My ill-fated Queen Auditions

[pjmuck]

As some of you may or may not know, Roger Taylor, drummer/songwriter of Queen, has been sponsoring a North American search for the best talent to put together for a touring band of musicians to perform Queen's music across the country starting in May. (Queen Extravaganza: http://www.queenextravanganza.com). I found out about it a couple of weeks ago and, being a huge Queen fan, was determined to submit video auditions for one of the vocal spots and the lone bassist spot. I had wanted to submit 1 video featuring both vocals and bass, but the rules wouldn't allow it. So off we go.

Then I'm inundated with a ridiculous series of mishaps, starting with the snow storm that rocked New Jersey and left us without power or heat for a week. When I finally get power back, it continuously goes on and off every f*'in time I'm in the middle of recording! Long story short: I FINALLY get these done and submitted hours before the deadline, only to find out my files didn't encrypt properly so the receiver got some lovely videos of me performing with NO sound!

I wish I had a some fanfare for the common man success story telling of how I overcame great adversity and hardship to rise above all this, but alas I don't. Some unseen force obviously didn't want me to be participating in this, though when all is said and done I'm just thankful the damn things got done. One can only speculate how far I may have gone in the competition, which is now in round 2, so these will have to serve as a couple of elaborate demos until the next opportunity for world domination arises.

Vocals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc14zAAGDQo
(I left the chroma key background green, so feel free to add your own background. Free prize to whomever can come up with the best background. ).

Bass (Featuring the '73 P):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwDJ1kxMaPA

[blankrider]

man, they sound really good. That's a damn shame they didn't encrypt correctly!

The vocals at 1:10 are nice

[belinmad]

very cool! I'm a Queens fan myself, it's always so much fun to play their songs...
It is indeed a shame!

[AzWhoFan]

Good job PJ!
This was the 1st I heard of the competition.
Did you put a lot of hours in to get it 'right', or was there any winging-it involved?

[pjmuck]

Thanks everyone.

Most of my time required getting the camera/backdrops set up, getting levels, and when power failed a number of times it was back to square one. I did a few run thrus vocally and on bass until the song became second nature and I felt comfortable ad libbing over the tracks, but I had little time to rehearse, so I recorded 3 stabs at it and went with the best takes I had before running out of time. In hindsight, they could have been better, but I did what I could given the circumstances (Did I mention my bout with bronchitis too? ).

All of this was really to serve as a trial run for a series of videos and gear reviews I'm planning soon for our website.

[bhunt1]

Really nicely done PJ We cover Crazy Little Thing Called Love in my band, John Deacon's basslines are excellent. I hope you will do video reviews, do you care to give us any ideas as to what you might cover?

[Addison]

Awesome!!!

Really cool man... even though somebody somewhere clearly did NOT want you to land this gig, at least you ended up with a couple of sweet little videos to add to your resume for the next one.

You totally need to do some more!

[Retag]

A friend of mine is going through the process right now for the keyboard role. He now needs people to vote on his video in order to make it to the final round.

Watched only a few bass videos. Was the song selected beforehand or was everyone simply boring and decided to cover "Another One Bites The Dust"?

[pjmuck]

I'll vote for your friend. Send a link or his name.

You had your choice of 4 different Queen songs to download, which were instrument/voice-specific to what you were going to try out for:

Somebody to Love
Killer Queen
I Want to Break Free
Seven Seas of Rye

I picked STL because it had the right combination of challenging vocals and interesting bass lines. I wanted to download the track without the bass or vocals, but that wasn't an option. I didn't see one bassist who tried, "I Want to Break Free", and rightfully so. Nothing much to the bass lines and easily the worst song of the lot.

There is an obvious inherent flaw in the whole audition process. The earlier you submitted your audition video the more time you had to promote it and spread the word, thus guys who jumped on it right away had 2 solid months of exposure over others participants who got in late to the game and some had well over 1/4 million hits on their YouTube link before the 2nd round even started. Thus, Marc Martel (the guy who's built quite a viral following and WILL be one of the vocalists; sounds EXACTLY like Freddie Mercury even though there was a stipulation in the rules: "we're not looking for look-alike/sound-alikes. ) has over 4 million views already and he was one of the first to send in a video.

[velalv]

Very cool. Also, glad they didn't chose Another One Bites the Dust. I am learning that song now, and while it is A cool, song I don't think it is the best showcase of a bassist's skill per se. Great job on the video, thanks for sharing.

[fivebass52]

Just listened to the bass video - didn't realize there was so much going on bass-wise in that song! Well done....