Queen DVD CollectorÂ’s Box Jonesboro GA

Queen DVD Collector's Box

Queen

Chrome Dreams, 2007

REVIEW BY: Melanie Love

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 06/12/2007

Queen is the best band ever. No, that’s not debatable. Yet that inimitable awesomeness lead singer Freddie Mercury, drummer Roger Taylor, guitarist Brian May and bassist John Deacon cultivated over their extensive career doesn’t often extend to documentaries of the band.

Assuming these DVDs are primarily marketed towards fans who have already delved beyond Queen’s greatest hits and are hungering for more information, it’s particularly dismaying that I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been told a heartwrenching story about Mercury’s death in 1990 (first of all, Freddie despised being mistaken for Freddy. Second, he died in 1991.)

With all that misinformation masking as the definitive truth about the band, it’s all too easy to be suckered into wasting two hours of your life on a less than stellar video – which is where, hopefully, my crazy-obscure knowledge of all things Queen can finally be put to use (let it stand that I can’t conjugate French verb tenses or play the guitar to save my life, but I can tell you the names of Freddie Mercury’s bevy of cats. A handy skill, if only it would come up in a Jeopardy category once in awhile!).

Unauthorized DVDs can be, unsurprisingly, pretty hit or miss, primarily leaning towards the miss. Under Review 1973-1980, however, is one of the better releases I’ve seen; though interviews with the members of Queen are of course absent, this disc provides a clear, fastidious view of the band’s most prolific years, courtesy of critics like former Melody Maker writer Chris Welch, journalist and friend of Mercury’s Paul Gambacinni, guitarist Simon Bradley and contributing editor of Uncut magazine Nigel Williamson, among others.