Freddie Mercury – Well Eye Never

Queen Album Review – Queen I Collector’s Edition

As long-term readers of my blog will know, Queen are my favourite band of all time. And they’ve just brought out a new box set of their 1973 debut album with remixed versions of the tracks and lots of extra material, some of it never before released. So naturally I’ve had to check it out.

I already did an extensive review of the album back in lockdown 4 years ago, as I reviewed all of their 70s albums as one of my projects to keep myself occupied while stuck at home. So I’m not going to repeat all of that here.

The purpose of this new post is to give my reactions to the tracks in the new set, and compare them with the original versions I already have where applicable. I’ve also updated my Queen I playlist on Youtube with the new tracks, while still retaining the previous 2011 remasters for comparison.

The Super Deluxe edition of this new release has 6 CDs and 1 LP, plus a 108-page book, a fold-out poster and 4 photo prints. There’s also a smaller 2-disc edition with just the remixed album and sessions material, along with other variations and merchandise, even including editions that have a cassette tape.

However, while I did buy the physical version of their Miracle box set a couple of years ago, I’ve bought the digital download of this new Queen I set instead, not least because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper at £17.99 compared to £149.99 for the box! It still has the contents of all 6 discs anyway, so I’m not missing anything. Furthermore, I consider this to be an alternate remix of the album rather than a replacement, a lot of the bonus material duplicates tracks from previous releases I already own, and I have no use for the vinyl (it is frustrating when artists don’t produce alternate vinyl-free versions of their box sets, as we don’t all want it). So I can’t justify the rip-off price tag on the physical set. I’m sure the book, poster and prints are lovely, but I can live without them.

I bought this new edition myself, so it’s not sponsored by Queen or Sony or anyone else, and all opinions are my own. So let’s get on with it, and I hope you enjoy!

Live Aid Review

Updated in July 2025 to include the 40th anniversary broadcasts.

July 13, 1985, was arguably the greatest day in the history of rock and pop music. As if anyone needs reminding, the extraordinary Live Aid concert was organised by Bob Geldof from the Boomtown Rats and Midge Ure from Ultravox to raise funds for the victims of the devastating famine in Ethiopia. It brought together many of the world’s biggest music stars in London’s Wembley Stadium and Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium, along with some additional contributions from other countries, and was broadcast live for 16 hours to nearly 2 billion viewers in 150 nations.

An event of such magnitude had never been attempted before. So given the speed in which everything was organised and coordinated in just a few months, the generosity of the performers and other personnel who gave their time and expertise for free, and the challenges of running and broadcasting it all using the limited technology of the mid-80s, it was a colossal achievement.

Double-page spread from the Live Aid DVD booklet. On the left, a colour photograph shows a couple of large water jets being sprayed across the huge crowd in Philadelphia to keep them cool in the heat. On the right, a black and white photo shows frail African children and adults wrapped in blankets outdoors, stretching far into the distance.

It wasn’t a magic bullet that fixed all the problems in Africa of course, nor was it ever intended or expected to be. But it had a huge impact, exposing the suffering of Africans in a way that couldn’t be ignored by politicians, the media or the public, and it raised an estimated £150 million that saved countless lives. It also launched a movement to fight poverty and injustice that has continued in various forms to this day, including the Live 8 concerts that followed in 2005, plus other charity records and events.

Double-page spread from the Live Aid booklet. A yellow strip across the top has text that says Band Aid chartered three ships which sailed every week to Africa.
The ships carried medicine, tents, trucks, vegetable oil, grain, and flour. Below this is a photo of one of the ships and 2 photos of the aid packages on board. Below those images is a photo of the group finale at the end of the Wembley concert, led by Bob Geldof and Bono, and a large photo spanning both pages that shows the huge crowd in Wembley, with the stage on the right.

I wasn’t old enough to see Live Aid when it was originally held, as I was only a toddler at the time. I did hear a bit about it while I was growing up, and saw occasional clips here and there, but it was only when they released a DVD in 2004 that I finally got to really appreciate what it was like. Granted, several tracks were missed out, many of which have since been posted on the official Live Aid Youtube channel, and there are unofficial uploads of most of the others. So it would be amazing if they did an extended release in the future to fill in at least some of the gaps. One can hope at least. But as things stand, the DVD is still a fabulous record of the event, containing 10 hours of material.

