November 10, 2018 —

Oh my goodness, check this out! I’m back!

First, I would like to express my thanks for bearing with me while I learned yet another thing about websites, not that I fixed the problems myself, but even arranging what to do was beyond my experience. I love this website, but it isn’t always easy, no bed of roses, as they say. In fact deciding what to write after such a long time away isn’t either, but I will press on because I’m so lucky to have you all still with me, and again quoting the immortal words of the great Freddie Mercury, I thank you all.

Speaking of … I was very excited to see the new movie about Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody. I saw the preview months ago in the form of a link my sister shared on my Facebook page. The movie came on the heels of the remake of A Star is Born, which honestly does nothing for me. That’s a music-related movie, but interestingly my sister didn’t link that one on my Facebook page. I don’t know how she would know which link to give me. I suppose a sister is a knowledgeable thing when it comes to judging taste.

I saw Bohemian Rhapsody not as an avid Queen fan, just an avid rock fan who likes what she knows of Queen. Or so I thought going in. I have vivid memories of their Live Aid performance. I remember singing Bohemian Rhapsody at sleepovers with my girlies in the late ‘70s, one particular girl who was in high school band with me. She played flute, and she loved that song. We sat at the vacant lot across the street singing the operatic words to the trees in the dark. Who knows why? I guess we thought trees were a good audience. Every time I hear the word “Mama”, in the verse where Freddie sings, “Mama, I just killed a man”, I have to turn it down because how Freddie says Mama is exactly how I do — sort of holding on to the word. I personally love the guitar sound of Queen. Many of my rock compatriots don’t, apparently because it’s not hard enough, not enough gain, not enough grit. But I like it. For a long time I’ve wanted that amp, a Vox amp, this one particular one, for some sound I believe I hear in my head. I love Queen’s hits. They are songs that, other than the line with the word “Mama”, I always leave on the radio. But, sadly, I don’t have any Queen records, so I don’t know their deep cuts. With that in mind, I thought I might not appreciate the movie, or at least not appreciate it as fully as a true Queen aficionado. However, it turns out those little qualifications I just listed are enough to make me a Queen aficionado. I say that because all the way through the movie those Queen memories and influences made me want to cheer.

I wanted to cheer just from the way the movie looked and felt – the fashion, the characters, the music. Oh and incidentally, the theater where I saw the movie, the Sherman Oaks Galleria, had the sound up very loud, so loud I complemented and thanked the door person afterwards. I wanted to cheer just because the movie was loud. I wanted to cheer because I grew up in the ‘70s. This movie was a post-card to anyone who did. Sure, those characters are older than I am, but everything they went through, everything they wore and loved, were all my influences too. I had little tears in my eyes, not at the end of the movie where you are supposed to, but at the beginning, when they were setting the stage for the rest of the movie, tears for that time that made me, a time that’s so totally lost now.

I’m not going to talk about the movie in this article. I think I might next week, but you know how I am; I say I’m going to talk about something later, and then something else pops into my head. What I want to relay now are these feelings of familiarity, a feeling of pride for the feel and fashion of the movie because I lived in the time. Even the heartache and the fear of the movie were things I learned from those times.

I don’t know if everyone who grew up in that time feels this way, but it’s not that way now. Nothing is the same. When I got into my truck to leave the garage of the mall, the truck radio was on. I can’t tell you what the song was; in fact, I’m not learning any of the new songs on pop radio because even the sound of the songs is getting on my nerves. And forget the “singer”. If there’s a song without a rap artist, even those singers sound like they are rapping. The radio lasted about five seconds before I turned it off and drove in silence all the way home. Angry. Literally, I was angry for that lost time of yesterday.

I hadn’t watched any reviews, so this past week, I watched some reviews. I watched Queen’s Live Aid performance from 1985 too. I rarely do this, but I posted on those. My posts were angry little rants about music being dead, about the modern world killing it. I remember writing, why? But it is not just music. It’s the feel. The style. I say it often. People’s styles are homogeneous now. Everything looks the same now. Nothing has any feel. When I was young, I used to put together outfits just to be daring, fashionable, to make myself feel powerful and interesting. Interesting was the best thing I thought I could be. Now? Now, everyone looks like they jumped out of the screen of a Starbucks commercial.

I wanted to see what the actors look like in real life What I will say about the movie is that it is well acted. The actors look convincing too, very similar to the members of Queen. And they have mojo. They are interesting on screen. I hoped for them to look something like that in real life, save for the prosthetics they obviously used on the actor who played Freddie Mercury.  I wondered whether playing these characters would influence these people to be more interesting, more individualistic, but every interview I see, and I make it through only a few minutes of these things because I don’t like the pretension of actors, is just more of the same. Their interviews match their look. Like everyone else today, they too look like they jumped out of a Starbucks commercial. Homogeneous. The opposite of interesting. Here’s my collection of pictures for comparisons.

Rami Malek, Freddie Mercury (vocalist), then Malek playing Mercury

Gwilym Lee, Brian May(guitar), then Lee playing May

Ben Hardy, Roger Taylor (drums), then Hardy playing Taylor

Joe Mazzelo, John Deacon (bass), then Mazzelo playing Deacon

I had a ray of hope by way of a store window I passed last week. It was on Ventura Boulevard, near my grocery store in Studio City. The window had the words Bohemian Rhapsody painted on it. I didn’t notice the clothing in that window, so I don’t know what it was they thought was representative of the movie. I drove there today to look for the window again, but the entire display was gone. These actors, the disappearing store window, nothing changes the homogeneity of today. Nothing can.

It must be good to look and be and feel like everything else. It must be. Because that’s what everything is now. And it’s not like I can turn off the dial on the look and feel of the times like I can on the music of the times. That expression about grass being greener, I wonder if I’m looking at the past that way, looking at the time when Queen music was new on the radio waves, when being interesting was the goal? Am I romanticizing it when it was really no bed of roses? Perhaps it’s easier now. We can buy one shirt now, and it will look the same as another shirt made three years from now. We can buy one song now, and it will sound the same as another song made three years from now. We don’t have to curl our hair, or style anything about ourselves. We can all look, feel and sound exactly the same, like a Starbucks commercial… forever. It’s way easier than the effort that went into all that older stuff; I remember the effort, and certainly it was no bed of roses. But … I still miss it, no bed of roses, regardless.