Queen - A Night at the Opera (30th Anniversary Coll. Ed) [CD/DVD Combo]
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Music CD Cover
Artist: QueenEdition: Music CD
Format: Collector's Edition, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2005-11-22
Music Label: Hollywood Records
Soundtracks:
- Death On Two Legs
- Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon
- I'm In Love With My Car
- You're My Best Friend
- '39
- Sweet Lady
- Seaside Rendezvous
- The Prophet's Song
- Love Of My Life
- Good Company
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- God Save The Queen
Free Music Notes for A Night at the Opera (30th Anniversary Coll. Ed) [CD/DVD Combo]
Free Music Review: Queen's GRAND breakthrough to the US gets a 30th anniversary fit for a king
Hit: 5 Stars
Queen's fourth album A Night at the Opera was originally released in December of 1975.
The album was the band's sink or swim album, if it flopped it would have been the end of Queen.
Here is a track-by-track summary of the album.
"Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to...)" kicks off the album in a hard rocking manner which was frontman Freddie Mercury's ode to an ex-management company whom treated the band like dirt. The vaudevillian sounding "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" follows and is great with its 1930s-ish sound and harmonized heavy metal guitar solo at the end is amazing. Drummer Roger Taylor's ode to the automobile "I'm In Love With My Car" follows and is a superb rocker sung by Roger. The ballad "You're My Best Friend" follows and is a nice song written by bass player John Deacon for his wife Veronica (whom he is still married to today) and was a US Top 20 hit in the summer of 1976 peaking at #16. I love the melodies and harmony parts. Guitarist Brian May's "'39" is a great skiffle (folk) song with Brian singing. The song is Queen's sci-fi song about a man who goes time travelling for a hundred years but comes back one year older. Musically sounds like an outtake from either The Beatles' Rubber Soul or a Kingston Trio album. Brian writes the next track, the rocker "Sweet Lady" which is a great hard rock track. Freddie's vaudevillian sounding "Seaside Rendezvous" ends the first half. Got to love those voice orchestrations from Roger and Freddie imitating a brass and horn section.
Brian's epic "The Prophet's Song" kicks off the second half in epic style and all I can say is WOW! The song was written while Brian was sick with the curable form of hepatitis and an ulcer which forced Queen to cancel a US tour in 1974. It's a great epic, superb vocals. Especially with Freddie's vocal solo which was pure genius. Freddie's "Love of My Life" follows and is a great song about a breakup. Brian's "Good Company" is next with Brian's jazz guitar orchestra, ukulele and vocals on this track just rock. Next is the album's biggest hit and Queen's arguable greatest moment, Freddie Mercury's nearly six minute "Bohemian Rhapsody". The song is Freddie's 6 minute magnum opus and a song unlike any in rock history. It has it all, ballad, an OPERA section (voices by the Queen members and was overdubbed and overdubbed to point where master tape almost deteriorated). This song would be Queen's first US Top 10 hit reaching #9 in 1976. Then it would reach #2 in 1992 in the US when re-released because of Wayne's World. Brian's classic rendition of the British anthem "God Save the Queen" closes this masterpiece.
When this album was released, it went to #4 in the US and became Queen's first million seller and has sold up to 3 million copies to date in the US alone (I helped when I first bought the album on CD in March of 1992 only being familiar with Bohemian Rhapsody and You're My Best Friend as they were on Elektra/Asylum's 1981 version of Queen's Greatest Hits).
In November of 2005, Queen re-released A Night at the Opera complete with a new remaster which buries any previous CD version of ANATO(including the remastered version on the 1998 Queen box set The Crown Jewels) plus a DVD of videos, commentary and the album in 5.1
The cut and paste videos on the DVD I liked the best are Death on Two Legs(showing footage from the Earls Court and Houston concerts in 1977), I'm in Love With My Car(which features more rare concert footage), Sweet Lady(with footage from the Hyde Park performance Queen did in 1976) and The Prophet's Song. Also, you get new re-mastered videos for You're My Best Friend and the "flames" version of Bohemian Rhapsody which was only an easter egg on the Greatest Video Hits 1 DVD released in 2002.
The commentary may not be new but at least it gives stories behind each track.
Some will say why buy again but I say go for it because of the remastering!
Highly recommended!
A Night at the Opera (30th Anniversary Coll. Ed) [CD/DVD Combo] Poster
A landmark release, this special edition features both the new CD and DVD formats of the album completely restored from original analogue tapes and digitally re-mastered by Bob Ludwig, in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound. As well as the original 1975 videos for 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'You're My Best Friend', the DVD also contains brand new video footage for the other 10 tracks, along with archive audio commentary from all four members of Queen, including the late Freddie Mercury.As Queen guitarist Brian May explains in the new liner notes: "Months of craftsmanship by true perfectionists have gone into wringing every ounce out of the original master recordings and into this hitherto unequalled 'high definition' domain. Never has the recording been so carefully balanced, so carefully cleansed of clicks and pops from so many sources, some of which were even present on the original mix master tapes. In the stereo sound on this DVD, every nuance of the analogue character of these human-made mixes is more faithfully reproduced here than ever before. In addition, for the surround track, a whole set of 5.1 mixes has been created from microscopically accurate digital sound files, mirroring the original multitrack tapes. For the first time this includes a new surround mix of the final track 'God Save the Queen', and some improvements to the surround mixes previously issued to a small audience on the DTS DVD-Audio release."May continues: "This DVD also features for the first time visuals for every track on the album some, like the original 'Bohemian Rhapsody' video, carefully digitally restored and re-graded, and some, like the stunning new video for 'Good Company', created especially for this release. There are also some special commentaries, ancient and modern, from all four Queen members on facets of the tracks, and... yes, this is quite simply the best 'Night At The Opera' ever produced. I doubt if it can ever be bettered!"Nothing succeeds like excess--at least that's the case with Queen's breakthrough classic, A Night at the Opera. On one level, the title is a reference to the band's operatic pretensions, best in evidence here on the classic "Bohemian Rhapsody," which was championed by headbangers a generation before being revived by the Wayne's World set. Of course, A Night at the Opera was also the title of a Marx Brothers movie, and the reference isn't lost on Queen, who seldom scaled the heights of pomprock without a knowing wink. The album is remembered for its meticulously produced bombast, but the truth is that there's a wide variety of material here, from the gorgeous piano-based "You're My Best Friend" and the McCartneyesque "39" to the music-hall-style "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" and the pedal-to-the-metal rockers "Death on Two Legs" and "I'm in Love with My Car." A Night at the Opera is viewed by most as the quintessential Queen album, and justifiably so. --Daniel Durchholz
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