Queen in Review: A Night at the Opera

I'm off to Boston (a hardcore Queen town if there ever was one) tomorrow for 5 days so this will be the last review for a bit but once I return we'll wrap up the rest of the band's first decade. But for now, here we are at the album Queen has been building to all along. It certainly is as manic and silly as the Marx Brothers film from which it takes it's name but is certainly the closest they ever got to rewriting La Boheme in their own image. Although, Queen is never as classy as Puccini. This record is more like a cross between Grease and Rocky Horror Picture Show with its retro manliness and its glorious campy overdrive.

A Night at the Opera begins with the ferocious and unstoppable "Death on Two Legs." It's possibly my favorite opening song of theirs and sets the listener up for what promises to be a muscular masterpiece of rock and roll. Queen of course have no tact so they follow it up with the momentum crushing old-timey lark "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon." From there all best are off as Freddie and the rest of the musical dilettante's flit from this flower to that as nature commands them to.

Drummer Roger Taylor solidifies his title as work songwriter in the band with this album. The author of previous disasters "Modern Times Rock n Roll" and "Tenement Funster," Taylor contributes the execrable "I'm In Love With My Car" to Opera and it's a depressing attempt at power rock that fails miserably. I'm all for musical democracy in theory but when it births such tragedies, I start to see the benefits of autocracy. I just read that he also wrote "radio Ga Ga" so he has secured his place in musical hell for certain.

There's plenty of crap to be had on this album but the highlights are some of their greatest songs ever. "'39" is a self described "sci-fi skiffle" about Einstein's time dilation theory and I can't get enough of it. It's an understated, simple song that is so unlike the rest of their catalog and is pure joy. And then there is "Bohemian Rhapsody" which even the massive supersaturation of the airwaves caused by Wayne's World couldn't kill. It is inarguably a perfect song as long as you have a stomach for the sublimely ridiculous, which I certainly do. Simply put, May and Mercury lay it all on the line here and fully capitalize on their unique and astonishing talents. It's a song no one else could have written and even if the rest of their catalog were as terrible as "Sweet Lady" it would all be worth it for this song alone. It's all downhill from here folks.

Weirdest song: "Seaside Rendezvous"