I’m rotting inside My flesh turns to dust Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear I’m so sick to death Tumors in my head Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear Black rose of death In my fist I clutch Thorns shred my finger tips And drips toxic blood Kiss me one last time Wipe off my sweat Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear As my bones they rust 20 pounds of trust Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear Black rose of death In my fist I clutch Thorns shred my finger tips And drips toxic blood I’m rotting inside My flesh turns to dust Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear Kiss me one last time Wipe off my sweat Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear Whisper, “are you dying?” in my ear
St. Jimmy (From “American Idiot”) - Billie Joe Armstrong & John Gallagher Jr.
Is life imitating me or is rage imitating life? I feel like a civil war, like a knife in the heart. I’ve got an axe to grind and it is splitting my head open. No friends, no girls. I NEED BOTH.
every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking
it’s fucking crazy to think about the amount of people who have sung bohemian rhapsody? like it’s such a unifying song, by nature of the fact that so many people know it. it holds so many good memories for me and other people. it’s a song you scream in the car with your friends while you drive around your boring hometown, it’s a song you drunkenly sing with your arm around your best friend, or a song you sing along to with strangers when it’s on in public. it’s bittersweet to think about freddie’s legacy carrying on like that through his masterpiece. freddie carries on because he’s a part of so many people’s good memories and bohemian rhapsody is a huge part of that.
Reblog if you have sung bohemian rhapsody with your friends
every time i see this post i’m reminded of the video of 65,000 people singing bohemian rhapsody in near-perfect harmony
like, what other song can make that claim?
Some of the highlights of that video include:
The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what they’re all doing
So many people audibly ‘doing the guitar parts’… like ya do
The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)
How they all start jumping at the ramp-up “so you think you can stomp me”
Hands up, hundreds, thousands deep for the final “ooooo”s and the last line to close the song
Only days before my state went into lockdown, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on in the restaurant kitchen I’d just been hired at and, no shit, every single worker in that little diner started singing along. Me (the only queer afaik), the manager, all the other kitchen workers, the dishwasher up front, the two people on the counter, all but two of the men over 30. Just belting out Freddie Mercury at the top of their lungs. And you can bet when “sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all” came around, we every single one of us ramped up the intensity and basically made sure Freddie could hear us in the afterlife.
One of the things that struck me, listening to the video, is that you cannot distinguish the original vocals from the crowd, and sometimes you can barely hear the music. And the POV is on the stage the speakers are playing the song from!
There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.
(And how albums left lying about in cars will eventually metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.)
Something else that’s rather incredible about this is, Bohemian Rhapsody is a very difficult song from a technical standpoint. Like–humor me, okay, go flip it on and try to sing the whole thing at the top of your voice without falling off-key, out of breath, or cracking at least once. Then come back.
Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.
Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.
I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell.Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.
They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the famed Woodstock music festival in 1969 another outdoor festival was held in upstate New York. Held in Saugerties New York, Woodstock 94 was initially being billed as a two day concert but a third day was added as it gained more interest and more artists.
>In total 68 acts played the festival on two stages, including Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Aerosmith, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Spin Doctors, Live, Joe Cocker, Melissa Etheridge and Red Hot Chili Peppers. But perhaps the most memorable performances came from Green Day. More on that soon.
There are so many parallels between the 1994 concert and the 1969 concert that it’s a little hard to believe organizers made so many of the same mistakes. Both concerts were not held in Woodstock (though ‘94 was considerably closer), both concerts attendance swelled to the point of uncontrollability causing people to just climb over, or cut through fences to attend, and both concerts lost money for the promoters.
It should be worth nothing that Woodstock 94 was not the unmitigated disaster that was Woodstock 99. There were no riots. There was no one electrocuted on stage. No one died. Sure people were covered in mud because it rained the first day (and my cousin lost his wallet there) but for the most part was pretty tame.
Whenever I think of Woodstock 94, I think of Green Day on stage throwing mud at people in the crowd. It’s engrained in my mind. After raining on the first day a select group of people, dubbed “Mudpeople,” took to the mud like it was a religious rite. As Green Day played their set people were throwing mud at them on stage. Billy Joe Armstrong , not one to fuck around, started throwing mud back as their performance started to wind down. Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt kept playing providing a great soundtrack for the all the mud slinging.
But aside from the Mud war, Green Day played an absolutely killer performance. If the release of Dookie wasn’t enough to escalate them to full on rock stars, their performance at Woodstock 94 did.
It’s unfortunate that Woodstock 94 was succeeded by Woodstock 99. It seems to taint everyones memory of the festival. Woodstock 94 was a peaceful music festival that really celebrated music. It was a great mix of bands that played in 1969 and popular artists of 1994. It captured the spirit of Woodstock perfectly.
At the start of the year (before my life more or less fell to pieces lmao), I was asked to illustrate some posters for Rock Sound magazine. I should be allowed to post them online by now :)
