, and just Brian or Roger doing LVs would have worked better for me....just as I enjoyed the 70's Queen LPs more with Freddie not doing all of the LVs.  Van Halen is the only band I can think of where a change of the main lead vocals continued a band's success (or increased it, depending on who you argue with).  

Queen fans bought the album.  Or did not buy it.  Perhaps 3% of the sales were by the casual listener.  More promotion might have bumped this up to 4%.  But the return on the extra investment would have been nil.  Just my opinion.

On another thread where I discussed Styx' recent tour and their 'Cyclorama' LP.....Dennis DeYoung was the leader on stage and the 'definitive' voice of the band (Tommy Shaw and James Young had their 'hits' but were the Brian and Roger of the band).  Their one original studio LP after DDY limited Lawrence Gowen to two tracks (thank goodness).  And I still give most of this release a spin, 2/3 of it sounded like the original band, and the songs were pretty damn good.

That's what I wish TCR had done.  Musically.....it was better than Hot Space (other than 'Call Me').  I will admit.....I dreamed of what Mr. Mercury would have sounded like occasionally on it. 

'We Believe'.........that their hearts weren't totally into this.  It was not a half-assed effort, but it lacked 'something'.  Call it a lack of 'hunger', a lack of 'angst', or just plain old age....but it just did not entirely 'reach' their audience.  gawd bless 'em for trying, and am grateful that we got to see their concerts two times over on this side of the pond.  Forever grateful for the New Jersey '06 show.

It will never happen, but I'd love a remake with Brian and Roger doing the LVs with a more Freddie-ish singer filling in the occasional gap.  Or a karaoke version, where I can dream my own vocals.