1) Happy Birthday Mum! I know she's not on LJ, but I wanted to say it anyway. I wish I was at home but there we go; besides my parents are visiting in 12 days time so I won't be too lonely. (Then it's only 3 days until the new Doctor Who, hooray!).

2) I'll be posting a new review either tonight or tomorrow, not that I really needed to say it. But it is one of my favourite films of all time, so a bit of fanfare may be neccesary.

3) I don't celebrate halloween, but I do believe in sometimes giving people a scare. So, I present to you one of the worst Sonic songs ever made. Beware, your ears may bleed.

As you may already have read, Queen had a pretty hard time getting into the music business in the first place. They had the talent, and the experience but had to wait two years before they even got a chance to record an album. Still, that gave them time to iron out any major problems; their debut self-titled effort sounds more like a third album in confidence. They'd found their style too, or at least a style. But as we all know, Queen never stayed in the same place for long.


Even in their first album you can see all the things that would make them superstars. The copious guitars, multi-tracked vocals, showmanship, and a personal style that's distinctive from 5 miles away. So what makes this album different to their breakthrough albums Sheer Heart Attack or Night at the Opera? They hadn't got the balance right, they lack the variety of music and their subject matter turned people off. In other words, the same things that affected Pink Floyd during the period between Saucerful of Secrets and Echoes.

Lets be honest here; at this point of their careers Queen were a Progressive Rock band, albeit leaning more towards the rock side of it. This isn't a bad thing, but it explains why they took a while hitting the big time. Expect a lot of instrumental passages, guitar solos, different tempos and dark lyrics. If you like that sort of thing, then this album has nearly everything you'd want. (None of the songs sound the same) Surprisingly, this album tends to avoid the fantasy lyrics of Zeppelin (or for that matter, Queen II). Sure we have 'My Fairy King', but most of the others tend to be a lot more personal and down to earth in the subject matter they address, which really makes me wonder why the stereotype persists so much.

Song Runthrough
Keep Yourself Alive was a dead certainty to be the main single of the album, one of the more conventional songs on it. Pretty much sets the tone of the songs to follow. Doing All Right follows, an emotional song borrowed from Brian and Rodger's former band Smile. Great King Rat sounds like a dark fantasy flamenco, while My Fairy King gives us our first glimpse of Freddie's childhood kingdom Rhye. Liar, the longest song on the album, is yet more progressive rock and by now the lack of variety is starting to show.

The good news is that we get given a slow, acoustic guitar driven song next; called The Night Comes Down. Following hot on it's heels is the first song from Rodger, and it sounds completely different to all the others. Modern Times Rock 'N' Roll is fast, short and completely un-proggish. Next it's the heavy rock song Son and Daughter. This is starting to give me musical whiplash. This is when the album throws a curveball. It's about and called Jesus, and it gives us the first glimpse of what Queen will grow into. It's conventional slow rock! Finally, we have a slow instrumental version of Seven Seas of Rhye. Or a portion of it anyway. This is obviously a sequel hook for the next album, and it sounds very different to what it will become.

Personal Thoughts
Listening to it now, there's a reason I don't really play this album by itself. It just lacks the variety of their later work. It's competent prog, and it's likable prog, but the tracks all seem to merge together, few standing out from each other. On the other hand, my playlists wouldn't be the same without it either; songs like Doing All Right, The Night Comes Down and Jesus show what they were capable of growing into, and I would have loved to have been there to hear these songs live.

I recommend buying this if you like Queen, or you like Prog, but even if you don't you can find these songs on youtube and see what you think of them. This is a very solid start by one of the most regal of bands, but their full majesty was still to be shown. For their next album, they would move further down the fantasy path...

I said there was going to be a revamp! Sadly, it's playing up. The sidebar and dates won't change colour. :( If anyone knows CSS and can help, I would really appreciate it!

It's been a while hasn't it. Well, I'm back now. This is going to be a slight revamp too.

Basically, I don't have the time or energy to do in-depth breakdowns on things, like my Queen retrospective. So, I'm going to consolidate my resources into actual reviews. All it means is that I talk less and get more done, I'm not going to churn them out like a robot. :D I'm also trialing a different scheme of rating things, on two scales: Production Quality and Entertainment. I noticed that some movies aren't made very well at all but are so bad that they become really entertaining. Others, of course are slick and well financed but are immensly dull. Having two scales to judge a work lets you instantly tell what's going on.

