Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
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Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
https://youtu.be/QKbeVeZODbQ
Queen II - Queen's best album followed by Sheer Heart Attack
I'll have to disagree here - my 4 essential/desert island ones:
I'd personally put SHA in the great-albums-but-second-tier along with The Works and News of the World.
Honestly though if we played "you must pull ONE album mentioned in this comment from your collection and never hear anything on it again" it would be very highly irritating.
I like Jazz. It was much better prog rock before the synths. I appreciate the older albums, on the whole, so much more. Their last really and fully great album was A Day at the Races. The other albums had great songs, but I like the older stuff a lot more.
***I am too lazy to correct my repeated phrase usage.
BTW speaking of Deacon, you may recall I play bass. I am here to tell you, his shit is some of the hardest to figure out. It's all over the place, melodic, hard to tell what's going on in the mix etc. (Other than "AOBTD" and "Under Pressure" of course LOL.) I've never really bothered figuring out much of his stuff because you'd have to chart it or have sheet music/tab or whatever.
Geddy Lee is actually somewhat pedestrian (!) by comparison - I know lots of his stuff even if I can't play it anymore due to rust etc. [Edit: I never thought about it before but the way Deacon does all kinds of interesting counterpoints etc is kind of akin to how Lifeson does weird chord voicings etc tbh. And May is kind of the Geddy Lee of the band. Fans of both bands - does this make sense? I should also mention that Lee really hit his stride on Vapor Trails - THAT is some melodic bass playing, and easily my favorite stuff of his - along with My Favorite Headache - which I like more than most Rush material, these days. OK, you are now leaving Tangent City.]
Jaco I haven't even tried ;)
I am much more familiar with Queen than Rush. Deacon is a great song writer. He wrote some of the best lyrical songs they played. In Only Seven Days is incredibly lush and beautiful. He seemed to have a solid family life and it played into his writing.
Lee is a good bassist, but I prefer Jaco and Deacon. I suppose Deacon is so good that his playing seems so simple and easy. I am no bassist but I truly admire those who play.
Yeah I knew you like the earlier stuff better. I'm ok with the synths but the main thing is while I like the full on rock (e.g. "Opera") I quite like the rhythm-based stuff (so the Deacon and Taylor tunes) of which those middle-later albums (before things started to really slip with "Magic") some strong examples.
"Races" just doesn't hook me as you note it's not on my list, though the live version of "Somebody to Love" on the Montreal DVD is absolutely one of the best performances I've ever seen.