Lorde Save Us

Dear Lorde

Firstly, I would like to apologise for sending you an open letter. I realise open letters are very popular at present, with Sufjan sending one to Miley and Miley sending one to Liam and BlackBerry sending one to its customers no one, but I'm not jumping on the open wagon just to be as hip and down with the kids as BlackBerry. I would have sent you a closed letter but I doubt 'Lorde, Somewhere in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand', would have reached you. I'm guessing being as busy as you are you're not at home much anyway. I also read NZ Post are only delivering letters on the second equinox of every fourth leap year so I decided to play it safe and rely on the extensive readership of my blog to get this important communiqué to you. As a token of its importance I just spent five minutes working out how to put the accent aigu over the 'e' but gave up and copied and pasted it from the internet. Michael Bublé has an accent aigu too. Have you met him? He seems nice but I don't like his music much. Don't tell him that if you meet him, as like I said he seems nice. Perhaps one day you could add an accent aigu to your name. This is how it would look.

Lordé.

Not bad. If you ever do a French album it could be a shrewd move as the French seem to appreciate it when you make an effort to speak French. You would have to say your name differently though, a bit like Debbie Dorday. Do you remember Debbie Dorday? She used to have a TV ad in NZ where she would breathlessly exclaim, "See you at Burgandys!", but this was probably a bit before your time. There is also the chance you could be confused with Eurovision Song Contest winning monster mask wearing Finnish hard rock band Lordi, so don't rush into it.

I'm really enjoying your music. You've got a great set of pipes and it's very refreshing you seem happy singing not half naked. I imagine life must be bit of a blur right now. Zipping round the world on Works Deluxe fares, being able to get into the Koru Lounge whenever you like and meeting glamorous people at glamorous gatherings in glamorous places. I see you just sang at MoMA in NYC in front of people like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfield and David Bowie to help celebrate the career of Tilda Swinton. That must have been awesome. According to the MoMA website Tilda has "multihyphenate talents" and who can argue with a word like that. David Bowie most certainly has multihyphenate talents and there you are right between them, another multihyphenate talent hypenating their multihyphenate talents.

But, there is someone else in this photo. No, don't turn around, he's still there. Just keep looking at the camera. His head is right to your right. Smaller than yours, perfectly framed and monstrously in focus. A tanned medium sized beardy head gazing into Tilda's ear and grinning...that grin...that only he can grin. That all-knowing knowing-all grin of someone who knows he's made it to the perfect position to make it in shot. I have seen this grin before. It has many faces and many names, but I know it only as...

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

How does he do it? How does he find these background bonanzas with such consummate beardy ease? I don't know. I've spent the last eight years of my life trying to find out and it's left me a bankrupt, broken, itchy, rubby shell of a man. I even wrote a play about it and spent a small fortune on flyers and stuff but nobody came. Why?

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

His power is as deep and immense as his beard. I have tried in vain to warn the world and failed but I hope this open letter will succeed in warning you. Like me my warning is short. Five short words.

DON'T. LET. HIM. SKETCH. YOU.

He will ask. He may have already. But if not, he will. Maybe on Twitter. Maybe via email. Maybe he will get Tilda to ask for him. But he will ask. He always asks. He didn't ask me, but he will ask you. And once he's sketched you before you can say...

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

...you will be forever in his power and he will be travel the world with you and photobomb your photos. Forever.

I know this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy man. From what I've read you've got your head screwed on, but you must understand, his is a power like no other. Tilda fought valiantly but lost. And she was Jadis, the White Witch! Even by writing this I'm putting myself at risk. Everytime I did my one-man show I expected it to be my last, and based on how much money I lost at the Melbourne Fringe I'm a bit miffed it wasn't.

Please dear Lorde,  I beg of you. Think of him as a dog thinks of a power pole, or that Chinese guy thinks of his garden path. Just spray and walk away. You don't need to be sketched by him. There are plenty more sketchers in the sea. Rolf Harris would love to sketch you and he even painted the Queen.

Now I'm going to go check the door is locked and stroke the cat

Your fan

Greg

P.S. Happy birthday.

Mercurious.

I don't remember how my brother got into Queen but he really got into Queen in a big way. He owned all their CD's. He even had Brian May's 1992 solo album 'Back to the Light' but the less typed about that the better. So from a reasonably impressionable age my ear holes were filled with Freddie belting out songs about fairy queens and great king rats, Brian belting out songs about time travel and badgers, Roger belting out songs about how much he loves his car and John belting his bass guitar.

