Fair weather friends and their hangers on

^ I don't think he was flaming you, brenski - but, after all the infighting of late, it's understandable that some of us may still feel a little delicate. I think his reply was fair-play, mate :)

Tbh, I took your comments the same way as Moog did, but I can see what you're saying if comparing it to earlier output - thing is, queen were moving in a different direction by this point. I don't think that, because it might not sound as sophisticated as, say Queen II, that there was any less effort put into The Game. I love it, with the exception of Dragon Attack, from start to finish. Play The Game is an awesome track, Another One Bites The Dust illustrates the change in direction, Rock It is fun, upbeat and pure Roger, Coming Soon is stellar whilst SASS and Save Me are beautiful, delicate tracks. Save me is actually my favourite from the album: top notch vocals from Freddie and some really amazing guitar work - goosebumps all the time for me. Especially live! Like I say, if there was more of the same to add, then that would be a real orgasmic experience, AFAIC.

Of course brenski, your opinion is as valid as mine or Moog's, but I think he's entitled to debate it without being told its a groundless opportunity to flame. His point is quite fair (despite appearing jovial/sarcastic or however you want to perceive it), and does stand to reason.

And it's not often I agree with him lol :)

@Thistleboy & Moog

that wasn't my point. my point was Moog hacked one tiny part of a sentence and pasted it to suit an argument.

when you place it in the WHOLE sentence, its meaning is not as Moog made it appear.

anyway, not fighting over it, just clearing it up

"it was a lazy, basic, effort lacking effort or any of the queen trademarks i'd grown up with."

The sam can be said about News of the World and Jazz

In defense of the OP, not EVERYONE who contributes to this board has the time to be on here as often as others do; people dip in and out when they feel they have the time to spare.........people have lives, you know.

but to clarify the "lazy" word

how many tracks used the Oberheim? and why? because if you listen to the
intro to "Play The Game" "SASS"
some of the "effects" in "Dragon Attack" "Dust" "coming soon"
the verses in "Rock It"
and the bridge "Save Me" (2:25 onwards)

all of the above they'd have usually done with real instruments... the OBX was a cop-out in my opinion.

think about it - all the songs they had, and they still ended up with the shortest album they ever made..couple that with the first use of the synth. smacks a little of "oh let's just get the fucker done, and go skiiing/snorting/partying/shagging"

the synth was not groundbreaking - bands used synths for almost a decade by this stage. so my view is it was a way to do something without toil

I think that many Queen fans at the time felt that way, Brenski. The Game sounded very basic and missed a lot of the familiar bombastic Queen sound. I always thought it was the band's attempt to live up to the 80s and not relive the past but in fact IMO Queen had quite an ongoing problem trying to reconcile their music with the sound of the 80s that spread over 3 albums. For me it lasted till AKOM when they had regained some confidence soundwise and naturally combined all the band achievements with the requirements of the contemporary sound. After the all-too-poppy (imo) Miracle it took Innuendo to return to their wonderful unique sound. That does not mean that Game, Hot Space and Works did not have some great songs. The albums just did not have this breath taking effect imo.

i think you nailed what i was trying to say Barb.

in fact, if you take the best of those four albums - game, HS, AKOM & works you could probably (just about) make one great fullsize album out of them.

which equates to about 12/13 tracks

Bang on. Here are my 13:

Play The Game
Dragon Attack
Sail Away Sweet Sister
Save Me
Under Pressure
Las Palabras de Amor
Radio Ga Ga
It's A Hard Life
Hammer To Fall
One Vision
A Kind Of Magic
Who Wants To Live Forever
Princes of the Universe

^ note that only three tracks are by Mercury.

The rest is filler, or at best, truly non-essential as per the depth of their catalogue. I just can't add Break Free and Dust. Sorry Deacy - they're pop hits, not depth.

I'd like to add Soul Brother to the list too. Let's call it an honourable mention.

yes, ^^^^because he was too busy doing a "lennon" - filling himself with drugs and shit rather than making music.

incidentally, in the same period i'd probably pick mainly songs that WERE mercury compositions - despite his lack of creativity....
mainly because what the other three were doing was even sh*tter. think that's because not only was he NOT interested in his own song-writing at that point, he was also disinterested in his usual "quality control" role in what John and Roger were writing.

think he got his "buzz" back after live aid - it was the kick up the backside he needed.

fyi - my 13 from that time:
play the game
life is real
hard life
kptow
princes
rock it
save me
coming soon
need your loving tonight
action this day
gaga
hammer
sail away sweet sister

Back to the topic at hand, although I still maintain that RUB is just a WUM, I do think it interesting that GT or Greg (which is who I imagine Dowens was referring to when he said QPL) haven't commented at all on any of his assertions.

I would also imagine that the **** ****** was meant to refer to Greg.

Agreed, Bohardy. WUM or not, this just proves that there may be more to the archives than first thought. Remember, nobody had any idea that 'Grand Dame' or 'Affairs' existed until two years ago.

To quote myself from a previous thread...

"Most of the people close to the fact know there were over 30 songs recorded for what became "The Game". From memory, RT is quoted as saying 20. Rubbish, there's easily 10 more and he knows it and Fanthology knows it. Hugely hugely creative period even when the first cracks were starting to appear between FM and BM (imho, BM never really liked FM but other people said I was wrong on that).

QPL history tells us that "The Game" was recorded over 2 periods of time - summer 79 and spring 80. That much is factually correct but there were at least 2 more.

