Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me

Queen - Queen - 1973

It's almost like the beginning of a joke: An astrophysicist, a biologist, an electronics guy and a graphics designer walk into a studio... and end up creating a kind of magic so unique, so brilliant, that would, at the same time, earn them ever increasing love and respect after more than four decades, and make them a strangely underrated band in their days.
Let me get this straight right from the very beginning: Queen have been, are, and will always be the band I love the most. They were the first band I ever became a fan of, and you know how it is with first loves.
And no matter how much time goes by, I keep finding reasons for my love and admiration for these guys every time I listen to them again. There are a lot of other bands that I have a huge amount of respect, admiration and love for, but few manage to surprise me after all this time like Queen do.
Probably part of it has to do that I was not even a teenager when I first got to know them, and I didn't really know much about music then. Mind you, I grew up listening to classical music, and in parallel with Queen, I got to know some of the most important bands from the 1970s, but back then I mostly paid attention to melodies and, somehow, I "taught myself" to listen to Queen as a band that had beautiful songs, with a singer that was unbelievable, and sort of let their musicianship slide by a bit.
In time, as I grew older, I came to re-discover them in different ways, and I have never been disappointed, quite the contrary.

So we come now to me listening to this one, their debut album, after quite a while. I always loved all Queen albums, and this one is no exception, but now I realise how little I understood it for a long time. Listening to it in the context of its time helps a lot, and I can only feel true awe about how unique, crazy and, in a way, innovative this album was.
This one is much heavier than any of their future releases would be, and you can hear the influence of the hard rock / metal bands of the time, especially Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. But there was also a more glam rock aspect, but not the glam of bands like Sweet or Slade, but a more complex and intricate kind, that reminds me more of David Bowie. And while in many cases influences make an artist sound like a copy, when it comes to Queen it helped them produce a sound that was quite like nothing else at the time.
And because of this, I think they were sorely misunderstood and unappreciated, mostly by critics, but by audiences too. As I said, it would take a bit of time, but eventually they got the recognition they always deserved.
But I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the one guy that stands out more than anybody or anything else in this album: That ridiculously talented and also underrated guitar genius that is Brian May. Listening to this album again, I feel renewed admiration for this guy, and while I know that he is widely recognised as one of the best guitar players ever, I don't think any amount of praise does him justice.
He is one of the most immediately recognisable guitar players in the world, I think, mostly because of his use of guitar harmonies and vibrato, as well as the unique sound that his Red Special, the guitar he himself built with his father had, and the added uniqueness of his not using picks to play it but a sixpence instead. There's a lot of that in this album and that's why anybody who never heard this one before would know this is Queen, even before Freddie started to sing. But what blows my mind here is how brilliant Brian is consistently, regardless of whether he is playing acoustic guitar, playing a solo, doing harmonies, or producing the heaviest riffs the band ever played.
So this is for you, Brian, thank you for having given us your immense talent throughout the years, thank you because your music has given me, personally, so much happiness, and thank you for, also, being such a cool guy. You're a true star, and not just because you have an asteroid very deservedly named after you.

• Bassist John Deacon appeared credited in this album as Deacon John, apparently because it made it sound more interesting. In future albums, he would appear with his real name. 
• This album, as all the albums up until, but excluding, The Game, had a note in the sleeve stating "And nobody played synthesiser", which was May's idea and a way to set themselves apart from the likes of ELP and all the prog bands that used (and abused) synths.
• The title of this post is from "My Fairy King", the first of a series of fantasy themed songs written by Freddie they would have in the first few albums. Freddie claimed that he was singing about his own mother and, after he came up with the song, he changed his name. 
• Probably the heaviest song in the album is "Son and Daughter" that really reminds me a lot of Sabbath. Someone described it as a cross between Black Sabbath and Ziggy Stardust, and weird as it sounds, I think it's quite accurate. 
• While trying to decide on one song to post here, I changed my mind many times because every time I heard a song I thought "this one!". I ended up sticking to my first choice: "Great King Rat", a brilliant and complex song that I think represents this album quite well. 

Looking fine on television

New York Dolls - New York Dolls - 1973

They were from New York, they wore lots of lipstick, high heels, garters. They sounded like they really didn't know, or care, what they were doing. They were so much of a breath of fresh air that most of the audiences either dismissed them or were not too sure what to do with them. They had the strange honor of being named both "Best New Band" and "Worst Band" by Creem magazine's poll for 1973. They were the granddaddies of punk. 

They sound as if we had crossed the Rolling Stones with Velvet Underground and got the bastard child completely drunk. 

This is one of the bands that would inspire punk rock a few years ahead, which is a bit of a problem, because punk is kind of strange, in the sense that musically is as narrow as it gets, but it caused a massive revolution. But because of how narrow the whole genre is, this album ends up sounding like a much better version of punk than punk would ever be. 

It does sound a bit dated, but it's still a lot of fun to listen to this album. And what else can I say? It's a punk album, after all. It's not meant to be analysed.

• Guitarist Johnny Thunders died in April 1991 of a probably overdose, although it was never too clear. A few months later, Guns'n'Roses released their Use your Illusion albums which include the Duff McKagan song "So Fine", dedicated to him. They also covered his "You Can't Put your Arms around a Memory" song for The Spaghetti Incident. 
• Singer David Johansen also had a sort of acting career. He appeared in a sci-fi movie that I probably remember as better than it was called Freejack. The cast has a couple of big names in it, such as Anthony Hopkins, Renee Russo and another sort of known musician called Mick Jagger. 
• I'm putting "Trash" here, from a live TV version that pretty much shows everything you need to see. Love them or hate them. They changed music forever. 

Hello world, here's a song that we're singing

The Partridge Family - TV series - 1970 - 1974

Among all the silly things I have, there's this album called C'mon Get Happy! The Very Best of the Partridge Family, a compilation released in 2005. But it would be absurd to wait till then for a compilation about the music from a 1970s series. 

It's also absurd putting this here, I know.
The series was about this family, a mum and her 4 kids, who were a pop band, and travelled touring together. I remember it being quite big here in the late 70s and I loved it.
Or maybe I just had a crush on the oldest kid, David Cassidy, who was the singer. 

The album is a collection of mostly typical 70s pop songs that, while nothing to write home about, is actually better than I had expected. So here's a bit of nostalgia. 

• David Cassidy died on November 21st, 2017, so less than 6 months ago. It made me a bit sad. RIP David, thank you for the good memories and the good music.