Wishing AKOM was never made

*made even more strange as DLYH is one of my least favourite Queen tracks. However, I still love A Dozen Red Roses... which was on the AKOM 7". I'm sure their should've been room for that on at least the CD instead of the refried Extra Magical Ingredients - of which only Forever seems to work as the album closer 'proper'.

I have it on good authority that A Dozen Red Roses was created when someone in the studio accidentally leant on the big machine thing and it made a noise and some arty person thought it would be a good B side. Queen fans seem to lap it up though.... :/

Hey I was little and it sounded odd. It pretty much started the entire Hoxton scene.

Needless to say I grabbed the cassette for a car ride only to find it was Live Magic. AKOM will have to wait another few years for a window.

I like One Year Of Love, but mainly because Freddie absolutely sings the shit out of that song. It would just have been a boring synth pop-with-sax-solo song otherwise. Which it may already be.

I found a Spanish promo of the single on a fair :)

I'd probably like it more if it was placed later on side 2.

we could seal it in the same concrete bath i've consigned Hot Space to in the Mariana Trench

Had a listen, and what I didn't note in 1986 is that the Mack produced songs on it piss all over the DR ones. Would've been interesting to see what had happened if it was Mack all through.

Was it the first time David Richards worked on any Queen songs, as opposed to Roger Taylor ones? I wonder if he was finding his feet with the other 3.

Yaah maybe. Was A Dozen Red Roses a Roger solo effort then that was his 'in'? Dunno.

Martin Packer wrote:

Was it the first time David Richards worked on any Queen songs, as opposed to Roger Taylor ones?

No, it wasn't. In 1979 he'd engineered all of 'Live Killers' with John Etchells (and the overwhelming majority of that record contains material Roger didn't write). He also co-engineered the B-Side of 'Hot Space' (except for 'Life Is Real') and played piano on 'Under Pressure.'

Makes sense I guess as he based at the studio there?

Also on my latest listen, I have to say that I have a new found love for the title track. Excellent 'light' pop that Queen excelled at, like Killer Queen.

A Kind Of Magic, even with the non-soundtrack songs, still just completely comes off to me as "Highlander-The Soundtrack".

I mean that in a good way.

They really should've just made it a full on soundtrack or perhaps if they didn't want to do a whole soundtrack album, make it an EP and do a full album of other songs.

If it had just been "Highlander - The Soundtrack" it would've contributed to rumours of the band's demise. Whether they then had to consciously pad with a few non-movie songs or not remains an open question. (I suspect not as One Vision and Friends Will Be Friends are pretty decent attempts at non-movie songs (but One Vision WAS from a movie).)

Martin Packer wrote:

If it had just been "Highlander - The Soundtrack" it would've contributed to rumours of the band's demise. Whether they then had to consciously pad with a few non-movie songs or not remains an open question. (I suspect not as One Vision and Friends Will Be Friends are pretty decent attempts at non-movie songs (but One Vision WAS from a movie).)

I never really class One Vision as a movie track......it was written as a band song as per any other, and just happened to later be used in a movie, as opposed to the Highlander stuff written specifically for a film.

The first place I heard One Vision was on Live Magic, and it was certainly credited to 'Iron Eagle' all over the packaging :)