all time record – day five
This past Saturday morning, before heading out on adventures, I checked in, as I do, on social media, and found myself tagged by a friend with this:
Day X of 10 of my all-time favorite albums. 10 days. What really made an impact and is still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain, and nominate a person each day to do the same. Nominated by XXXXXX, I now nominate XXXXXXX
I felt the need to explain:
Day Five: Queen: Greatest Hits (1981)
A friend gave me a dubbed copy of this on cassette at some point in middle school; I don’t remember quite when, or who it was (or maybe I just left a tape in the car for more than about a fortnight), but I was hooked. As a relatively new guitar player at the time, Brian May’s precision and tone drew me right in, Freddie Mercury’s fearlessness in his vocals and performance caught me. The variety and scope of the thing was like nothing I’d heard before.
During the Queen resurgence in the early 90s with Freddie’s death in ’91 and Wayne’s World‘s iconic use of “Bohemian Rhapsody” in ’92, I was ready to jump right back on, and evangelize the newbies, dropping knowledge about things like the weirdness of “Bicycle Race” and (the unfortunately not on this record) “Hammer to Fall”.
I expect another release of this one and yet another Queen resurgence any time now, given the upcoming release of Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic whose trailer dropped yesterday.
