Queen: Under Review

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Program: B-

 

 

It is in this critics humble opinion that out of all the rock bands to emerge or thrive in the 1970’s there are only two that remained incredibly unique and only one of those two that transitions fairly well into the 1980s.  Those two bands are Led Zeppelin and Queen, of course Led Zeppelin may have had a different history if it did not fall victim to the death of their beloved drummer John Bonham.  Both of these bands unearthed some amazing levels of diversity in their music making ‘rock’ a lot more than just the same ole’ thing.  Zeppelin applied more blues and inspirations from Reggae, while Queen went for a more operatic/ballad approach.  These of course are just minor examples of their chameleonic nature. 

 

What is incredible about a band like Queen is that they can produce stadium anthem hits like We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions and then on the flipside perform interesting numbers like ’39, Seaside Rendezvous, and Don’t Stop Me Now.  Their range is impeccable and their live performances made them true crowd-pleasers.  Here at FulvueDrive-in, I have been able to tackle both of their DVD-Audio’s released from albums A Night at the Opera and The Game, but also have visited both of their video collections released as two volumes and have even been able to check out 3 live performance DVDs.  Queen is certainly well-represented in the DVD format, which is a great thing considering that they know how to release their material with great fashion. 

 

Queen: Under Review chronicles the band during it’s arguable hey-day from 1973-1980 and is far better than expected.  These types of music programs often range in their quality, which makes it difficult for the consumer to discern the good from the bad without actually hearing and seeing the material.  This particular DVD is issued from a company called Chrome Dreams Media Production and is unauthorized, which means that Queen themselves had nothing to do with it’s production.  Therefore, we are given ‘other’ peoples thoughts on the band and a biography of the band from a second point of view.  The program is, like stated already; better than expected for something that is unauthorized. 

 

Technically this DVD is so-so.  Problem number one comes in the picture department, which the package states that this DVD is in the 4X3 format, but upon playing the disc it seems that it’s actually a non-anamorphic 1.78 X 1 format instead.  Other than this mistake the picture quality is fairly standard, but much better for this being a lower-end production.  The source material is mainly interviews and old archive footage of the band.  Sound is another issue with the only option being a 2.0 Stereo option, which is hardly the best way to hear the bands music, although we don’t really get to hear much of the bands music anyway because most of the content is interviews and other talking.  If this had been an authorized program we certainly would get more music and also more interesting content like the band themselves.  Despite not having both of those key elements this disc still scores some good content.  The only extras on the disc are a Queen quiz, which claims to be the ‘hardest Queen Quiz ever’. 

 

Only a huge fan of the band would probably find this interesting enough to purchase, but it’s doubtful that a real fan would really find anything on this disc that is ‘new’ information to them anyway as most of this would seem common knowledge to a huge Queen fan.

 

 

-   Nate Goss