I'll be summing up my thoughts on the album 'Queen' when I have this system sorted out and some nifty-ish graphics made for them. Personal life wise, I'm tired but functioning. The workload has increased dramatically, but I'm mostly keeping on top of it all. Need to take better care of myself though, I'm starting to miss meals; which is not a good thing at all.

And that's it for now. Look out for the new look LJ!

Content goes here, accidently pressed the enter key. XD

Your Personality is Very Rare (INFP)

Your personality type is dreamy, romantic, elegant, and expressive. Only about 5% of all people have your personality, including 6% of all women and 4% of all men You are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving.

Part 1: 'Queen'
Introduction
So, in the previous journal I put enough information in for you to work out how they got together. (Roger and Brian meet in Smile, Freddie joins after that and they find a different bassist, who they fire in favour of John). But what happened after that? Well, it wasn't exactly clear sailing. They spent two years playing college gigs before getting their hands on a studio, because it needed testing. They took the opportunity to record five tracks, all of which made it onto their debut album. It didn't get them any serious bids, and even when they managed to get a contract, they had to work in the downtime, 3-7AM. They had to re-do all of their demo tracks bar 1, and they weren't exactly happy with the results. After the album was finally completed, and all the work done, they still had the trouble of finding a record company to release it.

So, not exactly a very happy time for the group, but what about the album itself? Would it suprise you if I said it sounded a lot like Sheer Heart attack, just a lot heavier? Queen had spent their two years in the clubs well, Brian pointed out that ' we really had matured as a group and had our audience before the press caught on to us'. The other main difference between this, and their breakthrough albums later one is that it isn't as musically varied. It's just as imaginative, but most of the themes and feels of the songs are very similar. It's like what would happen if you took a blank album and filled it full of tracks that sounded Queenish.
Queen start off their first album with their first single, which is an interesting choice. This is the track that they had trouble getting right, and it was written by Brian, which he wrote to be completely ironic. Freddie took the song for his own and sung it completely sincerily, completely changing the meaning of the song. And what is the meaning? You're going to have to work to live, working too hard won't get you very far and you're not going to be happy until you allow yourself to be. Which is a fairly good message for a song.

Music wise, this song is a medium paced rocker; drums, bass, rhythm guitar and some Brian-May trademark  guitar solos. You could pretty much learn everything you needed to know about Queen from this song. There's a lot of guitar, John's bass isn't content to stay in the background unheard, and the drums are enegetic. And over the top, Queen start singinging multiple parts at you. While it lacks the later sophisticatedness, this song works as an introduction to the band. Also, you get to hear the only clear time that John Deacon sung on record, so it's a first in more ways than one. All in all, I like this song, but you can tell it's going to be a few albums until 'Now I'm Here'.

Part 1: Overview
Introduction
I felt that I needed to find something to do that would keep me active on Livejournal. That way, as well as get some thoughts down on something I like, I could find time to talk about how I'm feeling. So, I thought 'Why not go through every album of a popular band'. Sure, it'll take a while, but it's not as hard as analysing a video game, and it'll be fun.

So I chose Queen, since I have MP3's of nearly all their albums. Easy as that.

FAQ
1) So, what is it?:  I just told you up there, silly. :) I'm trying to do a studio album a week, with a day or two's gaps in between albums. So in other words, it's not always going to turn out 1 a week. It could be 1.1 a week, or 0.9 a week. But it's close enough.

2) Even Hot Space?: Yes, even Hot Space and Made in Heaven. Same thing goes for the early Queen too, because that stuff's grown on me. I might even throw in a retrospective of a live album or two, but not in the same detail. Queen + Paul Rodgers is a step too far though, just because it's not a retrospective. I haven't heard the music to comment on it. But you never know.

3) What will you be talking about?: Three things my friends. Music, Lyrics, and Personal Feelings. It's all fairly straightforward. I guess it's actually four since I might be throwing in some Trivia. Gotta love a bit of extra knowledge, right?

4) Will you be doing anything other than talking?: Hey, that makes me feel like it's a bad thing. :D But seriously, there will be some soundbites of bits I might want to point attention to, maybe some other stuff like that. If the songs are on youtube, I'll post the link as well for you all to gawp at ^_^

5) Can we comment, or stuff like that?: By all means, I'd love it if you did. :) I definitely would like your view on the tracks or videos as we go through it. Don't think you can post anything mean though, because then I'll set my attack-unicorns on you, and those things are viscious. There's a difference between sensible dislike of a track (because i'm sure we all love and hate different things) and throwing around your opinion like a club. :3

6) Who ARE Queen?
Ah, now that's a question. Read on.

