"Jazz" review in Argentinian magazine - 1979

Hi, there!

I have a couple of old magazines with articles about Queen, that I'll be scanning, translating and uploading in the following days.

On this occasion I bring to you a review of "Jazz" by Argentinian music magazine "Pelo", January 1979 issue. I don't agree with some of the opinions, and we can discuss about this later. I hope my translation is good enough, I tried to make it as accurate as possible. Enjoy!

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QUEEN - "Jazz"

Another year, another Queen album. And along with the annual offer, a deep concern about what's going to happen with Queen now arises. I write this as a Queen fan. During three years the relationship between Queen and the press has fallen through. I know some of the reasons. Press never loved them very much. Sometimes hostility towards them was close to slander. On the other hand, their own bad taste little fights can be tiresome. What I've just mentioned would be completely irrelevant if it wasn't because it's interfering with their music. I really liked "A day at the races", I liked "News of the world" and I like "Jazz", but the fact is that Queen have shown no progress since "A night at the opera". They still write good songs, but they are so busy with healing the wounds caused by the media that, somewhere in the road, Queen, and particularly Freddie Mercury and Brian May forgot to move forward. Their attempts to consolidate have ruined their minds. Where has the imagination of "A night at the opera", "Sheer heart attack" and "Queen II" gone? It can't be found neither in "News of the world" or in this album. Is it dead or just asleep? "Jazz", a neat but baffling title, is truly the sequel of "News of the world", with an obsessive triviality even more baffling, never noisier than the single "Fat bottomed girls" and "Bicycle race", songs by Mercury and May. "Bicycle race" is actually a fascinating song, with the traditional skilled vocal performance, but "Fat bottomed girls", by May, is soft and an insult to his own intelligence. Brian should know that he wrote Queen's utmost rock with "Brighton rock" and that he doesn't need to diminish his talent in every album by contributing a heavy rock song as a display of what he can do. May, however, also contributes a jewel as "Dead on time", pulling out from Mercury a wonderful vocal performance. It sounds a lot like "Keep yourself alive", from "Queen". He also wrote "Dreamers ball" and the juicy "Leaving home ain't easy" which, with its sweet appeal, can be a hit. The other remarkable Mercury song in "Jazz" is "Let me entertain you", an enormous heritage of riff-raff executed with clinical precision. But the impact that May and Mercury achieve here is minimum compared to the colourful creativity they put in the other albums. In this album there's little of the imagination we can find in "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Mercury or "The prophet's song" by May. "If you can't beat them" is catchy, whereas Taylor's compositions are, once again, the album vedettes. "Fun it", that gives us the subtle use of synthesized drums, is the closest to disco music a band can get, while "More of that jazz" is a raunch with a bit of second-rate raunch. Taylor sings and (I think) plays bass, guitar and drums in both songs. Nowadays he sings better than Freddie. There are also two songs by Roger Taylor and John Deacon. Deacon songs are harmless examples of pop rock.
Cover: good idea, although it looks dull due to the absence of the "fat bottomed girls" in ther bicyles.
Summary: for Queen standards, "Jazz" is a common album. It doesn't appeal anyone. It doesn't say "We are Queen and we are still important". And that's the kind of album that Queen should release in this moment.

Thank you for this! A rare one.

Thanks for translating and posting.

I can't say I disagree with anything in that review, except for not mentioning Don't Stop Me Now.  Queen were clearly in a creative rut around this time, and they found a way to reinvent themselves the next time around with The Game... but it still didn't match the diversity and artistic quality of ANATO.  In fact, I'd argue that nothing they did after ANATO did.

Sir GH...so you agree that Roger sang "better than Freddie" on Jazz?

A Day At The Races and News Of The World(especially) saw Queen developing and moving in new directions.  BOTH are equal masterpieces to A Night At The Opera...and actually I prefer BOTH of those albums to ANATO.

PrimeJiveUSA wrote:

Sir GH...so you agree that Roger sang "better than Freddie" on Jazz?

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Ok, not that part :-)

But I can't say I agree with your second statement.  There are some incredible tracks (and diversity) on both ADATR and NOTW, but there's no way Fight From The Inside and White Man are as strong as I'm In Love With My Car and The Prophet's Song, for example.  As far as I'm concerned, ANATO was Queen's creative peak.  Only Innuendo came close to reaching those heights again.

I cant' argue with that review it sums it up well

I'm glad you like it :)

Jazz is one of my favourites. Of course it lacks the creativity of ANATO, but beating ANATO is a very difficult task. Jazz is also better than any 80's album. If I could travel in time I'd go back and tell the writer of this review "don't worry, the worst is yet to come".

