My Amazon Reviews: Queen "Made In Heaven"

Lost Among The Stars
3 Out Of 5 Stars

For their final proper album as Queen (I am one of those who is steadfast that there is no Queen without Freddie Mercury), Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon put in a valiant effort towards making an album worthy of their finest work. But there is no escaping that "Made In Heaven" is a patchwork effort, comprised of B-Sides, remixes and songs cobbled together from snippets of works in progress. It's a good album, but it is not a great one, and Queen is a band that produced more than their share of brilliance.

In 1995, four years after Mercury's passing, the band took a look over what they had. This included vocal tracks that Mercury had laid down prior to his death; he knew what was coming and did what any self respecting Diva would do, he made sure there were plenty of his grand voice tracks for his bandmates to choose from. These are the songs "Mother Love" and (I believe) "A Winter's Tale." Of the two, "A Winter's Tale" fairs the best as a relaxed song where Freddie ruminates on the finer yet unheralded things of life, before adding at the end, "ooo, it's bliss."

Then come the redoes, like "Made In Heaven" and "I Was Born To Love You," reworked from Mercury's underrated "Mr Bad Guy" album. "Born To Love You" started life as a disco-fied dance-rock number, here Mercury's vocal track is synthed out into a mid tempo rocker with the rest of the band adding their background vocals. The two songs where Freddie's vocals weren't originally there come from "Made In Heaven" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You" (now there's some bad irony) via Roger Taylor's unheralded band The Cross and a Brian May solo album, respectively. Both are grand in the traditional Queen fashion. Same with "Let Me Live," which features Taylor and Brian sharing leads with Freddie and a gospel chorus backing them up.

That's the good stuff. The rest of "Made In Heaven" is piecemeal and sounds it. Then there's the inexplicable 23 minutes of ambient chill-out that drags out the CD (thank heaven for the skip button) to a very WTF ending where the final thing you hear is Mercury exclaiming "Fab!" I'm sure someone, somewhere, thought this was a brilliant tribute to Mercury's ascendance into legend, but it wasn't. For Queen fans and completists, "Made In Heaven" is something you should own. But I can't recommend it to much anyone else except for the most ardent of Queen fans. "Innuendo" was the last Queen album that measured up to the bend's mighty legacy. Best it should have stayed that way.

     

My Amazon Reviews: 10cc "The Original Soundtrack"

A True Original
5 Out Of 5 Stars

10cc, prior to "The Original Soundtrack," were something of a novelty act. They came up with arty songs with humorous twists, like "Donna," "The Dean and I," and (their biggest US single before this album) "Rubber Bullets." The album before "Soundtrack," "Sheet Music," hinted that the band had some great things potentially in store with songs like "Clockwork Creep" and "Old Wild Men." It was also beginning to show that Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme were becoming formidable songwriters.

"The Original Soundtrack" blew all their previous efforts out of the water. Opening with a cinematic suite titled "Une Nuit In Paris," it was eight minutes of mini-opera complete with Gendarmes and ladies of the evening. It took all the smart-arse confections of the past and turned it into artiness, a couple years before Queen would do roughly the same thing with "Bohemian Rhapsody." Then came knockout punch number two, "I'm Not In Love." Richly multi-tracked vocals buoy the lamenting singer's defense of a break-up, all while being utterly unconvincing about his non-nonchalance. It was simple but extremely effective, and hit number 2 on the US Pop Charts.

Nothing else here matches the brilliance of those opening tracks, but 10cc sure did try. The satirical quirks return on "Blackmail" and "Life is a Minestrone," while "The Film of My Love" ended the album with another nod to the cinema. The topical "Second Sitting For The Last Supper" is notable for its questioning of religion ("2,000 years and he ain't come yet, we've kept his seat warm and a table set...") These were salad days for 10cc, as the band worked in two halves. Gouldman and Stewart were more conventional, Godley and Creme the artier. While it all worked on this album and the follow-up ("How Dare You"), upcoming frictions would make 10cc's albums lesser efforts. "The Original Soundtrack" was the highpoint.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Queen "A Kind Of Magic"

There Can Be Only One!
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Queen had just come off their triumphant Live Aid appearance when they headed back into the studio to record "A Kind of Magic." The band was also approached with the plum job of writing songs for the film Highlander, giving them even more inspiration to compose material up to their high standards. This album, probably the best of the latter part of their career, was the result.

