Queen I Box Set - Post-Release Discussion

Picked up the vinyl at a record store near my college, sounds AMAZING!! Spared no time or money in picking this up the day of the release! It’s a great contender with my original US pressing of the album

Amen to that. The BBC/Rainbow material being redundant for most serious fans being the only annoyance to me. What makes up for it is we have an actual remix here. I'd say that alone is worth the price of the box. Queen ll certainly will get the same treatment. I can already imagine what a better mix of that gem would sound like!

Have to agree. I'd heard versions of it before, but I think it's mythical status far outweighs it's merit as a song.

This can be said about any song.
For example, face it alone. We listened to the demo version of this song, wondered how it would be released and whether it would be released at all
It was released, and the way it was released exceeded expectations, or rather, left an aftertaste. It seems like you feel joy, but at the same time you feel like you've been screwed

So, what are you saying? Cos that makes about as much sense as something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I love the book. Of course, they could have added more stuff, but the fact that all the photos, receipts, lyrics, etc, have been preserved all this time is fascinating to me. It's like turning the clock back 50 years.

Brian May and Roger Taylor revealed a huge change last night in London while debuting an expanded and remixed edition of Queen's self-titled debut: They've digitally retouched every single drum hit from the original sessions.

The group was initially tracked at London's legendary Trident Studios under the guidance of eccentric producer Roy Thomas Baker. Queen was still so unproven, however, that they were relegated to recording during studio downtime.

"We were signed to the owners of the studio so that is why we got that [time]," Taylor said. "I remember there was Lou Reed and David [Bowie] producing Transformer. He'd just finished Hunky Dory and Ziggy. This was the place to be. The Beatles did 'All You Need Is Love' there. It really was the place to be – Harry Nilsson, etc. So we thought it was great – we're in Trident!"

As a result, no one felt empowered to complain about the in-house drums. "I remember Roger getting angry because he was in such an unfamiliar situation," May said. "Instead of playing in a room with his kit, which he knows inside out, suddenly he is in a tiny little room with a foreign drum kit – which was tiny and transparent, as I remember."

May described the drums as "plastic, all covered in tape – literally covered in all this tape. They'd taken most of the skin off the bass drum and it's got a cushion inside. He's trying to play this thing and he hates it!"

They moved forward anyway, releasing Queen in July 1973. "I think you would have seen us very much immersed in it and we felt privileged to be there at all," May said, "and we were enjoying each other's company, and we were enjoying working with each other and developing new ideas."

The LP rose to the U.K. Top 25 and eventually went gold in America – but May and Taylor were never completely satisfied with the result. They've now meticulously polished up Taylor's drum sound and restored the original track listing, inserting "Mad the Swine" between "Great King Rat" and "My Fairy King" as they'd once hoped to do.

"It's exactly how we wanted it," May enthused. "We waited 52 years to get to this point, to make it the way it should have been in the first place. We always hated the fact that Roger wasn't playing his own kit. It didn't sound like Rodge."

ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-debut-drums-remix

It was always there but not so recognisable. Also it could be found on the BBC version of the song from the Session 1 (February 1973) in a more prominent volume.

Wow, the new album cuts of Mad The Swine and Jesus are such a revelation. Absolutely amazing.

I said this in the announcement but the remix is absolutely incredible. The live tracks are another fantastic addition. The 1970 performance of Jesus was mind blowing to say the least. Desperately hoping QPL actually releases the full recording, because it's insanely good quality for 1970.

Seeing that picture of John with the Rickenbacker bass recently and hearing that bass riff(solo) on the remix of Liar, I'm just wondering if he played the Rick on Liar. Sounds closer to a Rick than a Fender. It has the metallic sound to it. Anyone know about what bass he used?

Here's my verdict:

Obviously all the new live tracks and sessions stuff is great for those interested in the rarities. Equally shocked that the San Diego and Imperial College recordings are mostly raw, apart from a bit of stereo editing done for the San Diego Recording, which sounds strange but isn't a deal breaker. At least they seemed to reel in the autotune for these tracks.

The 2024 mix is (mostly) terrible. Queen 1 never had a good mix to begin with, but the excessive, unnecessary autotune sticks out like a sore thumb to anyone who has heard this album before. The drums also sound super fake and over compressed. The balance is all off here, and some tracks are bordering on unlistenable, like Doing All Right and Liar, where the drums don't even have a consistent sound quality. The only track on here that sounds better to my ears is Son and Daughter, which benefits from the "crank the drums to 11" effect only because of the nature of the song.

If they ever do this for Queen II, it will immediately be made irrelevant due to the C_matt mix that's out there, which I think is the definitive mix for the album, and Queen 1 would have been better off with that sort of treatment.

Queen’s 1973 Debut Gets a Glorious Sonic Upgrade That Transforms It From Black-and-White to Living Color

Queen’s 1973 eponymous debut album has always been an outlier in the group’s catalog. Yes, it’s a vivid opening statement that set the stage for the glorious creativity and bombast — the heavenly voices, snarling guitars and baroque flourishes — that would peak with “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Night at the Opera” just over two years later.

But the album suffered from a muddy mix that made it feel stiff and unfocused, a situation probably not helped by the fact that most of it was recorded on borrowed equipment in the middle of the night, when the studio owned by the unsigned band’s managers was available for free.

Queen were a complex and ambitious band, so it’s not surprising that the relatively inexperienced outfit’s debut album would be imperfect. But at times that complexity and ambition came out jumbled, and some of Freddie Mercury’s lyrics were so loaded with Biblical imagery that the group could have been mistaken for an early Christian rock outfit.

Still, that first album includes the group’s fiery first hit, “Keep Yourself Alive,” as well as towering rockers like “Liar,” “Son and Daughter” and “Great King Rat” — and also a song immortalized in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” biopic, the lilting “Doing All Right,” which was first recorded by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor’s previous band, Smile.

A half century later, “Queen I,” the lavish six-CD 50th anniversary-ish deluxe re-release of the album, shows just how much of the underwhelm was caused by that muddy mix. The bandmembers have said for decades that they were unhappy with the album’s sound, and here it has been given such a dramatic sonic overhaul that, to use an overplayed but accurate analogy, hearing it is like seeing “The Wizard of Oz” shift from black-and-white to color.

Read more:- variety.com/2024/music/reviews/queen-1-1973-debut-deluxe-edition-album-review-1236190338/