I don't agree with "Roger sings better than Freddie", "Dead on time" is not a jewel and not mentioning "Don't stop me now" is unforgivable, but we know, everything is subjective. "Mustapha" blows my mind and here it's overlooked. :(

Sadly,  Queen Arn't only underated by the media, but also by their own fans.   The review is horrible IMO.  No mention of Mustapha or Don't stop me now/Dead on time?....Roger sings better than freddie these days?....really?....While i  agree Jazz didn't create any new sounds and probably was their weakest 70's album, it was still  very good.  People don't give enough credit to this band for playing so many different styles of music.  They play more styles on one album than most do in a career.   Some people can't handle that. they rather listen to ACDC or something.

Sir GH wrote: PrimeJiveUSA wrote:

Sir GH...so you agree that Roger sang "better than Freddie" on Jazz?

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Ok, not that part :-)

But I can't say I agree with your second statement.  There are some incredible tracks (and diversity) on both ADATR and NOTW, but there's no way Fight From The Inside and White Man are as strong as I'm In Love With My Car and The Prophet's Song, for example.  As far as I'm concerned, ANATO was Queen's creative peak.  Only Innuendo came close to reaching those heights again.

I love Innuendo, but no way is it better than A Day At The Races......News Of The World is also Stronger, and had more of a Influence.  Innuendo is slightly ahead of Jazz and The Game IMO, but not by much.  My opinion of why some people overate Innuendo is that the expectations were so low after The Miracle,  it was a shock to the system hearing it for the first time and how great it was.  Jazz and The Game is underated because so much was expected of them after the first 6 brilliant albums,   Anything that didn't match those 6 albums would be considered weak.   I do agree that ANATO is the perfect Queen album.  The second side is beyond perfect.

mike hunt wrote: People don't give enough credit to this band for playing so many different styles of music.  They play more styles on one album than most do in a career.  

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Playing many different styles of music is one of the things that make me love Queen. I can't think of any other band with such ability.

Sometimes they combine and alternate several styles within a single song, which is even more impressive.

Sir Gh...I'm not being intentionally contentious...but "White Man", to ME, IS a superior song to "The Prophet's Song".  "It's Late" and "Spread Your Wings" are also in league with ANYTHING on ANATO.  And "Sheer Hearet Attack" definintely holds it's own against "I'm In Love With My Car".

Thanks for the translation!
I`ve got much of these Pelos magazines with Queen Articles and i`m also thinking in translate them!
They have much interesting things about the queen stay in argentine And great data about the performances.

I`m not agree with all the review anyway i think The prophet`s song is a BIT superior to White man in lirycs and melodie...
But white man is really a good song also!.

Cheers!

Well I think it is very very hard to equal , or even improve your pinacle. Remember there are many bands which are been remebered by just 1 huge hit!

When you ask people in the Netherlandds they can sum up at least 10 Queen hits. Or even more. But when you ask for Rolling Stones hits, then can barely sum up 3 hits.

The only song from van Halen I can remember is Jump , though I had serval of their albums. KISS = I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU. and I cannot think of any other big one....

Well the point is Queen actually was innovative with ANATO en ADATR and even with SHA and Queen II , the later albums followed the commercial succeses at the time. In exception of Innuendo.

What Queen did was in hinsight very commercial : first 3 albums trying to penatrate a excistence of a known and settled rock band. ANATO + ADATR , hitting the jackpot being different and being accepted in the music world and the chart world.

At this point the expecting you followers is huge ! And they will be quickly dissapointed... the change of being dissapointed is bigger as being surprised.

The changes and choises Queen did make at the time , is the explenation of their succes today. They couldn;t keep topping the charges with BOH RHAP redentions, or look al likes... they were a commercial band, which is remembered today as succesfull band due to their understanding of the marketing demand.

Thanks for this upload!, Pelo magazine had always articles about Queen. I remember one i saw from january 1975 with the tilte "Reina Caliente del Reino" (something like "Hot Queen from the Kingdon"). Or in August 1989 (which i have), the main cover, with a photo taken during IWIA video session, which says "Queen - el nuevo LP es un éxito mundial, pero no salen de gira porque Mercury tendría Sida" ( sort of :Queen -the new LP is a global succes but they won't tour because Mercury might have Aids), although the inner notes were excellent, and full of details, about the album, with things we all know by now, of course.

This Jazz review is right, but this guy maybe was not aware of the music changes of that time. He was asking Queen to do songs like 1974-75, and the music scene was not like that time, in 1978, not anymore. Queen had reflexes to adapt their creativity to the times, and NOTW and Jazz were excellent examples of that.