"A Kind of Magic" contained the Live Aid inspired "One Vision" (which also ended up in the cult movie "Iron Eagle"). Better known as the "fried chicken song," "One Vision" is one of Queen's great arena rockers. Both "Gimme The Prize" and "Don't Lose Your Head" rocked the "Highlander" movie, with Freddie Mercury's mighty wails atop Brian May's usual guitar pyrotechnics.

May, however, contributed one of my favorite Queen ballads to this album, the heartbreaking "Who Wants To Live Forever." Along with the delicious pop of the title track, these were both massive hits around the world (and unforgivably ignored in the USA). The video of a cartoon Queen dancing to "Magic" is also one of the most clever things that the band's ever done. John Deacon put in the beautiful "One Year Of Love," also a worldwide hit.

Next to the farewell of Innuendo, the best of the second phase of Queen's career. As an Queen album, it's on a par with Jazz and A Day At The Races. The triumph of Live Aid and the inspirational feel of this album led Queen to embark on the Live Magic tour, their last live trek before Mercury's declining health ended their 20th Century touring.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Muse "The 2'nd Law"

A State of Thermodynamic Equilibrium
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Muse waste no time on album #6 in going right for the pomp. "Supremacy" kicks off "The 2nd Law" like some expectation of a James Bond film theme, incorporating a movie-like riff and building into a cinematic overthrow of anything else that may follow. But that's Muse. If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. Which is a main part of the band's charm.

Queenly pompous and football stadium huge, Muse are one of the few bands that currently play it on a large scale. Take the exaggerated funk of "Panic Station," a dead ringer for Queen's "Fun It," or the upward crescendo of their contribution to the 2012 Olympics, the monumental "Survival" (which is self important enough to have its own prelude). Spiraling up to a mammoth cascade of vocal overlays and epic anthem guitars, it was a fitting song to play over Olympian triumphs.

New to the band is the stepping out of bass player Chris Wolstenholme, who tries his hand at singing and songwriting in place of main man Matthew Bellamy. On "Save Me" and "Liquid State," which provide a break to Muse's usual sledgehammer approach. "Liquid State" is the more driven of the pair, which then leads into the band's set of prog numbers, "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable" and "The 2nd Law: Isolated System." Not since Alan Parsons has a band attempted to go this grand; who else would try a duo of songs based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics? (The entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium--the state of maximum entropy - thanks Wikipedia.)

Loaded with stings, horns and choral effects, it's the sound of ambition pole vaulting into classic rock territory. Parsons would be proud of his prodigies in this case, although I bet a lot of fans will be confused. Me, I usually like when one of my favorite bands tries to get their rocks off doing something against the grain. Be it the electronics of "Madness" or the theater of "The Second Law," Muse delivers on their promise to not be run-of-the-mill.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Adam Lambert "Tresspassing"

Border Smashing
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Adam Lambert is the real thing. He is charismatic, flamboyant and sings his @ss off. He isn't here to make you like him, he's here to make you pay attention. He's not just there to shock you, he's here to make 100% certain that he was all everyone talks about afterwards. And they do. For days. Lambert laid it all on the table; from his sexuality to his theater background, all so you'd take notice. There hasn't been someone so blatantly lunging fists first at rock stardom since Billy Corgan smashed his pumpkins. And his new album is even better than the debut.

"Trespassing" quits the all-over-the-place song-styling of "For Your Entertainment" and concentrates on dance-rock. He cuts right to the chase on the title track and opening song, where he pounds out a drum/bass line worthy of Queen and states up front "No Trespassing, yeah well my *ss, wait till you get a hold of me." Make no mistake, Adam is out to make you dance (Nile Rodgers and Sam Sparrow guest on the slinky "Shady") while "Pop That Lock" trades on both dance and EDM style without giving up an inch of Adma-style. That may be because this time, Lambert has songwriter's credit on almost all the disc's tracks, as opposed to "FYE," where almost every song was outsider composed and usually by a star/stunt guest (Pink, Weezer, Justin Hawkins of the Darkness, etc).

