This Is the Post I Intended Sunday

Music.  It can take you to the sublime beauty of the seasons through Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.  It can make you weep with the pathos and power of Maria Callas' recording of "La Momma Morta" as seen in the movie Philadelphia.  It can transport you to a beach house cantina lookin' for your last shaker of salt in "Margaritaville."  Sometimes though, you just need something harder.  Something with more of an edge.  Something with a higher capacity to make you drool.  That's when you turn to your standby.  For me, that's Queensryche.

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I had this photo on my dorm room wall in college.

I had occasion to pop in a DVD of theirs this weekend.  Building Empires  came out following the huge commercial success of their Empire  album.

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I got this t-shirt in college as well.  It's still in my camping clothes box.  I love it.

I've been fortunate enough to see the band twice in concert.  Unfortunately it was after Chris DeGarmo made his much lamented departure from the band in 1997.  I did however get to see the band up close and personal:

My close friend who is also a fan suggested I lick his face.  Tempting...

Two years later, close again, but no hair.

Back to Saturday afternoon:

I popped in the DVD and proceeded to clean the house while watching/listening to Building Empires.  I began to reminisce about how in college, my roommate and I were huge fans of the band and we frequently had a Queensryche CD playing in the room.  We even had a photo from a metal magazine of Geoff Tate with little cartoon voice bubbles to indicate what we were up to.  We used lyrics from songs to tell people we were studying with "Educate the masses" for example.  We also had a whiteboard lyrics war with a guy from one of the other dorms.  We called him The Friendly Viking.  I honestly don't recall his real name, but my roommate and I were terribly impressed that he knew so many lyrics!  

We also would occasionally reserve a VCR from the dorm front desk and gather in the common room in the basement with other like-minded fans to rock out for a few hours.  I remember some people who would come in and see us all scream-singing along and ask meekly when we'd be done with the common room TV.  Sometimes they'd sit and watch with us.  More often than not though, they'd move on to try and find another available big screen in one of the other dorms.  Of course, if I was not familiar with Operation Mindcrime and a group of four or five college age women were scream-singing along, I might move on, too.  I loved those days though and the time spent with my friends wailing along with Tate and salivating at the guitar prowess of DeGarmo and the unbelievable driving beats of Rockenfield during Anarchy X or Jackson's bass riff at the start of Jet City Woman and Wilton's five-finger metal punch on his skull and cross-bones guitar.  Queensryche is and will forever be my favorite band.  Here's a sampling of why:

They never aired this one, but they should have.  It's totally better than the one they did play on MTV and VH-1.

One of my favorite aspects of Building Empires  is seeing how the band looked when they started.  This is hysterical:

We must all forgive questionable style choices that were made in the 1980's.

The Sexy Stalking Song a.k.a. "Gonna Get Close to You" was a personal favorite even after watching this:

The red eyes at the end is nice touch, right?

Trying to cram all of Mindcrime on BE would be redundant.  They did a montage for "Eyes of a Stranger" though:

Grrrr.  *drool*

While I could continue and post even more, believe me that plenty more of Queensryche's music beyond Empire is well worth it.  Tribe, American Soldier, and even Take Cover should not be overlooked.  I will leave you though with my favorite song from Empire...and it's not "Silent Lucidity."

Oh Rockenfield!  How I love your drums.