May 6, 2009

This'll Make Your Eyeballs Water Or Your Nipples Hard

It all started when I heard Ben Harper and his new band Relentless7 perform a cover of Queen and David Bowie's Under Pressure. It was an acoustic performance on Triple J's Like A Version.

Some background: My favourite song in the entire world is Queen and David Bowie's Under Pressure. It is singable, danceable, resonates deeply with its dual hopefulness that love can save the world and the stinging understanding that it never will. It soars majestically at its climax. It's a fantastic fucking song by two brilliant sorts with magical voices and intimidating skills and presence.

I didn't really have an opinion on Ben Harper aside from the fact that Diamonds on the Inside drove me crazy with its oppressive prevalence in 2003.

Harper's cover of Under Pressure has resulted in my complete and utter conversion. I don't care - one song can a believer make. It's a true and faithful cover. It honours the spirit of the original. It is beautiful. It made me cry.
Follow the link, click the little box in the top right of the header (or search for Like a Version, JTV or the juke box). Watch it. If you like the song like I do, I hope you'll love it.

I love David Bowie. Anyone who knows me knows that, or should if they want to claim they know me. If you have a car battery clamped to someone who claims to know me's delicate parts and you ask them whether I like Bowie or not, if they reply no, fry 'em. Fuck, fry 'em anyway, 'cuz who doesn't like Bowie? Wankers, that's who.

Queen formed the backbone of my appreciation for Rock. I humbly and faithfully prostrate myself in the traditional goat-horned prayer at the altar of Rock. I pray to the Gods nightly. My dad played us Queen from an early age. We headbanged to Bohemian Rhapsody in the back of his big red Volvo station wagon. We listened eagerly to the slow build of bike bells that Dad informed us was "mag-nificent" in Bicycle Race and giggled to Fat Bottomed Girls (a song I now consider one of the best). My sisters and I danced on the sheep skin rug like teeny tiny maniacs while Don't Stop Me Now blasted from the stack speakers and record player. When I grew up, I came to appreciate the nostalgia of Radio Ga Ga. With my personal discovery of Bowie came the deepest respect for Under Pressure, cemented forever when Taylor Hawkins admitted immediately, without even thinking, that the same song was his all time favourite when asked on some TV interview. Along with Deep Purple, Queen started the hellacious fire of Rock in my heart that tore down to my loins and was never extinguished.

With that in mind and because Freddie Mercury was one awesome, voice-shreddin', hip-swaggerin', cock-suckin' mother fucker, I give you these links:
Now go forth and look up the original and the best Queen clips and songs.

UPDATE of AWESOMENESS: For the video to Bicycle Race, "Queen staged a bicycle race with 65 naked women... The song is famed for its 'bicycle bell solo', which fans would often replicate live at Queen concerts with their own such bells." - wiki

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