Even the outsider songs have punch. "Better Than I Know Myself" continues the formula of the ballads like "Whataya Want From Me" from the debut. There's a cathedral of multi-tracked Lamberts and a climaxing production. Same with "Never Close Our Eyes," a Bruno Mars song that has a plenty of soul. Lambert explores both his vocal range and his emotional one on "Trespassing," with two ballads, the interesting "Underneath" and the stunning closer "Outlaws of Love." Without saying it explicitly, it's the main exploration of Adam's out-ness, (or the night after the party ends, you choose), but is sure sounds like a defensive pose in favor of relationships.

The funny thing is, "Outlaws" may be the album's most restrained performance. Adam maybe be the kind of man for whom over-the-top is merely a barrier to be conquered as often as possible, but when he "they say we'll rot in hell, well, I don't think we will. They've branded us enough, Outlaws of Love." As stunning as he is when he's glamming it up on the dance floor, Adam can be more effective when he's pulling back on the reins. He'll be doing some dates as Freddie Mercury with Queen this year, but the Adam Lambert of "Trespassing" is his own man now.

     

My Amazon Reviews: The Darkness "Hot Cakes"

Seas of Sleeveless T-Shirts
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Cheesy, Sleazy and Tongue in cheekily, The Darkness make their return with their third CD, "Hot Cakes." (No, not the Carly Simon album from 1974...). From the pseudo-seventies sexism of the cover art to the glammy Queen-sized vocals and AC/DC guitar chunks, they sounds like they've not missed a beat since "One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back." They're half hard rock tribute and half inside joke, with the terrific part that Justin Hawkins knows that they can rock as hard as they wannabe and that they're 100% cool with being in on the joke.

Take the opening track, "Every Inch of You." Telling a semi-autobiographical tale of a "English man with a very high voice" who discovers Led Zepplin who went from "loser" to the man for whom all audience members want to suck in a protruding body part...wailed in that very high voice. Then you get the total Queen ripoff, "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us" and the Angus slamming guitars of "Everybody Have a Good Time." Derivative stuff all, and every inch of it pure fun. Even the hoary power ballads come off with a wink. The Darkness are smart enough to know that they possess about as much menace as a litter of puppies and subtlety of any given British Tabloid.

It's that they have this much obvious glee in doing what they do that makes them so likeable. "Hot Cakes" won't break any new ground, but don't let that stop you. I'd take the self-informed fun of The Darkness over the parodied self importance of a cookie-monster vocal-led rock band any day of the week.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Queen "The Miracle"

Royal Therapy
3 Out of 5 Stars

Queen was in a personal impasse at the time of The Miracle. Brian May was dealing with a tempestuous divorce and Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS. Most bands would have found a corner to crawl into and curled up into a fetal position. Queen took it as a chance to regroup and have each others' backs while pouring their hearts into the new album.

"The one thing we're all waiting for
Is peace on Earth - an end to war
It's a miracle we need, the miracle."

Kind of giving the album a purpose, the title song was pure Freddie gold. It bogs in the end with a cacophony before rising back up with a unified and gorgeous harmony front, before tearing into a riff monster from Brian, "I Want It All" (with the single mix on the bonus disc). It's kind of a polar opposite from "The Miracle"; instead of harmony and good will towards men, "I Want It All" let it rip with guitar solos and a lyric that literally demands that you give it up, and give it up now.

There was a little of Queen's issues popping through. It's easy to interpret "Scandal" as Brian having a go at the British Press over treatment of his private life while the marriage was coming apart, and "Was It All Worth It" sounds like Freddie beginning his questioning of life with AIDS, a topic that would dominate "Innuendo" two years later. (Freddie's health also prevented the bad from touring behind this album, despite it being their most successful US album since "The Game." There was a bit of silliness courtesy of Roger Taylor's "Invisible Man," a total 80's dance track (included in a 12-inch mix on the bonus CD). Queen may have been searching for a Miracle as the 80's were drawing to a close, and this CD did a good job of proving the band still could deliver.