I also got a further sense of what the experience must have been like recently thanks to the musical Just For One Day, which has just ended its 2-month run at the Old Vic Theatre. I had an amazing time seeing it with a touch tour and audio description.

July 2025 Update: The musical has since returned and is now running at the Shaftesbury Theatre. It really is well worth seeing.

So as a special extended post, I thought I’d take a deep dive into this massive event, by reviewing the DVD in conjunction with other videos online that fill in the gaps and add further context. I’ve also created UK and US playlists on Youtube with nearly all of the performances, along with a selection of interviews and other extras. So I hope you enjoy!

Christmas 2023 Favourites – Part 2

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great Christmas, and that you have a prosperous year ahead as well.

This is the second, bumper part of my festive Favourites, as the first part covered the month of November, where I had a free Christmas meal, explored a trail of snowmen sculptures and saw some of London’s displays, among other activities.

Since then, in December and early January, I’ve met friends in both London and Devon, seen four incredible theatre shows, explored a museum I hadn’t been to before, had some lovely meals in restaurants, ate far too much food at home, celebrated the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, watched lots of comedies on TV, and enjoyed some music as well.

So once again, as with every Christmas, this is a bumper post and video. One of the meals was a free PR invite for my journalist friend Emily to review, but as usual I’m not sponsored or affiliated to write anything here, and all opinions are my own. I hope you enjoy!

40th Birthday Favourites

Here we go, the big four-o,
These two score years have not gone slow!
Amazing how the time has flown,
And since my youth how much I’ve grown.
I had to celebrate, you know,
With food and drink and West End shows.
So with my friends and on my own,
I’ve really marked this milestone.

There’s stand-up stars who made me laugh,
Musicals well-choreographed,
Eating blind and on a cruise,
A 9-course feast and rounds of booze,
A major rock star’s prized possessions,
Art displayed with cool projections.
An action film with audio description,
And shows I’ve seen on television.

Come see how I’ve spent my time,
I promise it’s not all in rhyme.
Here’s why I’m feeling all aglow,
Enjoy this post and video!

Queen Album Review – The Miracle – Collector’s Edition Box Set

Back in the first lockdown in 2020 I started doing an occasional series of reviews celebrating Queen‘s 50th anniversary by doing very in-depth reviews of some of their albums. The posts have been very sporadic due to all sorts of other things keeping me busy, as well as the level of detail they contain, but it’s always been my intention to continue the series when time permits.

And now I have the opportunity to do a Christmas special, as the band recently unveiled a new edition of their 1989 album The Miracle. When it was first announced I eagerly pre-ordered the full Super Deluxe Collector’s Edition & Press Pack as an early festive treat for myself, so I thought I’d do a detailed review now that I’ve had time to go through it and savour its contents.

The set was retailing at £169.99 (plus shipping), but I took advantage of a 10% discount code that I received from their store for my birthday a few months ago. So I was charged £127.99 for the 8-disc box set, £25 for the press pack and £6.26 shipping, making £159.25 in total. And that’s not bad at all, considering how much you get.

There are cheaper editions too though, depending on what you can afford, including the 8-disc set without the press kit, a 2-disc edition consisting of the album and the sessions, and a download version that covers all 4 music CDs, plus there are related items of merchandise. So there’s something for everyone.

I’ve made an unboxing video to go with this post, where you can see my initial reactions to the contents of the set, and there’s an unboxing video by Brian May as well. Queen have also posted a couple of short documentary features about The Miracle to coincide with its re-release, which you can see here and here.

So in this post I want to review the set in full, to give my thoughts on all the music tracks and videos, the memorabilia, the book and the radio interviews – which means there’s a lot to cover here, and I hope you enjoy it!

October 2022 Favourites

Hello again, I hope you’re all doing well despite everything going on in the world at the moment. Here in the UK, Liz Truss having to resign after a disastrous 45 days as our shortest-serving Prime Minister was certainly quite astonishing to witness, and now it remains to be seen if new PM Rishi Sunak can start to get things back on track and last at least as long as she did!

