Pros: Tommy Shaw, Jack Blades, Nelson and Kip Winger
Cons: Glenn Hughes, Geoff Tate
The Bottom Line: It's not all great, but there are two or three great renditions, and the rest is good enough. It might be worth to buy just for these few.
scapp70's Full Review: Stone Cold Queen: A Tribute
Queen had a few tribute albums out so far. Most of them are performed by some symphony orchestra, but the remainder are performed by the same jokers from the old Shrapnel label, or ex members of KISS.
That's why this tribute album is different; it has some great artists here (still among some jokers that lingered from the older ones). Since there are better artists performing here, they are a couple of good tracks here as well.
I'm saying we have members of Cheap Trick, KISS, Styx, Queensryche, Damn Yankees.. etc.
This CD deals mostly with Queen's heavier songs, and that's to be expected I suppose from a release from the Shrapnel label. This is a label infamous for its guitar hero related CD releases.
Stone Cold Crazy from Queen's Sheer Heart Attack album, with lead vocals performed by Cheap Trick frontman, Robin Zander, does a great job with one of Queen's heaviest and fastest songs. Great guitar work from Steve Steven of Billy Idol fame. Bass played by Billy Sheehan from Mr. Big and the David Lee Roth band.
Play The Game from Queen's 1980 release, The Game, starts off impressively because it sounds exactly like the Queen version. Then when Mickey Thomas starts singing you realize that it is the Queen version playing in the beginning. The transition is laughable, but I suppose necessary under the budgets circumstances. Mickey Thomas from Jefferson Starship does a decent job handling the lead vocals, but the backing vocals sound sub par. The song is a much more tame Queen song than what would be expected on a Shrapnel release. It's a song written by Freddie, which includes piano as well as guitar, bass and drums. Playing guitar on this version we have a Shrapnel-type guitarist, Marty Friedman.
Fat Bottomed Girls from Queen's 1978 JAZZ album starts off sounding not too shabby. Joe Lynn Turner of Deep Purple (mach XXV), Yngwie, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow etc.. provides great vocal effect, where Queen provided a million overdubs, it sounds as Joe Lynn turner only needed substantially less to provide practically the same sound. I wasn't expecting much from this song, but I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. It was a single from 1978, and although it's a guitar riff oriented type of song, there was pleanty of commercial melody in the chorus. The guitarist is another Shrapnel type player from the eighties, Reb Beach who is most famous for his stint with hairband Winger. Hey Kip Winger is also on this CD, I guess they didn't want to play on the same track. Too much guitar crap from Reb Beach, boring as hell.
The gospel music/Aretha Franklin influenced Somebody To Love, from Queen's A Day At The Races, is admittedly one of the more difficult songs to sing, but having Queensryche's lead singer, Geoff Tate, take a stab at it, that it would be no problem. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Although, I love Geoff Tate's voice, his style of singing does not sit well where a Freddie Mercury voice was once.
Remember Nelson? I used to love Nelson, they had such a great song with (Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection that was released in the early 90s. Their version of Freddie's Crazy Little Thing Called Love is very good. They made a song that usually does not sound all that good when covered, and then Nelsonized it. The song is a originally a rockabilly acoustic guitar type of song. Gunnar & Matthew Nelson have made it sound like a Nelson song, by just removing the rockabilly aspect, and it's one of the better songs on this CD.
Remember Night Ranger, Sister Christian and all that? I used to hate Night Ranger. What a waste of Jack Blades talent. When he was in Damn Yankees, they were great. His version of Roger Taylor's Fight From The Inside is incredible. He made me appreciate Roger's version from the Queen album News of the World. His voice is superior to Roger's, as Jack Blades has such a great voice. The song sounds so heavy, and un-Queen like, and I think that is the key to a successful tribute album. The artists that cover the songs, should make the song sound more like themselves than the band being emulated. Jack Blades gave this song a more smokey blues type of feel. Great guitar work from guitar god Jake E. Lee who is best known as the guitarist who replace Randy Rhodes in Ozzy Osbourne's band.
You're My Best Friend from 1975's A Night At The Opera album is passable here. Chicago singer, Jason Scheff does a decent job. Good backing vocals, and good guitar work from Richie Kotzen.
I'm In Love With My Car again from A Night At The Opera is another highlight. Kip Winger from Winger slows down the song a bit, and totally makes the song his own. The loud guitars compliment Kip's voice as it is very raunchy like original singer Roger Taylor, so he makes the perfect choice for song to cover here.
The worst cover award goes to the step-lightly tune
Killer Queen from Queen's 1974 release Sheer Heart Attack. Glenn Hughes handles lead vocals. Glenn is part of the alumni that is Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. He sings as though he is not even familiar with the song, he gives his best Paul Nicholas impression though. This version really is crap.
My favorite here is easily Spread Your Wings. Again from Queen's 1977 release News of the World, Tommy Shaw from Styx and Damn Yankees fame gives a stunning performance. Written by bassist John Deacon, this version stays pretty loyal to the original. The song brings the piano to the fore for a sing-a-long type of song that maybe Queen were striving for on this record (We Will Rock You,We Are The Champions). Spread Your Wings, is definitely the hardest song to sing, the range is so wide, but mostly sung in the upper registers. Tommy's voice is perfect, since his voice is already in those higher registers naturally. I mean, he did all those impossible high harmonies in Styx, so he was the perfect choice, and this song was a perfect choice for him. Not that the song needs it, but Tommy Shaw breathed a new life into this song for me. Dweezil Zappa provides the guitar for this song, and he does a great job as he always does.
We Will Rock You is usually a dumb choice of song to cover, because only Queen could pull off something like foot stomps and handclaps for an entire song. Luckily there is the, although lesser-known, but more cover-friendly live version from 1979's Queen Live Killers available as well. The Stomp! Stomp! Clap! is gone, and replaced with a faster beat, and lots of guitar throughout the song.I hate Great White and lead singer Jack Russell, probably didn't help that much. Yet, on this song he pulls it out and makes it work...hey that doesn't sound right, I meant he performs very well here. Good ending to the CD, with a song that was used to open the Queen show for three years.
This is a CD from the Shrapnel label, and you expect and get the guitar heroes of the late 80's and early ninties here. The music on this CD sounds pretty sterile and standard except for the few exceptions I mentioned above.
It's kind of cool that artists come together and do these cover albums. There cannot be much money to be made from them, these CDs never chart and hardly get noticed at all, besides a pocket of hardcore fans that happen to stumble across it. Sure, they're not at all that good usually, but here, besides one horrible, and one almost horrible cover here, we have a great effort filled with Rock veterans that know how to perform well, and can produce a professional and sometimes quality piece of art.
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