“In which Queen (before the world had a clue who they were) unleash an astonishing mix of heavy licks, mad harmonies and wild mood swings all in service of some high fantasy concerning a mythical Queendom called Rhye. Which, if you were fifteen years old and stuck in the mid-1970s confused about pretty much everything, was exactly what the Universe needed you to hear.” (Philip Random)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEx1C9O7lVk
In which the Moody Blues go deep and wide and high, and remind us why they were once considered pretty darned cool. Philip Random recalls listening to Melancholy Man a lot while reading Lord of the Rings for the first time “… as a mostly uncool, pre-driver’s license teen with absolutely nothing better to do one long hot summer, stuck in somebody else’s cottage, there being only one even remotely decent album in the vicinity – This Is The Moody Blues (who knows how it got there?). I still think of Bilbo Baggins finally getting old whenever I hear Melancholy Man and I didn’t even know what melancholy meant at the time, just felt it anyway, all that deep sorrow and regret, particularly once the mellotron sweeps in for the kill.”
In which the Alice Cooper Group knock it out of the graveyard with a stirring epic toward the pleasures of necrophilia found on 1973’s hugely successful Billion Dollar Babies. “No question, this would’ve been my favourite song for at least three weeks when I was thirteen, almost fourteen. Though it’s actual meaning eluded me for years, because it never occurred to me that necrophilia was a thing, that people would actually do such stuff to get their rocks off. I guess, I just didn’t know people yet. Who says Alice was down on education? He was just way over our heads.” (Philip Random)
For all their pomp and fantasy, Queen could also take things down to earth every now and then as Drowse makes clear. Like something Brian Wilson and David Bowie might’ve come up with if they’d ever written a song together. Because it’s eternally true. Teenagers spend vast chunks of their time alone in their rooms frustrated and confused, bored to rages of tears, or maybe just on the drowse.
The Buzzcocks being one of truer teenage bands ever formed, Orgasm Addict being one of the truer teenage records ever produced, short and sharp and spewing in all directions.
Randophonic 