It’s hard to believe the Bohemian Rhapsody movie is 7 years old. It’s a music documentary about a band that plays the music of Queen, charting their rise from unknowns to playing sold-out gigs, just like the real Queen band.
Anyway, that’s enough of a commentary about what a fantasy the movie was. The trailer was pretty good and Brickfilm Day did an outstanding reproduction of it. This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since 2018, so it’s about time I published it. I’m impressed all the videos are still live after 7 years.
Here is the original trailer. I love what they did for their Live Aid appearance.
This episode of Recovering Queen was such a delight to listen to. They’re covering the wonderful Bicycle Race, a definite 10/10 Queen song. I love their banter about the song itself and the cover at the end was fantastic!
It was 40 years ago today. I remember watching bits of Live Aid and had a VCR recording it, but as an almost ten year old, I got bored and went out to play. So I don’t remember seeing Queen play that day, but I’ve watched their performance multiple times since.
The official Queen YouTube channel is showing a remastered version of their set for 24 hours only, so the video above may not work if you’re visiting this blog post in the future.
Go get yt-dlp and save a remarkable performance for your own viewing pleasure!
Now, go look at a 480p version of their set. You’ll notice some improvements to the audio, which I like, but the 1080p video in the remaster could have been so much better.
Get rid of that banding in the background!
Edit a few days later: it’s gone. I hope you grabbed a copy for yourself!
I’d heard of the troubles Keith Jarrett had when he played in Cologne but forgot to find out what his music sounded like until I came across the incident again this morning while listening to Cautionary Tales.
Jarrett was due to play in the opera house there and requested a particular type of piano. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the one he wanted and provided him with a beaten up rehearsal model. It was out of tune, the pedals were sticky, and it was in a terrible condition.
He refused to play at first, but after the promoter, an 18yo woman named Vera Brandes pleaded with him to play. He had to avoid broken keys, and concentrated most of his playing in the middle of the keyboard.
To make things worse, he had driven over the mountains from Switzerland the previous night, his back was in a brace, and he was hungry, having had to miss his dinner earlier in the evening.
I haven’t listened to all of it, but it is remarkable what he coaxed out of such a broken piano! Sometimes, less is more.
Oh dear. This will be so niche that nobody is going to read. Anyway.
Long before MP3 files were a thing, the world had mod files. It had s3m, xm, and it music files. There was a thriving scene of musicians creating music for the love of it. Files were distributed on bulletin boards, by swapping disks and in the early internet of the mid to late nineties, by downloading from Hornet or ftp.cdrom.com.
Before I was really online I frequented BBSes in Ireland and every Sunday morning I’d download the latest week’s worth of new scene music from a BBS in Northern Ireland. Luckily, the telephone system here was loosening up, and we had pretty cheap rates at the weekend and in the evenings. There was a huge amount of rubbish there but some classics too, all sadly rotting away on some long forgotten hard drive.
The days of using a modem meant a slow connection to the world. Thankfully, the files weren’t huge. Unlike MP3 files, mod files were instructions on using embedded samples to play the music. The samples were short 8 or 16 bit sounds that were used over and over to make the music. That resulted in tiny files. For example, the title music to Cannon Fodder, a piece of music that is over 2 minutes long, is only 245Kb, and that was a fairly large file for the time.
Want a taste of amazing mods without doing any work? Many years ago I purchased a compilation CD called Freedom with some remarkable tracks. Here are a few songs from it. YouTube really doesn’t do them justice, however. You can grab MP3 rips of the CD from scene.org or look for the songs on The Mod Archive.
How do you play mod files today? The simplest way is by using VLC player. That player natively supports several mod formats. Install it and double-click your mod files to load them. Another option is Open Cubic Player. You’ll find the original DOS version on that site, but a separate Unix port is now maintained on this GitHub repository. Opinion on how good a player it was is divided in the community, but I loved it.
It’s a command line application you can install on macOS with brew install ocp or grab the Linux version from the GitHub repository. A DOS version is available from their homepage, which might let you run it on Windows. I created a macOS application using Automator. I had it “run shell script” and entered the following to change the directory to where my MOD files are stored and then launch the player: cd ~/retro/MODS/ && /usr/local/bin/ocp
Save that as an application and copy into Applications. I couldn’t get it to load mod files by associating them in Finder but it’s possible to use the file navigator built into the player.
If you were active in the PC demoscene in the 90s, you’ll probably remember this player, and I think you’ll enjoy revisiting some of your old mod favourites. You can download mod files from a few sites listed on the Open Cubic Player GitHub page, but the best place to look is The Mod Archive. Best of all, you can play the mods in your browser, so you don’t need to worry about this ancient player at all. Their “About Modules” page lists other players for Linux, macOS, and Windows too.
Better think of your future
Time you straighten right out
Creating problems in town
Rudy, a message to you
Rudy, a message to you
What an earworm. Once you listen to it, you’ll be humming it all day long. RIP Terry Hall.
Today I learned that “rudy” is slang. I always thought it was about a specific person!
A ‘Rudy’ (or rudi or rude boy) is a 1960s Jamaican slang for a youth who is out of control. The term became popular in England in the late 1970s, referring to teens who listened to ska and their fashion of the time.
https://genius.com/2215187
While you’re here, take a look at my photo tour of Coventry Music Museum. There are lots of Specials memorabilia, a signed guitar, and even the car they used in the Ghost Town video!
If you don’t know, “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon” by Queen, you’re in for a treat. Absolutely lovely song and one of my favourite songs. Just over 1 minute of perfection.
When you’ve listened to that, follow it up with Seaside Rendezvous. Another delightful song!
If you’ve never heard either of those songs, you should run, without hurting yourself, to the nearest record store and purchase a copy of Queen’s 1975 album “A Night At The Opera”. A stupendously good album, and I guarantee you have heard at least one song from it. There’s no way you haven’t heard this song I’m thinking of. (it’s also on any music streaming service, if you must have instant gratification.)
When I shared this on Mastodon yesterday Stephen Tures replied, linking to this documentary on the making of the album. I’ve only watched 17 minutes of it, but listen with headphones as they play snippets from the songs too!
Yes, of course, PLAY QUEEN LOUD!
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