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The Firm: Serious Fun

The FIrm are “a novelty band” according to their Wikipedia page. They released fun, mostly silly songs in the eighties.

In the late eighties they released an album called “Serious Fun” which included a song most people who grew up in the eighties will recognise, Star Trekkin’.

My parents bought that album and I remember dancing around to that song so long ago. 🙂

There’s a bunch of other songs on the album too but unfortunately the album itself appears to be very rare and only a few of the following songs can be found online:

  • Star Trekkin’
  • Girls Got Feelings Too
  • Arthur Daley (E’s Alright)
  • Snookered
  • Heavy Metal Robot
  • Start Wrekkin’
  • Superheroes
  • Strawberry Ice Cream, Jelly and Cake
  • Monster Rap
  • Cash in Hand
  • Summertime on 42nd Street
  • Pop Stars

Lucky you, I tracked down most of them!

Your life is now complete.

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Jedininja

Sometimes you accidentally dive down a rabbit hole of your own making.
I came across the Retro Computer Scene search engine a few days ago and  accidentally clicked on a link to a Commodore 64 disk image. Those files are small at 175KB so I decided to keep it and look at it later.

This morning I did and found Noice Driver v3.0a, a music disk for the Commodore 64 released in 1993. There are some great tunes on there but the name JEDININJA leapt out at me. It’s a good tune too!

The filename of the disk image is sb130978-1fbef9.d64 so I guessed it might have something to do with Scene Base. I downloaded their metadata list and found it there in the c64disk set!

You can find JEDININJA on csdb and a later version of the music disk there too: Noice Driver V3.8c.

It’s quite amazing the amount of digital history that’s out there. I’m only scratching the surface.

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Bohemian Rhapsody Overload

Hyped for this. Don’t be bad. Don’t be bad. Don’t mess it up.

It’s kinda odd to think of Elliot from Mr. Robot as Freddie Mercury but this trailer is promising, unless you’re going to pick holes in every little bit of it.

I enjoyed this interview with Rami Malek on The Late Show, and here’s a video produced by the band Bulsara and His Queenies called ‘A Sheer Homage’. Wow.

If you still haven’t had enough of Queen, (and who can?) the official Queen Youtube Channel has a number of 1 hour long compilations.

Finally, and this is the coolest thing ever, User cmi on the QueenZone forum has made an expanded collection of Queen albums. You’ll probably find bits and pieces there that you’ve never heard.

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Canyon – music brings us together

Thank you James for sharing this lovely short video. I remember reading somewhere that the music that defines us, or that we "really get" is the music we hear in our twenties. This leads to disenchantment in later years because everything's changed, and it's not the same "as the good ol' days".

The thing is, you're not the only one who loves that music, and that's a wonderful bonding experience. A recent episode of First Dates Ireland (yes, yes, I'll watch it sometimes) featured a couple who bonded over music, only as friends but they now had someone to go to gigs with. Unfortunately this clip doesn't show any of their banter about music, but it's the only one I could find of them!

And this is the only time you'll read about First Dates Ireland on this blog, I promise!

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Queen – We Will Rock You (Raw Sessions Version)

In 1977 Queen released “News of the World”, and this year a 40th Anniversary Edition has been released with outtakes, alternative versions of the whole album and more. Here’s the trailer:

I found a playlist on Youtube and it’s great to hear slightly different versions of tracks I know so well but it reminds me that 2 days from now is the anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death and that makes me sad.

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Don’t Stop Me Now

An amazing cover of the Queen song, “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Peter Bence. (Thanks Ken Collins for sharing)

When you’ve listened to that, watch these two videos by Valentina Lisitsa and marvel at how fast her fingers move.

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90 days of music free

Well this is nice. If you’re a Chromecast owner check the offers page of the Home app. The offers are different in every region but I got 90 days of Google Play Music free, and this works even if you had 90 days free before!

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Under Pressure Studio Take

A version of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure you might not have heard before.

You can hear some talking in the background. From the title I thought this was made during the recording of the song but comments on this video and another video say it’s from radio interviews. Anyone know?

Here’s a great article on the making of the song.

Though the band sounds lighthearted enough in the studio sessions, the songwriting, May remembers, was fraught with tension. “It was very hard,” he said in 2008, “because you already had four precocious boys and David, who was precocious enough for all of us.” Bowie, says May, “took over the song lyrically” and insisted on presiding over the final mix session, which “didn’t go well,” according to Queen engineer Reinhold Mack. For his part, May has said he would “love to sit down quietly on my own and re-mix it.”

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Somebody to Love

As a joke a few days ago I shared an awful cover of a Queen song on Facebook, so in apology I give you Marc Martel singing the beautiful Queen song, “Somebody to Love”.

And as a bonus here’s an amazing rendition of Nessun Dorma. Wow, just wow.

All this found at the same time I find out that Freddie Mercury’s mother, Jer Bulsara has died at the age of 94. RIP.