Press Release: QUEEN: FIRST FIVE ALBUMS RE-ISSUED ON ISLAND RECORDS

In addition, final confirmation as to whether KYA Lost Lost Retake was truly RECORDED in 1975 (and therefore can be explained as correctly on the ANATO disc and not an error), and not in 1972 as is the common belief (and as previously confirmed by Brian) woudl be good too!

Yes it was recorded in 1975 for a possible single release.

It's nice to have confirmation on the KYA Long Lost Retake being recorded in 1975.

They did re-release Keep Yourself Alive in the U.S. in 1975, though. Instead of Now I'm Here, I believe. Maybe they wanted a new recording for that purpose but were not satisfied by the retake and ended up re-issuing the original version.

I just got a duplicate for that single and it's for sale, in case anybody wants it. It has Lily of the Valley and the original version of God Save the Queen (months ahead of the release of ANATO) as b-sides!

Thanks for confirming that Gary.

After much headscratching, and a little frustration at some of the random choices made in this case, I've realised something fundamental and, I hope, relevant.

We are not representative of Queen fans.  We are the nerdy 1% on the far right of a bell curve that, at its centre, rises high into the air. 

These releases will satisfy an overwhelming majority of the total people.  All we are is the militant wing, railing against the continuing non-existence of a box set.  We're irrelevant.

Yes, cherry picking from relevant BBC sessions makes no sense.  Flying in live tracks from offical live albums is cheeky as fuck, and inevitably there will be pointless remixes.  But to the AVERAGE Queen fan, for whom Mad The Swine is an obscurity, these are fantastic releases.

I just wish I was an average Queen fan....

Why are people so upset by this?

Haven’t we always expected more from this site than Queen Productions, everyone knows they are 15 years behind the obsessive fandom.

Gary, Thanks for reply.

I think some of you guys are dead right by saying that what has already been shared on Queenzone is superior to the "rarities" offered by Queen Productions. Perhaps, the mysterious box sets were never to be, perhaps, we created this fallacy, this imaginary extension of our own fandom to raise hope in our otherwise empty Queen-loving heads. It may have just been a cruel joke to begin with, and we bought into it. Perhaps, we the people of queenzone are the boxsets. We have been for the past... I won't count the years, I've been here too long. Each demo and out-take that leaks, is like a tear from the eye  of a hardcore Queen fan...

Seriously though, I hope that the remasters prove me wrong and do actually sound like an improvement in some cases. I fear they won't, but I suppose I should not judge them before I actually hear them (and you can't have enough copies of Queen II, can you?)

GT wrote: In addition, final confirmation as to whether KYA Lost Lost Retake was truly RECORDED in 1975 (and therefore can be explained as correctly on the ANATO disc and not an error), and not in 1972 as is the common belief (and as previously confirmed by Brian) woudl be good too!

Yes it was recorded in 1975 for a possible single release.

Cheers Gary - thanks for the reply

Penetration_Guru wrote: Yes, cherry picking from relevant BBC sessions makes no sense.  Flying in live tracks from offical live albums is cheeky as fuck, and inevitably there will be pointless remixes.  But to the AVERAGE Queen fan, for whom Mad The Swine is an obscurity, these are fantastic releases
Partly agree - anybody expecting a full disc with demo's and other stuff was going to be disappointed right from the start. Five random tracks is a whole other side of the spectrum though. I'm sure that 'general' fans wouldn't have minded a bigger selection of live tracks (the excellent BoRHap/KQ/MOTBQ/BoRhap medley) and other stuff. I still think including 5 bonustracks on discs which will undoubtely will be priced at 25+ euros is a rip-off.

