Previously I wrote about some of the music I listened to in high school and remarked that there were two albums that I associated with my senior year quite strongly. The first is Robert Plant's Manic Nirvana and now it's time for the second: The Miracle by Queen.
What does The Miracle sound like to my now much older ears?
As with Manic Nirvana, listening to The Miracle for the first time in years was like reuniting with an old friend. It may sound hokey but hearing the opening drum beat of "Party" brought back memories. And that beat is pure 80s. But there's also the trademark chorus of Freddie Mercury's multitracked vocals. The Bacchanalia continues on "Khashoggi's Ship", albeit in a more guitar-heavy form. The title track brings a bit of drama to the proceedings with synthesized strings and Mercury's operatic vocals. However, there is a jamming interlude with May soloing over something of a boogie beat courtesy of John Deacon. If Queen can be said to have followed up "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions", it would be with "I Want It All" with its slashing guitars and anthemic chorus.
Both The Miracle and Manic Nirvana have bonus tracks on them, most of which were released as b-sides. Seeing this brought back memories of the bad old days of tracking down singles to get at the non-LP tracks. When in the Chicago area, I frequented Hip Cat Records, which had a large selection of singles, imports, and bootlegs. (It used to be in Wheeling, if memory serves, but has since moved.) I recall their enormous selection of Pink Floyd boots well but it always seemed like they carried relatively few Genesis boots. I think that they usually had multiple copies of From the Mouth of the Monster, though, as it was a recording of a show they did in Chicago. Most of the time, though, I shuffled through Goldmine magazine in search of elusive non-LP tracks. The store that advertised on the back cover always had lots of singles and prominently noted the b-sides. I want to say it was in Louisville, but I can't recall.
This obsession with collecting singles with b-sides eventually became a very expensive one a few years later when it became the norm to issue multiple versions of a single each containing different b-sides. This was a ploy to climb the charts since each copy sold regardless of version contributed to the tallies for the song and was one of the biggest rip-offs ever devised. Don't have enough non-LP material? Throw on a worthless and virtually unlistenable remix. How things have changed. A couple of the major record labels which perpetuated this scam used to send me unsolicited e-mail in an attempt to get me to do their PR work for them.
So there you have it. My little trip back to my senior year of high school. Since Queen stopped touring in 1986, I grabbed a Bob Plant show from 1990 that a couple friends of mine went to. Neither can recall why a third ticket was not obtained for me.
So confess, dear reader. What music were you listening to in 1989-90? Or, if you're too young to have been a music fan at that time, what was the soundtrack to your senior year of high school?
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