The Hammock Papers: Queen

Showing posts with label Queen. Show all posts

26 July 2026

Happy Birthday, Roger Taylor

Roger Taylor was born on this day in 1949.

"Now I'm Here ...

An excellent album ...

13 July 2026

Magnificence.

On the afternoon of this day in 1985, I steeped into a bar on Mackinac Island, ordered a Mount Gay and tonic, and looked up to see this magnificence unfolding on the TV ...

30 June 2025

Released.

Queen released The Game on this day in 1980.

Roger Taylor's vocal abilities are completely underrated ...

30 May 2024

19 May 2024

26 July 2023

Happy Birthday, Taylor

Roger Taylor was born on this day in 1949.

06 July 2023

Cheese.

You call me sweet like I'm some kind of cheese.

21 November 2022

Released.

Queen released A Night at the Opera on this day in 1975.

"Death on Two Legs" ...

12 November 2022

Released.

Queen released Sheer Heart Attack on this day in 1974.

"Now I'm Here" ...

13 July 2022

Released.

The world was introduced to Queen on this day in 1973.

Side One, Track One ...

05 June 2022

Rock.

"... using a spoon to tap out the beat of Queen’s 'We Will Rock You' on a china teacup."

CONNECT

05 September 2021

Happy Birthday, Freddie

Freddie Mercury was born on this day in 1946.

"Now I'm Here" ...

12 August 2021

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington"

For best results play this ... Queen, "Now I'm Here"

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day.

Umberto Limongiello

26 July 2021

Happy Birthday, Taylor

Roger Taylor was born on this day in 1949.

Queen, "I'm in Love with My Car" ...

05 September 2020

Happy Birthday, Mercury

Freddie Mercury was born on this day in 1946.

My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
Fairy tales of yesterday, grow but never die
I can fly, my friends

"Tie Your Mother Down" ...

Improvisations ...

23 July 2020

Queen, "Lap of the Gods"

16 July 2020

Queen, "Seven Seas of Rhye"

A really loud appeal to the lower elements ...

26 May 2020

Happy Birthday, Ronson

Mick Ronson was born on this date in 1946.

Mick with Ian Hunter, Bowie, Queen, and Joe Elliot, "All the Young Dudes" ...

08 May 2020

Jake Shimabukuro, "Bohemian Rhapsody"

23 December 2019

Chap.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."