Still, despite all that chaos, I’m doing well, I’m happy to say. My redundancy certainly hasn’t left me twiddling my thumbs, as I’ve been very busy indeed this month. The fact that I’ve been invited to contribute to various disability and accessibility projects, some of which I’ve been paid for, has shown that I’m still very much in demand for my skills and opinions, and I’ve continued to socialise with friends as well of course. So I still have a sense of purpose and don’t feel at all lonely, bored or cast aside in any way despite my job loss, and I still have financial stability for the time being.

So I’m enjoying the career break, and there’s plenty to cover this month, including the aforementioned disability projects, virtual reality games, stand-up comedy shows, a museum visit, a seaside trip, an overseas holiday, TV shows and music releases. So I hope you enjoy this bumper roundup post and video!

London 2012 Revisited – Olympics Closing Ceremony

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the glorious London Olympics from 10 years ago, hence my recent lengthy reviews of the Opening Ceremony, Days 1-8 and Days 9-16. There are loads of great memories, and some things I’d forgotten about that I’ve been happily reminded of. So naturally it’s time to look back at the Closing Ceremony, which was overseen by creative director Kim Gavin.

As big and important as the occasion was, it’s fair to say it wasn’t quite as epic or impressive as the Opening Ceremony – but then it didn’t need to be. We had already put on a fantastic show over the previous few weeks, and so now we could just let our hair down and have fun, and thank everyone for making the Games such a success. This was more of a party than a ceremony really, focusing on the best of British music and culture with a variety of big-name artists. Most of the tracks appeared on the soundtrack album A Symphony Of British Music, compiled by the ceremony’s musical director David Arnold, which I own in my collection. It contains a mixture of original music written for the ceremony, cover versions of well-known songs, and special re-recordings by artists of their own tracks for the event.

And it was still very enjoyable on the whole. It’s very unlikely that everything would have appealed to everyone but, depending on your musical and cultural tastes, there would have been a few particularly memorable or special moments for each person watching. That was certainly the case for me anyway – there are some parts I can easily skip over, and other bits I can watch over and over again.

And visually it looked very cool as well, not just in terms of the costumes, dancing, fireworks and so on, but also the creative use of the ‘pixels’ – the coloured lights behind each audience member – that created animated patterns around the stadium throughout the show, and the impressive Union Jack stage – designed by artist Damien Hirst – that filled the floor of the stadium.

The ceremony lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, and is included in its entirety on the final fifth disc of the BBC’s Blu-ray set. There are no alternative audio options and no scene selection menu (though there are chapter points you can skip through). You simply get the broadcast coverage with the BBC commentators led by Huw Edwards, but that’s generally fine as they don’t interfere too much. They’re most involved when the athletes are making their way into the stadium, while at other times they just give a bit of contextual information, which is actually very useful. And by all accounts we had much better TV coverage than some overseas viewers. The only extra on the disc is a long PDF with the full list of credits for the ceremony, which you can see if you put it into a computer’s Blu-ray drive. Not quite as long as the equivalent document for the Opening Ceremony, but still pretty lengthy.

You can also watch the full ceremony on the Olympics Youtube channel, where they have their own commentators. As with their Opening Ceremony coverage, it starts with a beautiful helicopter shot travelling slowly over London towards and around the stadium, showing off the city and the venue wonderfully. And there are other videos online relating to the ceremony as well, including a bit of footage from the audience and behind the scenes. So, like I’ve done with my previous posts, I’ve compiled a Ceremony Playlist on Youtube, with relevant clips and the complete music soundtrack if you want to look through it.

And so, with all that said, let’s crack on with my look back at the ceremony. It won’t be anywhere near as lengthy as my Opening Ceremony coverage, as there’s much less to discuss this time. But I hope you enjoy!

Queen Album Review – Jazz

Following News Of The World, an album of raw energy that spawned the mega-hits We Will Rock You & We Are The Champions, on top of their previous successes, was always going to be a very tall order for Queen. But, as always, they weren’t deterred by that, and opted to explore a variety of musical styles on their 7th album (though not including jazz itself as the title might suggest). And it didn’t do them any harm, as the LP peaked at Number 2 in the UK charts (held off the top spot by the Grease soundtrack), and Number 6 on the US Billboard Chart, going Platinum in both countries.

