A Night at the Opera (1975) is an all-time Top Tenner.  Period.  I've been bonkers for it since the sixth grade.  You can imagine what it's like going apesheet for an album like this when you're about 11, and everyone you know is getting moist for Back In Black.  Eh, whaddya gonna do?

Picking "Bohemian Rhapsody" would be too easy.  So I am choosing the album's opener, "Death on Two Legs."

Click here to hear "Death on Two Legs" on YouTube.

Click here to watch a live performance.

This is part of a week-long series on the music of Queen.

The biggest hit from Sheer Heart Attack (1974) serves as, if nothing else, good subliminal advertising.  I'm surprised more bands don't stick their name right into their song titles directly, not to mention sing them in such a pronounced manner.  She's a killer.... QUEEEEEEN

Very slick.

Click here to watch the video for "Killer Queen" on YouTube.

This is part of a week-long series on the music of Queen.

Queen II (1974) had a fairly interesting concept.  Side one, the "white side", featured slower and more ballad-like songs written by Brian May and Roger Taylor, and that side of the album sleeve showed the band members dressed in white amongst a white backdrop.  Side two, the "black side", was made up exclusively of tracks penned by Freddie Mercury, dealing with darker, fantasy-inspired themes.  And of course, that side of the sleeve had the band clad in black against a black backdrop.

The black side was better, obviously.  One of its highlights is actually the not-so-dark "Seven Seas of Rhye."

Click here to watch a video for "Seven Seas of Rhye" on YouTube.

Click here to read about Queen II in more excruciating detail on Wikipedia.

This is part of a week-long series on the music of Queen.

As in Queen Week!  Get it?  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man, I kill me.

I mentioned in a previous post that I became a pretty big Queen fan due to my older siblings' (my sister, mostly) affection for them.  This was around 1980, when "Another One Bites the Dust" was a big hit.  I was never really big on that song or the album that spawned it, but I fell in love with their earlier and more bombastic work.  So it's getting some mad MSaD props all week long.

No 'E' artist yet.  So I'm picking an English Beat song.

It appears that all I have left to pick is a 'Q' artist.  Hmmmm.....

Click here to watch the video for "Mirror in the Bathroom" on YouTube.

I am rehashing a few prevalent themes for today's post:

1)  I hadn't posted a 'Y' artist yet.

2)  My brother got me hooked on the Yes album Fragile (released in 1971 or 1972, depending on your location) during my preteen years.

3)  Fragile is your prototypical prog rock album, which means critics find it self-indulgent and inaccessible.  Like anyone cares.

4)  "Roundabout" still gets frequent airplay on classic rock radio, which I avoid like the plague.

5)  It features great rhythm section playing.  In fact, it was one of the very first bass guitar lines I ever tried to learn.

6)  I love it dearly.  Which is the whole point anyway, right?

Click here to hear "Roundabout" on YouTube.

Drummer-turned-guitarist Keith Strickland of the B-52's turns 54 today.  So of course I'm gonna post "Rock Lobster."  Duh.

B-52's were another band I got into because one or both of my older siblings were into them.  It would have been around '81, maybe '82.  I played the hell out of the self-titled "yellow album" (1979) as well as its 1980 follow-up, Wild Planet, or the "red album."

I thought they were the coolest.  Kids my age thought I was just weird.

Click here to watch a fan-made video for "Rock Lobster" on YouTube.  Note to any aspiring YouTubians:  if you openly admit that your video is "sh***y", here's an idea - DON'T POST IT!!!  Be warned - this may be in somewhat questionable taste.

If you watch PBS with any regularity, chances are you've seen one of the computer-generated videos created by Animusic.  The Austin-based studio specializes in - wait for it - CGI animations set to music!  (God, I'm brilliant.)

What's unique about these animations is that they are not simply "set" to music, they are driven directly by the music.  Using proprietary software developed in-house, the MIDI data generated by the musical compositions creates many of the parameters in the animations.  Every note you hear is represented by some action on the part of some CGI element, be it a laser going off, a robotic arm hitting a drum head with a stick, a round mallet hitting a bass string, or whatever.

Understandably, the music can be a bit cheesy, seeing as how it is totally synthesized.  But that's a minor issue.  The quality of the presentation and overall wow factor more than make up for that.  If you have a kickass home theater, Animusic DVD's make for great demonstrations.  You see them used in stores like Best Buy fairly often.

The integration of software engineering and musical composition.  See, this is the kind of stuff I would be doing if I had any ambition whatsoever.

Click here to watch the video for "Starship Groove" on YouTube.  (Look, Pat!  Shin triggers!)

Like what you see?  Click here to download a 202MB high-res Quicktime movie.

I've hinted at my casual fondness for speed metal before, when I posted tracks from the likes of Metallica, Anthrax and S.O.D.  I covered my initial exposure to the genre in more detail in a previous post.

Megadeth was another band I kind of got into around that same time.  Their albums have been a bit hit and miss with me, but my favorite remains 1986's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?  My preferred cut from that release is its opener, "Wake Up Dead."

Click here to watch the video for "Wake Up Dead" on YouTube.  Yeah, I'm not sure how one would actually wake up dead either, but hey, it's metal, and it sounds cool.