GT wrote: There is no point in writing to Brian, the tracklisting is finalised and was chosen by the band themselves. They are happy with it, and is after all, their product.
As much as many people on here don't agree with the choices that were made, it won't be changed now.
Just enjoy what has been chosen and finally released, even if you have an inferior copy or don't like remixes or acapella's, you will appreciate more when you hear them.
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Try making the product widgets and then try to imagine anybody saying that unnecessarily missing an eager, loyal client segment almost entirely was in any way mitigated by the producers' happiness.  It wouldn't happen. They'd be thought poor businessmen and lousy visionaries all around.

Penetration Guru makes a very good point. QZ fans make up a very small portion of all Queen fans.

Then again, those that buy the reissues will also make up a small portion of all Queen fans.

Penetration_Guru wrote: After much headscratching, and a little frustration at some of the random choices made in this case, I've realised something fundamental and, I hope, relevant.

We are not representative of Queen fans.  We are the nerdy 1% on the far right of a bell curve that, at its centre, rises high into the air. 

These releases will satisfy an overwhelming majority of the total people.  All we are is the militant wing, railing against the continuing non-existence of a box set.  We're irrelevant.

Yes, cherry picking from relevant BBC sessions makes no sense.  Flying in live tracks from offical live albums is cheeky as fuck, and inevitably there will be pointless remixes.  But to the AVERAGE Queen fan, for whom Mad The Swine is an obscurity, these are fantastic releases.

I just wish I was an average Queen fan....

You are completely right about us being just a minority . I never expected an anthology but between loads of rare, unreleased material and the actual offers there is lots of room. Concerning the happiness of the casual buyer we have to wait and see. Greatest Hits 2010 remixes did not chart in Germany - unlike all previous GH releases. GH1 and 2, the golden box and the platinum box always topped the charts but now they did not enter the top 50. The thing is that you have to offer something when you want people to rebuy your product these days. Otherwise they just download some tracks from ITunes. The sad thing is that Queen were always so quality concious in the past and now they are so cheap compared to other artists - we named some examples in the other thread.. Certainly they make enough money with the musical and selling Japanese soup with Freddie's lookalike, so they won't mind.

The fact that Hollywood records did release Keep Yourself Alive (Long Lost Retake) wasn't a big suprise for me, since Brian already talked about it in a interview I read long way back in 1978.

So I digged in my archive an this is what I found...since it is in Dutch I give a small translation:

The interview was taken by Kees Baars (Dutch DJ and pop journalist) for Muziekkrant Oor in between the 2 concert at the Ahoy 19/20 april 1978 and was published 14 june 1978.

Translation:
First Brian talks about Queen II, that it is the most important Queen album for him and he would like to re-recorded it....but there many reasons to do it not. Than he says "Last Year" we have re- recorded Keep Yourself Alive for the American market, but due to the fact that "We are the champions" was a big sucess, we have left it on the shelf. Maybe we will release it sometime or put it on an album because it is a pretty good take which strenght me the idea that the production of the first album wasn't good.  

I don't know how serious we need to take the words "Last Year" which means that KYA was re-recorded in 1977... but I think Brian was wrong or was misunderstood.  

In the RAR you can't find the complete interview (In Dutch :-( ) and the snippet were here talks about KYA.

What's sad about this is that it would've been so easy to do it well. Queen I isn't a bad release, for example, as it has all the De Lane Lea stuff. From Queen II onwards, though, it's a dog's dinner. They are obviously holding back so that they have the option of releasing material later, and they can then say, "for the first time the full BBC sessions are released", or "for the first time the full Hyde Park show is released" etc. Of course, they'll probably never get around to releasing those, as Freddie didn't have a moustache back then, Brian doesn't like a guitar solo on a particular night, or more likely it's simply too much trouble to put any effort into complete releases when all you need to do is have a flunky remix an A cappella version which can then be sold to the gullible as something new. Being a Queen fan these days is like being in love with someone who won't return the affection. What Queen Productions doesn't realise though is that love is fleeting ...

I wonder if the live tracks from Wembley and Milton Keynes are remastered live tracks or just the same old tracks from the EMI production ?