Within the band, following the release of "Jazz", there was general confusion in what direction they should take the next album. Do they stay all "no synths" and "baroque and roll" or do they adapt to the times? Well, they did both - originally by "accident", then the idea of a double LP with two discs with different "Queens" on it circulated, then it went to the LP that was originally released.

CLTCL, SASS, CS and SM were four of, from memory, 16 tracks laid down in 1979 in various different studios (deffo one in London and Ireland). You could imagine any of those tracks fitting on SHA right up to NOTW - albeit with different production. Very classic Queen direction. Other track names from memory were "Home" (ballady), "Only For Today" ("save the world" type song), "Earth" (rocker - not the Smile song), "Cut Me Up" (rocky ballad) and "(It) Seems Like Love" (acoustic ballad, from memory). "It's A Beautiful Day" was originally a gospel-like "All God's People"/"Somebody To Love" type song. I loved the original version abck then but I really like All God's People, despite the fact it appears on what I think is a terrible album.

However, come 1980, the thinking had flipped more to FM and JD's approach, hence AOBTD, DA, PTG, RI(PJ) (Roger attempt at the sound) and a few other tracks, some of which wouldn't have been out of place on Hot Space. In fact, I wonder if some of the completed songs from those sessions were "re-imagined" for Hot Space. I think they might have been but we are talking 33-34 years ago and it was a mad time.

I wasn't there when the decision-making process took place, but it's obvious they went all "new Queen" and consigned the rest to the archive. A great pity - the March-ish 1980 idea of a double LP with one 12" of old "Queen" and a 12" of the new "Queen" would have been amazing."

I wasn't there for the decision to make it a single album so I don't know why they did.

If the way the average Queen discussion went happened in this case, BM would have argued about it for half an hour and then stormed off for two weeks.

I'd like to participate in this discussion about unreleased stuff from The Game, but there's not much about this that I really want to say, or read. I could read pages and pages from the somewhat distant memory of a guy who may or may not actually have knowledge about this stuff, but I'll only be really interested if these songs from The Game and Queen II (for some reason Deep Ridge has really sparked my interest. Maybe it's because I absolutely love the vocal choirs in Brian's songs from that time) actually started coming up. Until then, there's not much to be said.

I don't understand the Brian bashing going on in the first page of this thread at all. I think I like Back to the Light and Another World (and Furia!) more than your average bear, but seriously, they lack depth? No way. That's what Queen should have sounded like in the 80s.

[QUOTE] [b]Rogers Untidy Bottom wrote:[/b]
Think about BM's songs and specifically their lyrical content. "I'm lonely, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm shy" - essentially I have just written a new BM solo album in that sentence. He's also massively intolerant of others. Who wants to listen to 45 minutes of that self pitying shit? Besides which, Jimmy Nail is a more talented vocalist than him.

BM can be a very small man. FM, on the other hand, he oozed star appeal.
[/QUOTE]

Weak singer? His voice is amazing, both when complementing Freddie's and alone. It's so beautiful. Self pitying? I'm having a REALLY hard time figuring out what you're talking about. Yes, he wrote some pretty sad songs, but he wrote other songs as well. And maybe Freddie and Brian weren't the best of friends. So what? They sounded magnificent together. Why should Brian be bashed for some small personal distastes? And Brian May is not small. Take Freddie off that high horse and see him as he was: a human being. Just like Brian.

As for opinions on The Game, interestingly I agree with brENsKi. The synths just struck me as lazy. It saddens me that if White Queen or Some Day One Day had been released 10 years later, those gorgeous vocal choirs during the guitar solos would have been synths that sounded kind of like vocals instead of actual voices. The synths in Game, Sister, Save Me and Rock It could all have easily been guitars. A potentially related issue is that when Brian does finally get his moment, it leaves something to be desired. Sister and Save Me have nice solos, but other songs (Dragon Attack, Rock It, Suicide, Coming Soon) strike me as uninteresting and slapped in there to give Brian something to do. Finally, I just hate Suicide. The bassline's wicked awesome and the idea is kind of funny, but the whole song feels really disjointed (do we really need another funky handclap section in this album?) and I don't really see how the song all fits together.

And, just for fun, here's my 13 song tracklist from The Game/Hot Space/The Works/A Kind of Magic


Radio Ga-Ga
Dancer
It's a Hard Life
Who Wants to Live Forever
Gimme the Prize
Princes of the Universe
Sail Away Sweet Sister
Back Chat
Las Palabras De Amor
Play the Game
Under Pressure
Coming Soon
Save Me

When they were working on the "baroque and roll" Game sessions, the closest album equivalent I could think of would be that one of the two albums would sound like SHA. "Earth" was similar to ITLOTG and "Cut Me Up" like a Romeo and Juliet meets SCC. What a pity they didn't go ahead with the doubler.

Try spending 3 hrs in His Lordship May's company and see if you think I'm being harsh on him then. Have you seen how the insecure idiot named himself on the badger petition?

Sorry but aside from the guy being a boring pain in the ass, if you knew how much material he has that he won't release/sell, you'd cry. Just like I do when I hear the self pitying crap that is TMLWKY.

Sorry to harp on but that's why you're all dead wrong about JSS, Fanthology, etc. yes, they might be complicit in the denial of the truths I'm speaking but there's much more of a chance of them giving away what we all want to hear (albeit at some unknown point in the future) than there is for Dr Brian Harold May sanctioning the release of the really interesting stuff.

There's more chance of Real Madrid winning the Barclays Premier League than that. He doesn't care as that will take his time away from hating everyone who disagrees with him and his belief that, because he can play a guitar quite well and tell Uranus from his elbow, his worldview is somehow more important than anyone else's.