Barcelona re-release - What the @#8! did they do????

dowens wrote: Just be because you end something in minor doesn't make you dishonest.  

It's clear you dislike the final album, so we can just agree to disagree. But manipulative and dishonest? Can't see that.

No, but Freddie's MIH in Mr. Bad Guy was not a dark, brooding song ending in a minor piano chord, it ended on notes in the Ab major scale, with a nice fade out and a drum machine.  You could say that it was optimistic.  On the MIH album, it was big and orchestrated, and dramatic, as the Ab major became an Ab minor.  I'm not a theorist but minor brings tension and drama that a major chord doesn't (why CLTCL is more "upbeat" than WWTLF.)  So Freddie wrote the song, thanked his bandmates for not interfering on Mr. Bad Guy, and hopefully produced, the song he WANTED.  Now he's passed away, and the song takes on a tone of impending doom due to the instrumentation changes and that's the song that Freddie wanted?  He wrote the song MIH that he wanted, the remaining members changed it, I find that dishonest.  That's just me though :)

It's not like Queen ever said, "Hey, what we did with Freddie's MIH was to restore it to what he intended" or "This was the way Freddie would have wanted it" or even that they were "improving" it. They recorded a new backing track that reflected the feel of the album. They were upfront about what they were doing, that of offering fans alternatives to the songs already released in other forms. A dishonest approach would have seen the band lying about their intentions and the process. The band have been pretty forthcoming over the years about how each version came to be, how tracks were reworked and experimented on.

It sounds like you simply don't like that they changed the key and darkened the tone, as if they had no right. They were bandmates and friends for 20 years. Freddie trusted them to finish the album and they knew how to work on each other's tracks and make artistic decisions accordingly. Yes, he wrote it the way he wanted for Mr. Bad Guy, but that doesn't mean any of us know if he'd object to the idea of changing it around for inclusion as a Queen song.

I bought Freddie Solo Collection instead of this kind of sample version....

I could not agree more rhyeking.

I think Queen probably changed MIH to fit the album concept, so that's why they changed it to minor at the end possibly? I don't know.

I see what you're saying Sheer Brass Neck, but I just think Freddie gave the members 'free range' on whatever with his music. After all, we all know the famous quote Freddie told Jim Beach before he died..."do whatever you want with my music and image." Paraphrased, of course.

I understand music theory, I have a degree in music education and have taught instrumental music in the States for 10+ years. :)

I agree with you, and rhyeking, dowens, on both of your sentiments.  I'm just old school, and agree with Sebastian's line of thinking.  Why not have someone repaint Picasso's masterpieces?  Maybe there is an artist on an Italian reality painting show called Adamo Lamberto whose yellows are more vibrant than Picasso's, and maybe that's how Picasso really wanted them to be.  Maybe.  But doubtful.  Freddie wrote the songs he wanted to, Queen's surviving members "Queenified" them.  I can live with that.  I still and will always find certain things about the album manipulative and dishonest, and others who love it I think it's great.

For me there is a huge difference between the orchestrated Barcelona project and using the two Mr. Bad Guy tracks on MIH. After all, Queen were Freddie's peers and if he had offered the songs to them in his lifetime they would have probably sounded very similar. I simply have more confidence in the remaining Queen's musical ability and in fact they never claimed they were re-recording them because Freddie did not manage to record them the way they should sound. They re-recorded "Heaven For Everyone" in the same fashion and it was no disrespect to Roger.

Sheer Brass Neck wrote:
I'm not a theorist but minor brings tension and drama that a major chord doesn't (why CLTCL is more "upbeat" than WWTLF.)

Really? I would've thought CLTCL is more upbeat than WWTLF because WWTLF is a slow, melancholic organ-driven dirge, while Crazy Little Thing is a light (musically and lyrically) rockabilly song. But I guess it really is more to do with a single chord difference, huh. ;)

RhyeKing's point is very valid - they only ever set out to be re-doing the two Freddie tracks as Queen versions, not recreating Freddie's versions as they believed he would have preferred them.

Got my Barcelona set today.

First thoughts? The hi hat on How Can I Go On is so fucking loud it's unbelievable - did they mix it with earplugs in?!! And on the same song, the kind of triplet bass drum part just before the lead out 'dee dee dee.....' vocals at the end is an integral part of the original but is now missing.

It does seem to me that rather just a reproduction, someone has taken some 'creative/artistic' decisions to change things slightly, such as making some instruments carry on longer, bring vocals in and out at very different levels to the originals etc... To me that wasn't the brief and is totally unnecessary.