The only two things I can clearly remember about Live Aid in 1985 was Status Quo kicking things off with this song, I think the message was cheaper food makes poverty history, (and what is the man in the control booth doing with his big finger at 1.36?), and Freddie doing this fantastic stint of audience call and response. In fact if you've got a spare 25 minutes you could watch their whole set which I'm going to do right now and live blog it...


0:13 Someone holds up a banner saying 'Queen Works', either referring to the health of the Queen in 1985 or Queen's 1984 album 'The Works'
1:19 Freddie likes a lot of Pepsi. And one lager.
2:28 Freddie has some serious product in his hair.
2:36 Brian rips out a lovely guitar solo but nobody gives him a close up. He's probably a bit miffed.
2:43 Cancel that! Brian gets his close up. Bit late though.
2:53 Rolf Harris plays his wobble board in the wings to kick off Radio Lady Gaga.
2:59 Roger wakes up and starts drumming...whew.
3:45 Notice how all the camera crew are all in white. This was because Bob Geldof got a good deal on white pants and those 'Choose Life' shirts from George Michael. True fact.
3:53 Notice how Freddie has what looks like a dog collar around his right bicep. It's actually the collar for Brian's favourite badger 'Sir Patrick Moore' who passed away a few days before the concert.
4:23 Roger wakes up again and starts singing some BV's. Whew. Roger has a fantastic voice for a drummer, second only to Phil Collins, who was the only artist to play both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts thanks to a flight on the conchords. Apparently he sang 'I Can Feel Me Coming In The Air Tonight' the whole way. True fact.
4:36 A-ha! The famous Radio Ga Ga clap. Which is cheekily just the YMCA, without the M and C with an extra A. They were sued by The Village People but settled out of Court for two of Brian's badgers and one of Freddie's cats. True fact.
5:57 The first sighting of John Deacon! And what a sighting. Phil Spector modelled his hair on John's for his recent murder trial. True fact.
7:00 If you listen closely you can hear every band and singer who's already performed whisper, "We were a bit shit", and every band and artist due to perform whisper, "Oh shit."
7:05 Let's see Chris Martin do this.
7:55 'Hammer To Fall' was written after Freddie saw the marching hammers in the video for 'Another Brick In The Wall' while off his gourd on snuff. True fact.
8:32 Look how high John's jeans are! True fact.
9:38 Brian launches into his second big solo and the camera stays on Freddie. Brian is a bit miffed.
9:44 Cancel that! Brian made his own guitar out of the wood from an old police phone box he found. If he plays 'The Power of Love' by Huey Lewis and The News he can time travel. True fact.
11:54 The man with the grey hair giving Freddie a pat is actually Andrew Ridgely from Wham without makeup and hair dye.
12:01 Look how short those jeans are! And I thought my legs were white and skinny.
12:35 I can play this! It's just a baby D chord and then you put your little finger somewhere.
12:50 For the longest time I thought the words were 'This thing, cola, I just can't handle it.' But after seeing how much Freddie loves his Pepsi that would just be dumb.
15:50 Freddie was about to go all Pete Townshend on his guitar but then realised that guitar belonged to Pete Townshend and pulled out at the last second. True fact.
16:41 For the longest time I thought the words were, 'Mud on your face, big disgrace, kicking your cat all over the place.' But Freddie LOVED his cats, he even wrote a song about one of them called Delilah, so that would just be dumb.
17:03 I can't play this!
18:11 Everybody!
18:12 'We Are The Champions' is one of the favourite songs of lazy half-arsed TV producers on election day, second only to 'The Final Countdown'.
19:50 See that big tent in the middle of the crowd? Do you know who's in there? Aslan. True fact.
21:41 We don't see it but Brian accidently played 'The Power of Love'. That's why it's dark and they're wearing different outfits.
24:44 The end.

How good was that. I wasn't planning on watching or writing about that at all but I'm jolly pleased I did. What I was planning on sharing is this...


'Under Pressure' is a fantastic song. If you click on the wee triangle hopefully you'll get to hear Freddie and David Bowie's vocal track all by itself. Their voices have been processed a bit with some echo and maybe a bit of flanging. Flanging is about the only technical term I can remember from my nine month audio engineering diploma at SAE in Auckland, but I can't remember what it actually does, although it sounds a bit rude doesn't it. If you can wack on some headphones, or 'cans' for those with an audio engineering diploma, it will be even better. Buds will be okay but cans will be way better. You could even flange your cans for added aural pleasure. It's quite moving to hear two of the greatest pop singers ever in full flight without any audio distraction. Near the end Roger Taylor even joins in and if a wee tear falls down your face don't be ashamed. What's even better is that Queen and Bowie wrote this incredible song over 24 hours deep within a Swiss studio nourished by nothing but chardonnay and coke.

Or maybe Pepsi

True fact.