"Gritty and timeless Queen" - article form Italian magazine 'Radiocorriere TV', 1984
Aug 26, 2021 8:14:36 GMT
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Post by fabiogminero on Aug 26, 2021 8:14:36 GMT
Hi again,
I want to share with you another articvle taken from the Italian press. This one was written by Italian journalist Roberto d'Agostino after Queen's appearance at the '34th Sanremo Song Festival' in February 1984 and was published on the Italian magazine Radiocorriere TV in March 1984. Radiocorriere TV was RAI's official weekly magazine, distributed within the company; it is the official organ of the company dedicated to information on radio and television schedules.
Originally titled Intramontabili e grintosi Queen (translated as Gritty and timeless Queen), the article is a very nice review of the band, their last single "Radio Ga Ga" (the song was used in Italy as the final theme of "Discoring", a music show similar to "Top Of The Pops", broadcast on Sundays by RAI from 1977 to 1989) and their last album "The Works".
While in Sanremo, the band was also awarded with the Cavallo d'Oro (Golden Horse), an award donated by RAI Television to international artists for their activity.
Here's the translation from Italian to English. I wanted to correct the name of Freddie Mercury, reported incorrectly (as is customary in the Italian press, unfortunately) as Freddy Mercury.
I want to share with you another articvle taken from the Italian press. This one was written by Italian journalist Roberto d'Agostino after Queen's appearance at the '34th Sanremo Song Festival' in February 1984 and was published on the Italian magazine Radiocorriere TV in March 1984. Radiocorriere TV was RAI's official weekly magazine, distributed within the company; it is the official organ of the company dedicated to information on radio and television schedules.
Originally titled Intramontabili e grintosi Queen (translated as Gritty and timeless Queen), the article is a very nice review of the band, their last single "Radio Ga Ga" (the song was used in Italy as the final theme of "Discoring", a music show similar to "Top Of The Pops", broadcast on Sundays by RAI from 1977 to 1989) and their last album "The Works".
While in Sanremo, the band was also awarded with the Cavallo d'Oro (Golden Horse), an award donated by RAI Television to international artists for their activity.
Here's the translation from Italian to English. I wanted to correct the name of Freddie Mercury, reported incorrectly (as is customary in the Italian press, unfortunately) as Freddy Mercury.
Gritty and timeless Queen
With them the future is already old
In Sanremo - where it was awarded with the Radiocorriere TV Cavallo d'Oro - the group presented Radio Ga Ga, a song taken from the last 33 rpm The Works
With them the future is already old
In Sanremo - where it was awarded with the Radiocorriere TV Cavallo d'Oro - the group presented Radio Ga Ga, a song taken from the last 33 rpm The Works
Putting together dissimilar, incongruous or even incompatible things is one of the most bizarre and fun prerogatives of the Sanremo Festival. For example: what did the diabolical couple from Puglia, Al Bano and Romina have in common with Boy George's aesthetically androgynous solutions?
Again: what kind of artistic spark could strike between the rampant Tinker Bell (a century in two hired for the New Proposals section) and the ephebic Paul Young?
More: what musical reference could one expect between the petulant Toto Cutugno and those Queen butterflies?
Well, in this last close encounter, perhaps a reason for contact could be traced in the look of Cutugno, who recalled to many insiders precisely, with that blinding lamé jacket and curls paralyzed by lacquer, the "glitter" style, shimmering , which Queen adopted in the early seventies.
Permanently stopped the sequined suits completely open on the naked and sweaty chest, Freddie Mercury, the unshakable leader of the British quartet, tripped on the stage of the Ariston Theater in Sanremo all dressed in athletic pants and tank tops, according to the new taste of young fashion. For the same reason, with careful timeliness, he scissored the flowing locks of a consolidated rocker of the seventies, letting a pair of PS Marshal's mustache appear. "Well, it seems stupid at almost forty to keep wearing long hair and studded jackets," says Freddie Mercury.
Timeless, more gritty than ever, Queen are back to being talked about with a new album, entitled "The Works", with an amazing single, "Radio Ga Ga", but above all with a video-clip that for a few weeks the big Sunday episodes of "Discoring". Produced and directed by a videomusic specialist such as David Mallet, it cost three hundred thousand pounds and is built largely on the mythical clips of a 1926 silent film, "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang. Mallet worked above all on editing and on the alternation of white, black and color.
And he did it with great intelligence, balance and imagination explains Giandomenico Curi, one of the most popular directors of "Mister Fantasy", setting the fragile story of Queen in an already old future where listening to "Radio Ga Ga" becomes the the only possible remedy against disasters, floods and radioactivity. The same myth of the reconciliation of social classes, affirmed with emphasis by Lang, is re-proposed by Mallet through the music of Queen taken as a new instrument of pacification, of light and color, the family with gas masks gathered around the kitchen table, the album of the heroes (that is Queen) placed on display on the fireplace, the same somewhat cumbersome and grotesque style that is well suited to the perverse foreground and the falsetto voice of Freddie Mercury.