On a plus point, hearing the real instruments, it makes you realise how good a job Mercury, Moran and Richards did matching the synth sounds some 25 years ago, and how well they mixed it.

tomchristie22 wrote: Really? I would've thought CLTCL is more upbeat than WWTLF because WWTLF is a slow, melancholic organ-driven dirge, while Crazy Little Thing is a light (musically and lyrically) rockabilly song. But I guess it really is more to do with a single chord difference, huh. ;)

RhyeKing's point is very valid - they only ever set out to be re-doing the two Freddie tracks as Queen versions, not recreating Freddie's versions as they believed he would have preferred them.

Obviously you get music Tom, some people may not know a minor chord from an instrument so that was for their benefit.  And the reason I used WWTLF is that it's a slow, melancholic organ-driven dirge.  Change all the minor keys in that song to major keys and you'd likely have an uplifting sequence.  Which, when Brian passes away, John can say that's what Brian wanted, because he wanted to live forever, so John re-recorded the end section to make it joyful instead of mournful.  You can re=record for technology, but the use of a minor in MIH changed the tenor of the track to make it fit in with the death theme.  IMHO.

"How can I go on 2012" sounds like "How can I go on 1985".
I have the same felling when I heard original versions of "In my defence" and "Time" for the first time. Original versions sounds old but it was correct coz were old.
Why "2012 edit" sounds like from mid80's? Worse than 1987 original...

I bought it and I like it! Yesterday I ideally spent my evening with Freddie and Montserrat, and it's been nice. Thanks Freddie for all the fantastic muscic that you gave us!

Tony

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/tonyhomepage

It's funny that Sheer Brass Neck brings up the idea of visual art masterpieces and the idea of changing them around for different purposes. Believe it or not, this practice happens all the damn time, that artwork is procured, altered and presented as something different for another artist. "Redefined," "Parodied," "Homage," and other vaguely pretentious buzz words are used by artists to justify the artistic statement. Some comments the artists make are valid, some are self-indulgent.

In music, artists commandeer artwork for album covers with either the same deliberate artistic intent or because it looked cool. Hundreds of album covers are simply works of art altered in some way to suit the sleeve. Many don't credit the original anywhere in the sleeve.

Guns N' Roses
Crash Test Dummies
Led Zeppelin
The Smiths
Coldplay
Collective Soul

Here's a list:
http://blog.artfinder.com/2011/06/24/ten-famous-paintings-on-album-sleeves/

And a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjq-zdzw2JI

And believe me, there are many more examples, I just don't have time to hunt them all down.

My point is that argument implicit in "why not re-paint Picasso?," or any other artist, falls short when you realize respected (and maligned) artists *have* done that sort of thing in perfectly acceptable ways. For years. And it's not going to stop.

Even Queen did it. Twice:

News Of The World is an alteration, by the artist himself (Frank Kelly Freas), of the piece "The Gulf Between."

Innuendo's front and back covers (and it's related singles) are alterations of the illustrations of JJ Grandville for the book "Un Autre Monde".

They "Redefined" and "Recontextualzed" the pieces just as the argument feared. If that was dishonest, shouldn't you return every copy you own of those albums and never ever listen to them again.?

i got my disc 4disc barcelona today i gotta say dvd was appalling why wasnt it on bluray?its like it was done in a rush could of been so good so sad to hear@see ryhs@co screw this up after doing a sooperjob with previous stuff.on my 53inch tv dvd looked rough realy awful.these guys either better slow down abit@release high quality stuff from queen@co they let us down with 2011 deluxe editions i mean whats wrong with you muppets?you taking the peees/cus it works.they could of put 88barcelona wich i know is gunna get its own release in the future but they could of done that bit better.my god in freddies name these clowns take the p.ss.

Soooo is this release now by Freddie Mercury, Monsterat Cabelle, and Rufus Tiger Taylor? I love the idea of Rufus being all over me...oops! I mean all over this re-release I was just curious as to how many songs he is now on.

It's amusing that people just lump all releases related to Queen, be they Queen itself or solo material, into the category of Queen Are Responsible For This! Brian, Roger and John had nothing to do with the Special Edition's production. It's Freddie's Estate who calls the shots on his solo material. They may consult Queen Productions, since there is overlap in rights for Freddie's Queen material and QPL has resources and staff the Estate may not have, but the decision to create the Special Edition and things like the Very Best Of are all them. Roger and Brian and QPL make zero money on it. John may get some money because his bass work appears on the album, but that's it. Mike Moran would see some nice coin from it, since he co-wrote a bunch of the songs.