About the Band
Queen was a rock band made of 4 people, a bit like the Beatles.  They all met while they were in (or just after) higher education, and got together as a band. And they pretty much stayed together as a band for an extremely long time. It's really hard to classify what musical genre Queen belonged to (apart from the all-encompassing term 'Rock') because they wrote a lot of very different songs. They started of heavier and more 'Prog', moved to more mainstream rock for a long period, before taking a very small detour at funk and ending up being something that sounded like nobody else. To be honest though, they always sounded like no-one else, because they were that distinctive. They all contributed to the writing of the songs, and many tracks were collaborations between the four of them.

The members of the band WERE:

Yeah, I know. I know. I need to post here more often, otherwise there's little point me having it.

First things's first. I'm at uni now, and have been for the last month or so. Gosh, how it has FLOWN. And I'm suprised how confident I am now, even if my room is a bit of a tip. XD It's nice to be able to choose what you want to eat, and go to bed as late as you want. (Now I know to keep putting it on snooze mode, it won't let me oversleep because it keeps going every 10 mins until I turn it off. I shouldn't miss a lecture ever again! XD)

Secondly, I'm making a Lawyerman! group account on this. What's Lawyerman? You'll find out HEREEEEEE! And HEREEEEE! It's the PW world done as a superhero comic. We're at the concept stages mostly at the moment, but we're always looking for people who want to contribute ideas, critique, concept art and other stuff like that. If you want to contribute, then check out the first link.

Of course, I can't say all this without giving a link to our friendly opposition, Super Makoto.  They are also awesome, going for a more anime style to it. They're also probably closer to the PW mentality than we are, I like to meddle with characterisation a bit (I am the head writer, ya know :3)

So stay tuned! *gets out tuning fork and whacks it against desk* If you're out of tune I'll know it!

Darnit, where does the time go! I guess all these long essay like replies doesn't help. Oh wells, I'm sure I can catch up. :) I've not actually played any of the cases, just written them up. But when It gets to TaT, I'll be playing it for the second time, It's only fair!

Phew, I did manage to get it all done! I'm just one case behind now. :) Let's hope I can pull that back too. AJ Countdown.exe! POOOWER UP!

Ok, so I'm very behind. But I should be able to catch up. I should be able to get part three done by tonight at least. The weekend should help a lot too. So, get ready for:

It's time to begin with the countdown. Just as a world of warning, look forward to REALLY long posts. I'm a writer, what did you expect? XD Lets a go!

Life is a funny old thing really, I never really thought I'd be where I am today and here I am. Both metaphorically and physically. But this is a good place to show my thoughts, so why not :3

For instance, has anyone seen that drumming gorilla? http://www.aglassandahalffullproductions.com/ Now that's an interesting idea for an advert. It sure beats the pants off most adverts. Those darn 2 pair Specsavers adverts for starters. Trying to be artsy =/= a enjoyable and successful advert. All it does is make people go 'What the HELL was THAT all about' At least the gorilla makes you chuckle. Unless you've seen it about a dozen times, but then all adverts are like that

I don't think Strong Bad Emails on Homestarrunner.com get worse with age however, I think they get better. I'm gonna be posting a different SBEmail every week for your perusal (Man, that word sounds insidious! In fact, Insidious sounds Insidious. Ironic eh?) Somehow they're silly but clever at the same time. Like the one I'm posting today. They've took the premise of someone asking about a sound effect, and turned it into a parody of famous people. What other show has a sound effect taking part in a hollywood squares style game show? XD

But enough of randomness, you probably want to hear a bit more about me. Well, I'm not giving everything away you know. Certainly not my girth, cos it's embarrasing, but my height is 6 foot 1ish!  Circumstances wise, I'm in college doing my A2's and I'm trying to deal with not only the large amount of work but also some things from the past that try to bite me in the arse. I've been bullied most of my life, and also been a bit learning difficultied in my youth, so I get down fairly often. I guess I worry that people just... put up with me. That there's something wrong with me that no-one tells me about. But I know in my heart that there isn't, so who cares what they think, eh? :)

But thats about it so far. A shout-out to anyone here that knows me (Currently one, heyas Shaun XD) and I hope I can get to know some of you here :3

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LJ Friends: Shaun, Gyakusai-rating
H*R Toon of the unspecified period of time: SBEmail #136- Geddup Noise