Bohemian Rhapsody

[brainpanhandler]

This could have gone in the what are you listening to thread, the I'm shitfaced thread or the earworms thread, but this guy deserves his own thread.



Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me, to me

Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooo
Didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters

Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye everybody - I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooo - (anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

I see a little silhouetto of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning - very very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro - magnifico

But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Easy come easy go - will you let me go
Bismillah! No - we will not let you go - let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go - let him go
Bismillah! We will not let you go - let me go
Will not let you go - let me go (never)
Never let you go - let me go
Never let me go - ooo
No, no, no, no, no, no, no -
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
for me
for me

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh baby - can't do this to me baby
Just gotta get out - just gotta get right outta here

Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters - nothing really matters
(even the rcmp) to me

Anyway the wind blows...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[JackRiddler]

Much appreciated, not least because it prompted me to watch this again:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHbCE53s9hQ

Now my confession that there is a commercial I like...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xa7cYMD-Dc

[Laodicean]

‎"Physical violence is the least of my priorities."

Cop: "You're never gonna know."

[compared2what?]

It's a criminal outrage that the Mounties didn't wait for him to get to the last five words. That would have just killed me right there, on the spot, personally.

Some people, I'm telling you.

[justdrew]

he shoulda sung Don't Stop Me Now, duh...

[AhabsOtherLeg]

[Nordic]

Not sure I understand the appeal of this. He's drunk. He's in the back of a cop car. He's singing. Badly.

And this is entertaining because ......?

[MacCruiskeen]

[sunny]

WTF?

[IanEye]

*





"Please... fix it, daddy?"

*

[brainpanhandler]

Coyne: Easy come, easy go — Bohemian Rhapsody and the absurdity of existence
By Andrew Coyne April 3, 2012

-snip-

At first blush, it seems hard to explain this level of public fascination. Granted, it is a remarkable individual achievement. Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the most complex pieces of popular music ever written, incorporating elements of the ballad, hard rock and Baroque opera traditions. Rarely performed in full, it required more than 180 overdubs to record the vocals, Wikipedia tells me, backed by grand piano, four-piece rock band and, er, gong. Wilkinson manages the whole thing on his own, complete with multiple voices, instrumental fills and, at a guess, interpretive dance.


Still: seven million views? The Internet is filled with diverting spectacles — what's one singing drunk more or less? In part, what elevates this above mere curiosity is the unforced spontaneity of it. Most of the videos people post online involve a degree of self-consciousness. The performers have either staged the event themselves, or are at least aware they are being recorded. But Wilkinson is not singing for anyone, so far as he is aware, but himself. As the performance wears on, moreover, it becomes clear that he is not singing simply to pass the time. He is sticking it to the Man: not just the arresting officer, but arbitrary authority in general — not just his own personal experience of injustice, but Injustice.


So far as anyone has been able to make out, the song tells of a young man's descent into Hell after committing a terrible crime ("mama, just killed a man"), his pleas for release ("will you let me go") and final existential acceptance ("nothing really matters"). The parallels with Wilkinson's own situation, while inexact, seem clearly to have inspired his best work. The performance builds to a climax of quite unhinged ferocity — then instantly subsides. Spent, Wilkinson puts his glasses back on, and is transformed into a sort of bearded Woody Allen. "Physical violence is the least of my priorities," he meekly assures the officer before getting out of the car. As a demonstration of art's power to console, it has few equals: six minutes of undiluted, uninhibited id, performed without artifice or concession but purely out of psychic need.


It's hilarious, of course, but in a particular way. All great comedy has aspects of the heroic to it, and what makes a great comic hero is perseverance in the face of futility. What, after all, do our lives consist in but the same? We're born, we work, we struggle, we suffer, and just when we are starting to figure it all out, we snuff it. In the Tragic View of the Universe, this is deeply unfair, fuel for a lifetime of resentment. In the Comic View of the Universe, it is sublimely funny, a great cosmic joke God plays on us all. All jokes, I am convinced, are but an echo of the One Big Joke: we acquired our sense of humour coincident with our sense of mortality.


On the evidence, it should be said, Wilkinson is a world-class fool. For example, two videos on his YouTube page show him being punched in the face by friends, apparently willingly. The crime of which he is accused is a serious one, and the content of the video doesn't exactly suggest he has much hope of acquittal. And yet, rather than sink into sullen reflection, as most of us would, he . . . bursts into song. It's ridiculous, and yet there is something oddly heroic about it, and the longer he goes on, the more heroic it becomes. That is why we laugh: not so much because it is ridiculous, but because it is heroic, or rather because it is both at the same time, and as such, weirdly life-affirming.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.canada.com/entertainment/Coy ... z1rHHpCPug

[Nordic]

Wow, thanks. That answers my question about that quite brilliantly.

I still don't feel that way about the vid, but I now see what others like about it.