Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I updated the Brexit news. Tina reviewed The Moroccan Girl by Charles Cumming. Becky reviewed These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. Jean reviewed The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers and two middle-grade fantasies by Jasper Fforde. Gaele reviewed My Very 90s Romance by Jenny Colgan, New Starts and Cherry Tarts at the Cosy Kettle by Liz Eeles, and A Summer of New Beginnings by Lisa Hobman.
I was a casual fan of Queen. I never bought an album, but I knew all the words when the songs came on the radio. Bohemian Rhapsody, a bio-pic of the lead singer Freddie Mercury, was all a new story for me.
Wikipedia points out some historical inaccuracies, but for the most part, Bohemian Rhapsody captures the thrill and tragedy of a rock band that was both wildly innovative and widely popular.
I had a vague memory that I first heard "Bohemian Rhapsody" at church camp - played on a boom box by the counselor that I (and every other girl in camp) had a crush on. The timing's right. My last year at church camp would have been the summer of 1976, just before I started high school - "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released earlier that year. Church camp is a weird association to have with that song and to have it remain 43 years later.
I'm the right age to be one of the first kids to deafen a high school gymnasium by stomping on metal bleachers and singing the chorus of "We Will Rock You" as a basketball cheer.
"We are the Champions" remains on my playlist of most inspirational songs. I'm fighting to end suspensions of the youngest students in schools, in part because they are issued inequitably to students of color and students with disabilities. Of course, I foolishly thought that every one would immediately and intuitively accept the notion that suspending a six-year-old for two weeks was going to damage her ability to learn to read and to succeed in school. When I get discouraged, I sing "I consider it a challenge before the whole human race and I ain't gonna lose."
The film manages to cram in a lot of music while telling the story. I have songs stuck in my head days later, helped along by an incessant desire to listen to the music on Spotify and watch videos on You Tube.
What are your memories of the music of Queen?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
