| bst123 09.10.2008 17:29 |
[br]Q-PR and Queen: "The real difference"[br][br]I don't know if I'm a expert on the subject reading some of the comments and thoughts of others here on Queenzone. The thing is i saw Q-PR 4 times live now, 3 times in 2005 and 1 time in 2008. The 2005 tour was great because i didn't expect to see Brian and Roger together on one stage again (as Queen that is).[br][br]I've also seen Queen back in 1984 and 1986 and after that the two Brian solo tours in 93' and 98'. My opinion and feelings on the new album and 2008 tour are mixed. If you see Q-PR as a new band or a spin-off from the old ones (Queen, Bad Company etc.) i think it's ok. I mean they obviously don't do it for the money and the shows are still very good, even if you compare them with some newer acts, they still deliver and are great musicians in their own right.[br][br]I don't want to start another discussion on calling themselves Queen or not, but i do think that although their great musicians the spirit and wizardry of Queen is gone. I enjoy the Q-PR concerts and like the new album but for me the magic has disappeared. I think a lot of the older fans think the same way, Queen was something special and if you can, do you remember the old days when the new Queen LP's where released and you rushed to the record store to buy them....got home...headphones....first you liked track 4, 6 and 8 and two weeks later it was track 1, 3 and 7.........i still remember the smell of the freshly pressed LP's.[br][br]Maybe it's also a age thing but i like to remember Queen like they where. It has nothing to do with Paul Rodgers or Brian and Roger doing a kind of fan-service for a lot of younger people who got involved in Queen and never had the change to see them live in their heydays. But there is a huge difference between Q-PR and Queen as a lot of people loved or hated them.[br][br]I'm still a kind of fan but i lost some interest in Queen as Q-PR. For me a Brian or Roger solo tour/album would be far more interesting. I would like some new solo material from them. For example, look at Mark Knopfler, he quit Dire Straits and if you like him or not he's doing al kinds of solo-projects and solo tours with here and there some old Dire Straits songs. I think that's the way you(they) should do it, it's more gracefull and interesting then singing the same old songs over and over again. To quote Freddie Mercury "my songs are like disposable razors, you use them and throw them away".[br][br]My question: what are your thoughts on Q-PR, the 2008 tour or Queen in the old days (young or older fan's/music lovers)?[br] |
| Penetration_Guru 09.10.2008 19:31 |
bst123 wrote: [br]I don't want to start another discussion on calling themselves Queen or not,[br][br][br][br][br][br]Odd way of going about it....[br][br][br][br] |
| princetom 10.10.2008 06:02 |
Q-PR actually IS Queen, dummy.[br]Q+PR is another story...[br][br]why the hell does everybody compare those two marks ?[br]Q+PR is some kind of retirement-project for some damn good musicians. that's it.[br]they don't need to proove anything, they just have fun (and big $$)...[br][br] |
| onevsion 10.10.2008 15:50 |
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| onevsion 10.10.2008 15:52 |
Ducksoup wrote: I totally agree on all you said. In 2005 Q+PR was exciting. Never expected to see Brian and Roger performing together as "queen". Went to see them 6 times and had a wonderful time. This year I only saw them once and it was a totally different feeling. All the magic has gone. I prefer a Brian or Roger solo tour, but no more Queen + PR for me. I prefer to remember Queen like they used to be a long time ago. The group I once absolutely adored because LP's like Queen II and A Day At The Races... Shows like Live Aid and Hammy '79 totally blew me away. |
| YourValentine 12.10.2008 08:41 |
bst123 wrote:
I don't want to start another discussion on calling themselves Queen or not, but i do think that although their great musicians the spirit and wizardry of Queen is gone. I enjoy the Q-PR concerts and like the new album but for me the magic has disappeared. I think a lot of the older fans think the same way, Queen was something special and if you can, do you remember the old days when the new Queen LP's where released and you rushed to the record store to buy them....got home...headphones....first you liked track 4, 6 and 8 and two weeks later it was track 1, 3 and 7.........i still remember the smell of the freshly pressed LP's.
.........