Queen did not willingly accept the silence that struck their last declining test at 33 rpm ("Hot Space") and the new "noise" they produced brilliantly brings them back to the height of the best times. "The Works" is, in fact, a very danceable cocktail of hard rock, neofunk and electrodance sound jungles, all naturally blended in the unmistakable sound of the quartet, in the same language that in the mid-seventies dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic: epic melodic lines, guitar solos close to heavy metal, very seductive vocal arrangements. Finally, add the androgynous and "macho" attitudes (they chose the name of Queen for its gay connotations) of the singer Freddie Mercury and you will get best-sellers like "Bohemian Rhapsody" repeated in '76 by "Somebody To Love", in '79 from "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", in '80 from "Another One Bites The Dust", up to the success of '82 "Under Pressure", sung in tandem with David Bowie.
Now it is the turn of "Radio Ga Ga", which again cultivates the ambition of being a song in its time, is aimed at the very young, builds a highly topical product, while not losing the classic dimension of the group's style. "And you will soon realize it", reveals Freddie Mercury, "next summer we will definitely be on tour in Italy".
As we all know, Queen finally came to Italy in September 1984 and performed two concerts at Palazzetto dello Sport in Milan.
Just before the release of this article, another short article appeared on Radiocorriere TV at the end of February 1984: basically there was talk of the awarding of the Cavallo d'Oro to Queen by the magazine. Here's the translation:
TO QUEEN THE PRIZE OF THE RADIOCORRIERE TV
The "Radiocorriere Tv" award (Francesco Messina's famous "horse") went to Queen, one of the famous rock bands of the moment, at the Sanremo Festival, delivered during a very crowded press conference. Filming the event (it was the first time that the English group had come to Italy) were twenty-two public and private televisions, about thirty radios and an unspecified number of photographers and journalists. And the stars kept waiting for more than an hour. But there was a reason: to allow all the public present to listen to the latest LP "Works", which will be released in a few days also in Italy. With "Works" Queen hope to double the great success of "Radio Ga Ga", the song they performed in Sanremo, the final theme of "Discoring".
Permanently stopped the sequined suits completely open on the naked and sweaty chest, Freddie Mercury, the unshakable leader of the British quartet, tripped on the stage of the Ariston Theater in Sanremo all dressed in athletic pants and tank tops, according to the new taste of young fashion. For the same reason, with careful timeliness, he scissored the flowing locks of a consolidated rocker of the seventies, letting a pair of PS Marshal's mustache appear. "Well, it seems stupid at almost forty to keep wearing long hair and studded jackets," says Freddie Mercury.
Timeless, more gritty than ever, Queen are back to being talked about with a new album, entitled "The Works", with an amazing single, "Radio Ga Ga", but above all with a video-clip that for a few weeks the big Sunday episodes of "Discoring". Produced and directed by a videomusic specialist such as David Mallet, it cost three hundred thousand pounds and is built largely on the mythical clips of a 1926 silent film, "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang. Mallet worked above all on editing and on the alternation of white, black and color.
And he did it with great intelligence, balance and imagination explains Giandomenico Curi, one of the most popular directors of "Mister Fantasy", setting the fragile story of Queen in an already old future where listening to "Radio Ga Ga" becomes the the only possible remedy against disasters, floods and radioactivity. The same myth of the reconciliation of social classes, affirmed with emphasis by Lang, is re-proposed by Mallet through the music of Queen taken as a new instrument of pacification, of light and color, the family with gas masks gathered around the kitchen table, the album of the heroes (that is Queen) placed on display on the fireplace, the same somewhat cumbersome and grotesque style that is well suited to the perverse foreground and the falsetto voice of Freddie Mercury.
Queen did not willingly accept the silence that struck their last declining test at 33 rpm ("Hot Space") and the new "noise" they produced brilliantly brings them back to the height of the best times. "The Works" is, in fact, a very danceable cocktail of hard rock, neofunk and electrodance sound jungles, all naturally blended in the unmistakable sound of the quartet, in the same language that in the mid-seventies dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic: epic melodic lines, guitar solos close to heavy metal, very seductive vocal arrangements. Finally, add the androgynous and "macho" attitudes (they chose the name of Queen for its gay connotations) of the singer Freddie Mercury and you will get best-sellers like "Bohemian Rhapsody" repeated in '76 by "Somebody To Love", in '79 from "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", in '80 from "Another One Bites The Dust", up to the success of '82 "Under Pressure", sung in tandem with David Bowie.
Now it is the turn of "Radio Ga Ga", which again cultivates the ambition of being a song in its time, is aimed at the very young, builds a highly topical product, while not losing the classic dimension of the group's style. "And you will soon realize it", reveals Freddie Mercury, "next summer we will definitely be on tour in Italy".
As we all know, Queen finally came to Italy in September 1984 and performed two concerts at Palazzetto dello Sport in Milan.
Just before the release of this article, another short article appeared on Radiocorriere TV at the end of February 1984: basically there was talk of the awarding of the Cavallo d'Oro to Queen by the magazine. Here's the translation:
TO QUEEN THE PRIZE OF THE RADIOCORRIERE TV
The "Radiocorriere Tv" award (Francesco Messina's famous "horse") went to Queen, one of the famous rock bands of the moment, at the Sanremo Festival, delivered during a very crowded press conference. Filming the event (it was the first time that the English group had come to Italy) were twenty-two public and private televisions, about thirty radios and an unspecified number of photographers and journalists. And the stars kept waiting for more than an hour. But there was a reason: to allow all the public present to listen to the latest LP "Works", which will be released in a few days also in Italy. With "Works" Queen hope to double the great success of "Radio Ga Ga", the song they performed in Sanremo, the final theme of "Discoring".