Queen.....WHY THE HELL NOT?!?!?!

He , I like Queen, but let's keep this site clean. I'm still puzzled about Meshuggah.

Bye        

Proglover wrote: Can someone please explain to me, WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH, Queen is not on this damn site?!?!?!?!?!.........It's almost a complete insult. Perhaps a better question should be...why the hell are bands like Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, Styx, Weather Report, Traffic, SuperTramp, Hawkwind, and Asia on this site and Queen excluded?!?!?!? I listen to some of the above mentioned bands, and I think to myself...ummm this is prog?????????????? When including bands like Weather Report, you are blurring boundaries, which normally I would approve of, but there can't be a double standard. Weather Report, for all intensive purposes is JAZZ.......go to a store, and look for weather report, and they won't be in the pop/ rock section, but they will be in jazz. But...look for Gentle Giant, Genesis, YES, King Crimson, ELP, Jethro Tull, so on and so forth, you will find them under rock. Infact, Bill Bruford's solo efforts are under JAZZ......so if you are going to make exceptions to the rules based on your whims, then you have to examine more closely. Why not include Miles Davis on this site...certainly he was one of the starters of fusion....all im saying, is that the inclusion of some bands and the exclusion of others follows NO LOGIC. Then there are bands like Uriah Heep (who I detest by the way).....where I can't find one inkling of progressive anything. I listened to an album of theirs, and my thought was...wow this is pretty much STANDARD rock music. I personally don't understand why there is this huge road block for Queen, when HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE bands like Styx are placed in this site. Queen is ten times the band Styx was. Someone, who was really big into Styx, once said to me...."hey, if you like Queen, then you'll like Styx".....and I've listened to Styx, and I absoultely disagree. Now not to start a complete progressive riot.....but I still STRUGGLE with the idea that Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues are progressive. Certainly there are some Queen "tunes" which to me are more progressive than Pink Floyd or Moody Blues. I'm sorry people, but I just dont see them as being progressive. So come on Queen fans, let us fight with conviction to get this amazingly talented band on this site. oh by the way.....as a side note, am I the only one who sees a resemblance in the front man characteristics of Freddie Mercury and Peter Gabriel??....Both were AMAZING front men. Let me know what you think.

yeah, im absolutley agree, the first 4 queen's albums are absolutley prog, and queen I is a masterpiece of prog, songs like doing all right or my fairy king are complex, with great vocals arrengements.

I was going to agree with you until you started disputing Pink Floyd

I was even going to let you get away with daring to suggest that Hawkwind might not be all that proggy...

Drattit.

I still agree - but the case has got to be made a sight better than that, in order to get people agreeing that one of the biggest stadium rock bands of all time could be considered a prog band.

Yes, they produced more and better prog than many so-called prog bands - but they're more famous for the non-prog stuff.

Go on... apply that argument to Genesis

Okay, I one one of the biggest Queen fans out there, and I'm not just talking about their 70's material, but everything they released (except perhaps the Hot Space album...everyone makes mistakes).  Certainly their second offering "Queen II" could be considered somewhat of a prog album, but if you take into account what prog music is all about, I really don't see Queen fitting in too well!!

I see the arguement between Uriah Heep and Styx and Floyd, and for one second I can't imagine how Queen fits into this?  I also love Heep, but one only needs to listen to things like "Salisbury" and "July Morning" to see that Heep were 10 times proggier than Queen ever was.  Floyd???  Not prog???  Then I must have lost my mind somewhere along the way, because I can't name a Floyd album (MAYBE Momentary Lapse or Division Bell) that isn't prog.  As for Styx, I also love most of what they have done, but they had at least settled into being an art rock band which is at least a cousin to prog!!!  Listen to Styx's "Crystal Ball" and see what it takes to be a great art rock band!!!!

Back to the subject...Queen is probably one of the most important bands of the last 30 years, and this is not an opinion, this can be backed up by any number of facts.  The most impressive being that Queen have stolen the number one slot from the Beatles as being the most charted band in Europe!!!!!!!!  However, Queen are still not a prog band, just a simple hard rock / pop rock band.  They were the best at what they did and that's that...do I want to see Queen on this site???  Nope, that's what the Queen sites are for, I'll stick to those!!!!

I won't fight for them, mostly I enjoy them as a fantastic fun standart rock band with lots of different styles of music, all played in a distintive Queen sound.

Reasons in favor of Queens inclusion.

1. some albums have very a progressive approach.
    Queen I, Queen II, Sheer Heartattack, A Night At The Opera, A Day At The Races, Flash Gordon, The Miracle, Innuendo

2. all albums have at least one or two progressive (semi-progressive) songs.
    It's Late, More Of That Jazz, Play The Game, Save Me, Body Language, Radio GaGa, It's A Hard Life, Who Wants To Live Forever, One Vision.

3. Brian's guitar, freddie's piano, and the symphonised sound they produce.

4. They were influenced by progressive rock bands and had several influences on current progressive bands (Yes's Trevor Rabin, A.C.T. and more)

Reasons against Queen's inclusion.

Very commercial music, usualy quite simple songs (but who said prog rock had to be complicated), Queen said themselves they are not prog (but so does R. Fripp).

Overall their first couple, and their last two (living Freddie) albums are quite if not overly progressive, but their more commercial output, may scare people from including them.

I'll leave it to the powers that be, I would be happy to see them on the site, if not it's ok with me since I do not count them among the most important progressive bands anyway.
when included, I will issue some reviews

Ok People....I read all your responses......and ONCE AGAIN...they are filled with DOUBLE STANDARDS..........you can't say that Queen shouldn't be on this site, because of this reason, when bands like Genesis, YES, and ELP are guilty of the same things. Like I said...if you are going to set up rules, then you have to abide by them.....I mean, to be quite honest if the site were SERIOUS, about actually show-casing PROGRESSIVE ROCK music..then please for goodness sakes, get albums like 'Love Beach', "Big Generator", "90125", "Talk", "Civilian", "Giant For a Day", "And Then There Were Three" (And every other Genesis POP album), OFF THE SITE!!! ...cause they AIN'T PROG.

And I find it funny, that people use Queen's big commercial success as a reason why they shouldn't be on the site, when some of your biggest Prog heros are GUILTY of selling out to commercialism...ie YES, Gentle Giant, Genesis, ELP, the list goes on and on. Hypocrisy I tell ya!! And lets not forget the HUGE commercial success of Pink Floyd..hell, "Dark Side of the Moon" was more than an album, it was part of the culture of the youth of that time.

Also, here we have Robert Fripp, who openly hates and challenges the use of the term Prog to describe his music, and yet you so openly claim him for this site.

Overall, there were quite a few close minded responses, and as I said DOUBLE STANDARDS!! Oh and by the way, anyone who calls Queen a hard rock band is DELUSIONAL....have you listened to Queen??????? ...if anything, and I say this with the utmost respect, Queen is sort of a vaudeville act...kinda hard to catorgorize. There are so many different styles of music on ONE Queen album that you leave saying, what the hell are they, and what are they trying to say???

AND no one mentioned the similarities between Freddie Mercury and Peter Gabriel.