Scaramouche, Scaramouche, Will You Do the Fandango?
Warning! This post is rated PG-Ohgawd for saccharine love stories.
Before I met Andrew, if you'd asked me for my favorite artist, I probably would have said Steppenwolf or Warren Zevon or Carl Maria Von Weber if I was feeling particularly superior that day. You can't get to be more of a musical snob than by being an opera snob. But then we started dating. Concurrent to this, my own musical tastes were really developing and refining as I'd by that point given up entirely on the subject of caring what my peers thought about me. Piano sounds (like Zevon or the Dresden Dolls) were becoming more and more important, as was an interest in storytelling in the lyrics (like in every opera ever). I'd been kind of iffy of Queen at first- after all, they were that group that did We Will Rock You, and I'm still leery of arena rock. (Unless it's power ballads and then that's something else entirely.) But then Andrew made me this cd of Queen's love songs and sent it to me while I was at camp and I listened to it the entire bus ride home on repeat and fourteen hours later I had a new favorite band. It's their fortieth anniversary this year, and in celebration an exhibit opened up in what used to be the block of flats that Freddie Mercury lived in when he was still Farrokh Bulsara. It's all exhibit space now. The thing wasn't too large- five rooms- but they had so much stuff and focused on the first five albums. I didn't take too many pictures because a good deal of the stuff was audiovisual stuff- unreleased tracks, interview footage, remastered music videos, that sort of thing.
In the back- a couple of coats Freddie designed. Those are his sketches on the wall, and that's his bed from a very long time ago.
Everything in there is authentic, except for the Red Special. That's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
I thought this wall was cool- it's all the images considered for the Queen album cover.
Oh. Oh wow. It's real. And it's right there.
I, uh, may have freaked out a little at seeing some of this stuff. Normally, I get my "SOMEBODY I MUSICALLY ADMIRE HAS TOUCHED THIS" kick from Hard Rock Cafés, but the only Queen stuff they have is a pair of Freddie's red leather pants from the later (post-moustache) era.
The original pattern pieces for Freddie's Bohemian Rhapsody costume.
A lot of the Queen memorabilia they had was in these big metal cases. Magazine covers, album covers, tapes, pins, everything you can imagine. One interesting thing that I didn't get a picture of- apparently, there were official Queen pin-ups published. No wonder everybody thought Roger Taylor was a girl.
Brian May, what are you doing. Stop creeping on those poor girls!
A pair of drumsticks tossed out into the crowd at the '76 concert.
Just case after case of this stuff. A lot of it was placed near TVs with interviews or concert footage that corresponded to the stuff inside.
Brian's BR costume.
Brian's costume from the early tours. Note Roger Taylor apparently looming over me in the background.
One of Freddie's early costumes.
And one of John Deacon's.
In the next room, they had a lot of interviews with Brian May about the time he had to take a break from Queen due to illness and how this little break shaped his style, etc. It also contained a Japanese news crew.
Don't ask me how they got Brian May's hospital bed.
Queen was once very big in Japan, and apparently they still are. This news team was from Tokyo, and they were interviewing people- including me. They asked me what my favorite Queen album is, what my favorite Queen song is, and who my favorite member of Queen is. Can you guess?
This was the last of the clothing- nearly everything after this was in those big cases, or an interview or something. I honestly really enjoyed the interviews- I got to learn a lot. In one of the last rooms, they had footage from the massive free concert in '76. If I only had a time machine...
The very last thing you saw as you went out was a bunch of 3D televisions. The BBC remastered the Bohemian Rhapsody music video and put it in 3D. Normally, I find this kind of gimmicky, but as I stood there with a bunch of people who were just as enthusiastic as I was, I couldn't help but think it darned nifty that once again the video was pushing the technical boundaries. The opera sequence looked amazing.
In conclusion:
(Man. Didn't this start out as an anthropology blog?)
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