I don't think it's a surprise to any of you, my devoted Cake Eater readers, that I'm not a huge fan of the band Queen. Any fondness I might have had for them when I was younger was ruthlessly quashed by the repeated playing of "We Will Rock You" at skating parties in my youth (It's hard to clap your hands and skate at the same time. At least it is for some people. They kept wiping out and I couldn't maneuver around their crash sites quickly enough.) and at every televised sporting event during the late eighties and throughout the nineties. While I will admit it's better for sporting event entertainment than, say, "Whoop, There It Is," it is no "Welcome to the Jungle." I will confess a fondness for "Bohemian Rhapsody" but only within the context of "Wayne's World." So, while I am not a fan, I nonetheless think it very cool that Queen's lead guitarist, Brian May, is finally going to submit his long discarded doctoral dissertation in astrophysics to the Imperial College London in the next few weeks.
{...}The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful.
{...}May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree.
"It was unfinished business," he said. "I didn't want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for."
Impressive. Much, much, more impressive than "We Will Rock You" in my opinion.
And will allow for a much longer lasting legacy, too, than Rock God status.
Posted by Kathy at July 25, 2007 12:00 PM | TrackBackYeah, but Rock God status gets you laid. Even at like, what? Sixty-something?
LMAOOOO!
Impressive, indeed.
(And I loooove Queen. My favorites? "Tie Your Mother Down" "The Game" and "Liar."
The songs you mentioned are what I refer to as "Sellout" songs. EVERY band worth a crap has at least one or two. For a band to have several, to my way of thinking, shows you just how good they are. Were. Whatever. LOL
Posted by: Margi at July 25, 2007 12:26 PMI always liked the songs they did for the "Highlander" soundtrack. Especially "Hammer to Fall" (I think that one was previously released on another Queen album, but I'm not 100% sure). They also had some great early songs like "Fat Bottomed Girls", which I consider to be more of a cultural touchstone than "Bohemian Rhapsody". And don't forget "Under Pressure", the duet with Bowie. Even if you don't like the vocals, it's a classic for the bass line alone, IMHO.
I think Vanilla Ice would agree with me completely here.
Posted by: Russ from Winterset at July 25, 2007 05:33 PM