Queen pop-up shop opens on London's Carnaby Street

You've got to admire their marketing strategy - release only 1000 and they're guaranteed to sell.

I'll be visiting this tomorrow! Will try and get some pictures to upload, if I can

What an amazing year for Queen fans! Hopefully they will re-re-re-release Live at Wembley around Christmas.

So basically you can now buy a Queen-branded anything.

I do understand that if a band as big as Queen release a branded product then it will sell, and I understand that there's always going to be an interest in Queen product, especially from younger fans who weren't even born when Made In Heaven came out, but I'm personally not interested in all of this stuff. It's all crap. They're trying to squeeze the last drops of whatever they can out of the brand it seems, before they have to stop touring altogether.

I think the tour with Adam Lambert is fine, great, a back catalogue tour performed with two of the original band and a singer who can handle the songs albeit in a musical theatre fashion. I have seen the show twice, and I enjoyed it. Was it Queen without Freddie? No, not really, but since we can't have Freddie and there's no way John will tour again, it's the best we'll get. After ten years touring, or within that ten years touring, I'd have even liked some new material from them. A new studio album was probably never going to be on the cards but they could have even just incorporated a couple of new songs into their live shows and have included them on the live album. I don't see the tour as a problem, artistically, morally, or financially. In fact in many ways to me it makes sense.

The film though, oh my God, what a crock. It angered me. I found it verging on homophobic for a start, and yes while I realise that the 70s and 80s were less enlightened times than today and they had to reflect that in the film, the film did basically point the finger at Freddie and say that his gay hedonistic lifestyle was the cause of the downfall of the band, but it's not as if Brian May or Roger Taylor have a squeaky clean track record either.

Most frustrating for me is the re-re-re-re-packaged greatest hits. It's ridiculous when you think about it. In fact there'd be a case to repackage the Flix sets with a digital release of the videos from Innuendo, that would be better than what they're doing now. The other thing is, rather than drip feeding us crap like the Forever album, then a little later the News of the World box set, etc they could have just taken the previously unreleased tracks from Forever, given us the Freddie version of All Dead All Dead, maybe have included Silver Salmon, Polar Bear, and included some of the more complete unreleased tracks from the A Kind of Magic through the Innuendo era and you'd almost have an album, and no it wouldn't be a chart topper, but it would be more interesting than this. It wouldn't sell as much as a re-re-re-re-packaged greatest hits but Brian May and Roger Taylor are worth something like 200 million each, do they *REALLY* need the money. Even in 1989 Freddie said "well we don't need any more money", and if he was right back then, he's still right now!

Can you imagine Freddie looking at all this merchandise? He'd be condemning it as a load of boring old crap. 1000 copies of greatest hits in a special slipcase? Really?

I'd rather Brian and Roger had kept up with their solo careers, to be honest, and given us an album every two years or so....

Excellent post, completely agree. You can guarantee whenever QP wheel out the “never make me boring” Freddie quote that the release is going to be a complete snooze fest. It’s almost like they’re taunting us now.

If you take out the re-re-reissue of Greatest hits then it's an interesting selection of merchandise. Those Tshirts look interesting, might snag a few from the online shop. And some Outsider/BTTL stuff while I'm at it. And I am SO getting those 45's.

The Hot Space Rubiks cube is possibly the best Queen item for a decade.

The Vilebrequin tour passes trunks were TWO HUNDRED SHEETS which I thought a bit steep. I'd look great in them though.

The trunks were a really good design, but when you partner with high end brands, the result is product that is too expensive for Queen fans, and too Queen for vilebrequin shoppers.

after last Friday's FARCE of cancelled orders, Carnaby Street should have it's stock of 500 7" vinyls reduced to 100 and let the online store have 900 to sell.
That's 400 fans worldwide who have a better chance of getting the singles.

Stupid really that they've limited them to 1000 copies only considering they press almost 2000 picture discs and they sell out quickly.

Whoever runs QOL shop and comes up with the run numbers needs sorting out.