Overall the album perhaps isn’t as stunning as some of their previous work, but only because of the incredibly high bar they’d set themselves, and it’s still really good in its own right. For a start, it gave us their well-loved songs Fat Bottomed Girls, Bicycle Race and Don’t Stop Me Now, a trio that makes it worth the price of entry alone (although surprisingly the latter wasn’t a big hit to begin with). And the other ten tracks are an enjoyable mixture too, with some relatively obscure gems amongst them as usual.

The heavy criticism it received in the music press at the time was certainly unwarranted, with the band even being described as “fascist” and “creeps” with “polluting ideas” by Rolling Stone reviewer Dave Marsh. But it was often fashionable for music critics to bash the band, and reviewers tended to be thrown off guard whenever Queen tried something different (which was always), not knowing how to react to it and simply not ‘getting it’. Queen’s humour and sense of fun often went over journalists’ heads.

Hindsight has been kinder though, with retrospective reviews often being more favourable, such as Loudersound ranking it as their 4th best album, and Rolling Stone magazine admitting they were wrong. It is now rightly acknowledged that the album is rather underrated, as it’s never had as much attention as some of their earlier work.

And so, as the latest instalment in my series of Queen reviews, this post is my personal run-through of all the tracks on the Jazz album, including the usual mixture of alternate versions, live performances, covers and more. I hope you enjoy!

November 2021 Favourites

Hello again, hope you’re all keeping safe and well despite everything going on at the moment. I’m happy to say that I’ve had my Covid booster jab, which really helps to further educate and strengthen the immune system, and thus greatly reduces the chances of severe problems if you do get ill with the new variant. Plus Mum had both her flu jab and Covid booster last month, and I’m hoping to get my flu jab at some point. So we’re as well protected as we can be for the winter now.

The latest developments haven’t stopped me going out and about and being generally busy either, as I’ve been making the most of my time. So during November I was interviewed on another national radio show, had lovely days exploring London Zoo and the Illuminated River project, enjoyed stage and film versions of a Dickens classic, watched the latest series of Doctor Who, saw various comedies, got absorbed in the new Beatles documentary, heard ABBA’s new album, and celebrated Freddie Mercury’s life on the 30th anniversary of his untimely passing. And none of it is sponsored or gifted as usual. So I hope you enjoy my latest post and video roundup!

Queen Album Review – News Of The World

1977 could have been the year that Queen’s reign came to an end. With punk rock very much in the ascendancy, having gained traction over the previous few years, there was a greater appetite for raw power and simplicity in rock music, rather than elaborate and fancy progressive rock. And Queen’s last album, A Day At The Races, despite being an excellent collection of songs, hadn’t sold quite as well as its behemoth predecessor A Night At The Opera, with some critics and fans feeling that it was more of the same without any notable improvement. So it was going to seem too repetitive if they did the same kind of thing yet again.

The band were perfectly happy to adapt and take on the challenge though, and indeed were already keen to try something different from the multi-layered, complex productions they felt they’d done enough of by this point anyway. So even without the emerging competition from the punk scene, it was already the evolutionary path they were heading down.

As a result, News Of The World marked a shift towards a purer hard rock sound, and took just 2 months to record (compared to 5 for A Day At The Races). The tracks still had some beautifully arranged harmonies and instrumentation thrown in, but not as lavishly and prominently as before. There was also a change in how evenly the writing credits were distributed, with 4 tracks now written by Brian, just 3 by Freddie, and an increase to 2 each for Roger and John. And the band produced the album themselves, with assistance from engineer Mike Stone, now they had the experience and confidence to do so themselves.

It all worked out very well, resulting in another great selection of songs. And so, as you’ll be accustomed to by now if you’ve followed my Queen reviews to date, this is my personal review of each of the tracks, including a look at alternate versions, music videos, live performances, covers, etc, along with other bits and pieces that I’m aware of. I hope you enjoy!

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