Queen at Live Aid, 1985.
I don't know how it is I waited so long to do this, but I finally Googled Freddy Mercury today and watched several of his live performances. I started with Queen's Live Aid set from 85', then went through some of the older stuff - ending with a band documentary. Wow - he was amazing. He brought such energy to the stage. I grew up with his music of course, but I only heard a few of his songs as rural Illinois didn't play openly gay artists on the radio. In their defense, Springfield's stations didn't like black people either...and because of restricted airplay, I thought Prince's first song was "Let's Get Crazy." I also didn't hear "Bohemian Rhapsody" until 1989. At least the first time I heard it, the song was in stereo - rather than crackly AM.
Every gay man looked like this in 85'. It's amazing how we can go large chunks of our lives without ever knowing that certain talented performers exist. As consumers of entertainment, we tend to limit ourselves to what's available in American media, so it's easy forget that there's a whole other world out there - with stars whose reach in other countries often dwarfs our own. The few foreign performers who get Americans' attention typically do so through YouTube - like that dude who sang "Gangum Style," or Susan Boyle's frumpy audition for Britain's Got Talent. But singers like PSY are the rarity, and most successful artists still find their fame through traditional channels. Friday Night Videos might be a thing of the past, but the "Break" app provides a nice modern equivalent - and you don't need to adjust the rabbit ears. I'm especially fond of Honest Movie Trailers. If you guys are reading this blog, please have the buttery voice say: "Wearing underoos is fun. And you can choose from more than one..."
"Lights, camera...ACHTUNG!" In watching Mercury's Live Aid performance, I was taken by how "modern" it came across. The concert's picture was crisp, its audio decent, and despite the fact that the cameras recording Freddy's movements were enormous by today's standards, they definitely got the job done - with images that still seem fresh, 30 years later.
Sure, it was clearly the 80s - big clothes, big hair, and big electronics - but it was also the dawn of digital recording, and the quality of video was just outstanding. The stage crew's camcorders might have weighed a good 50lbs, but they captured a moment that hasn't degraded with time...unlike the fuzzy color videotapes of the 1970s - or, even worse, the progressively-grainy footage from the 60s, 50s, 40s, and earlier. (Shuddering). Can you imagine what Hitler would look like, if recorded on a JVC GY-HM650 Pro HD Mobile News Camera - and then replayed on a 62" Sony Plasma screen? Scary as Heil!
Sure, it was clearly the 80s - big clothes, big hair, and big electronics - but it was also the dawn of digital recording, and the quality of video was just outstanding. The stage crew's camcorders might have weighed a good 50lbs, but they captured a moment that hasn't degraded with time...unlike the fuzzy color videotapes of the 1970s - or, even worse, the progressively-grainy footage from the 60s, 50s, 40s, and earlier. (Shuddering). Can you imagine what Hitler would look like, if recorded on a JVC GY-HM650 Pro HD Mobile News Camera - and then replayed on a 62" Sony Plasma screen? Scary as Heil!
Wimoweh Looking back into the 78/32 days of LP records, there is one performer I wish I could have seen in person. Her name was Yma Sumac, and during the 50s, she was known as the diva who could sing in 5 octaves. Her recordings are breathtaking. Her body of work isn't huge, but it's quality makes modern singers seem both untalented & insignificant. Back in the day, Ms. Sumac filled stadiums in Latin America - in the same way Freddy Mercury packed Wembly in 86. You can see many of her concerts on YouTube - grainy, black & white performances of the past, as important to Peru as I Love Lucy was to America. Ms. Sumac was a superstar, but the only reason American audiences knew she existed was because of the mid-century "Latin" craze...again, thanks to Ricy Ricardo. She missed the Internet by a good ten years, but still, she was famous enough to appear on David Letterman in 87. Of course now that I say that, considering that Liberace once appeared during a cooking segment, perhaps Letterman in the 1980s might not be the best endorsement.
Drop Dead Gorgeous. Another performer that I completely missed was Divine in the late 70s/early 1980s. I knew she was the midnight movie star who ate dog shit on camera, but I had no idea she released "You Think You're a Man" - an early techno song - in the 1980s. Divine was more than just an icon within the gay community, she apparently had a significant career singing, MC'ing, and traveling from America to Europe. (Chuckling) Divine's 1983 performance on Top Of The Pops generated so many complaints, she was banned from the BBC for life - ironically in leu of Jimmy Savile. Drag Queen: bad. Sexual predator/Child molester: good. (Sure Jimmy, you can smoke a cigar - so long as you don't insert it Lewinski-style into a little girl - or boy.) The Brits might known for being open minded, but apparently in 83, only Mrs. Slocombe was allowed to discuss her pussy.
I wonder what the next big entertainment website will be? Probably something holographic, where home viewers can experience an event through some type of virtual reality. I hope I'm around to see that. Imagine "going to a concert" without ever leaving your living room, front row center, with seats so good you can actually smell the AXE on Justin Beiber, the musky angst of One Direction, or Susan Boyle's enchanting aroma of Youth Dew & corn creme.
The site should be called, appropriately, PU-Tube.
The site should be called, appropriately, PU-Tube.