I’m a huge Queen fan, one look at my CD collection and that’ll become clear. Unfortunately, there are two of their albums I really don’t like. Those are “Hot Space” and “Jazz”. They sound very 80’s-ish, and not in a good way. I think they haven’t dated very well.
Anyhow, the stypod has a feature on Dancer, one of the songs from Hot Space. Besides “Under Pressure” it probably is one of the stronger musical pieces on the album.
/me goes back to Queen at the Beeb.. ah yes!
Jazz? 80’s? Oh man, what were you smokin’ when you wrote this. Jazz is one of thier best and not 80’s at all. It’s so eclectic its hard to put any era on it. Hot space on the other hand, now theres a stinker! Heres a tip for listening to that album: get yourself some media player that can time stretch and shrink music and play it at twice the speed. Its one of the reasons Staying Power sounded better live.
After listening to Jazz again I do wonder what I was smoking.. Some great tracks there alright. Glad we agree that Hot Space sucks, although that album does have Under Pressure and Las Palabras De Amor..
Body Language, Back Chat, Cool Cat and Dancer are all fairly dire, the rest fall somewhere between.
Oh God, and “Action This Day” ..
“Like a juke box playing the same dead record
Or a radio in the corner keeps blaring
I got a feeling that just won’t quit
This world is using me”
Ah yes, another Roger classic. If Queen had a distinct weak link it was Roger. While they all worked well together as a pop group, they could have really hit progressive musical highs if they just got a good boot up the arse (no Mercury jokes please). No matter what kicking Taylor suffered his lack of percussive ability would still have hampered the bands evolution.
You might like the “Roger Should Have Left Queen” website. It’s basically a fan fiction type thing set to real events in the bands history. Here’s an example from the period around the Jazz album, ironically the time when Taylor out of the group:
“With Roger Taylor’s recent departure from Queen, a massive “clean up” operation has been called for on their current album “Jazz”. Hundreds of thousands of LP’s and cassettes are being withdrawn from music shops around the world. The reason? Queen have decided to replace the original ending song on the album “No more of that Jazz” which was penned by Taylor with a new group effort, “No more of that fucker”. The band have said to be happy with the expected high cost of this venture. “Its actually quite cheap for a ‘divorce'” Freddie jokes.”
http://geocities.com/rogershouldhaveleftqueen