My question: what are your thoughts on Q-PR, the 2008 tour or Queen in the old days (young or older fan's/music lovers)?
end of quote
I feel the same - mainly when I got the album The Cosmos Rocks - it was light years away from the excitement I used to feel about a new Queen album. It's not an age thing for me because I am not a "young fan" - for me it's :take what you can get and make the best out of it. For this tour I knew QPR already and I was pretty sure what I could expect. I enjoyed it. I shared the fun with many people who were fun loving and not making it a big issue of "preserving the legend" or "it's not what it used to be" - we all know that. If the tour does not do it for you - fine, it's your money, your decision, your life. Just enjoy your old Queen recordings, there is room enough on this board to discuss them. Many fans feel just like you do. For me it was two weeks of entertainment, enjoying the music with like- minded other fans, meeting incredible people I would never have met if not for QZ and the band. Being such an optimist I hope they find another chance to tour (with or without Paul Rodgers, with or without new album). I take it all - the tour, the old records, the memories and the old and new friendship. |
| AmeriQueen 14.10.2008 19:11 |
I think the good of the new Queen tours with Paul besides the obvious fact that there is a tour opposed to no tour at all is that we get to see a more retrospective look at Queen's career through a concentrated focus more on Brian and Roger. I especially loved the earlier part of the first tour when Paul was learning the songs still and we saw an equal distribution of vocal duties between the 2 members of Queen with Paul. I think the video visuals add a new touch, the post '86 tour songs give their never before presence to the show, and mostly I just love being a Queen fan with a Queen tour I can see live rather than just DVD replays. I think Paul's vocals give new life to several Queen songs, not all, but many, and I think Queen's Red Special led instrumental take on Free and Bad Company give Rodgers a new look on his music that far exceeds the original in EVERY way. I hoped that I would love the new album just the same as I did the tour, but sadly it pales a distant 16th to the 15 Freddie albums. Still, half Queen with a great singer like Paul is better than pretty much any 21st Century music I've come across. It's comparable to May's solo albums in quality and with the album and a 2nd tour I just keep smiling on and hoping that death ends this project years from now, or at least the physical inablity to drum, sing or hold a guitar. Queen anthologies projects and digitally perfected albums and concert DVD's of old Queen are my first and foremost desire from them, but this 2 tour and album gift is infinitely better to me than some embarrassing description read of the Ben Elton stupidity that Brian wasted SO MUCH time with when he could have been creating and/or touring. The only real gasp of negativity I have on Q+PR is the strange apathy or lack of a position i'd expect in regards to these strange lyrics that plague the album like 'Surf's Up.... School's Out' and other individual moments that make Friends Will Be Friends and China Belle lyrics read like a Bob Dylan poem by comparison of intelligence and meaningful maturity in the words they write. I have scarcely ever heard such cheeseball, teenage-ish words in a song outside of a Blink 182 song or an old 80's hair band video. Also there is the diversity of non-Queen sounds all over the album, making them sound like they are copying U2 with Warboys, the Traveling Wilburys with Call Me, some blues-country act I couldn't name with Cosmos Rockin, and never once really showing more than a few instances of something truly Queen-like accept for Say It's Not True. The Rodgers influence is heavier than B and R, but then there is a basic dominance of outside influences that cover most of the album, which is something only a few solo album covers of B and R ever showed a sign of. I never once felt that Brian or Roger were copying any kind of influence in their writing and only saw such a leak of outward influence in the two later Cross albums that Roger wrote with other musicians. The Purity isn't just tainted by PR, it's leaking a whole for other stuff to come in and I don't particularly like anything else enough to want Queen to be inspired by it. It's more the other way around. In the end it's not the pleasantly equal alternative to the original like Coverdale/Page was to Zeppelin in my taste and liking. It's more a lesser supergroup whose long drop still doesn't reach modern ground and I would not choose to suggest an alternative to QPR other than the prospect of a Brian/Roger album and tour with no singer at all. I do at least feel that Paul Rodgers singing Queen is more often than not a better lead singing option than B or R, simply because his bluesy voice truly is magnificent and he does seem to mesh strongly with their sound. It's not too odd really when you consider his departure from the tragic break of Free to a supergroup Bad Company that merged him with Mott The Hoople's guitarist, a very similar band to Queen as any other could claim to be. Oddly enough, I still say the best song they did with Paul so far is Take Love. |