The Queen Influence

Song: Queen - Tear It Up

Being home for the weekend right after you return for college has its good and bad about it. Good: You get to see people back at home so quickly and it feels like you  never left. Bad: See "good", but tack on the fact that now I have to realize that I have to return to the land of college so quickly. It's not cool. Syllabus shock is over now, but I have the looming realization that all the things on the syllabus will be catching up with me about halfway through the semester. Goodie good. Not. 

Anyway, the real point of the blog is because today I watched the Queen: Live at Wembley Stadium (1986) DVD for the one thousandth time, approximately. I mean come on, who wouldn't want to watch 4 men in their late thirties  or early forties rock around on stage? From the gallons of sweat dripping of their faces from the heat of the lights, the horrid colors of their ill fitting clothes (or lack thereof. ex: John Deacon's really short shorts) making you want to hide your eyes, the bad (aka AWESOME hahaha) hairstyles becoming shiny with the gallons of sweat mentioned before, the glazed look in Brian May's eyes, the bouncing of John Deacon, the countless inappropriate pelvic thrusts of Freddie Mercury, and the "I'm so awesome" look Roger Taylor has the whole time, this concert certainly holds huge entertainment value amongst the people wiling to take the time to watch it. 

Besides the laughable bad 1980's style of the crowd and band and that nagging reminder in your head that 30 years from now our kids will be saying the exact same thing about what we wear now, another reason I watched it was for the nostalgic value it holds for me. Back when I was a wee freshman in high school (5 years ago, yippie) Queen was the number one band in my book. They're the band that got me started in to the whole concept of finding music for myself and discovering how music could really change things. Don't ask me why it happened to be a 1970s/80s British rock band, but it was. No matter what was wrong or what was going on, I could listen to Queen and it'd instantly make me feel better. Then, because of the wide array of influences they stated and the different genres they tried, I eventually started to reach out and find more of this beautiful thing called music. Queen still holds a special place in my heart to this day.

The band Queen, though, was a revolutionary band for it's time. They started in 1971 with their debut album, Queen, (super creative title) and honestly didn't get a lot of response right at first from the rest of the world (except the UK). The music on that album was just too weird for people to latch on to right away (progressive rock). However, they just kept going and climbing towards stardom doing exactly what they liked to do, which was play the music they wanted, no matter what. Their experimentation with different genres turned to work for the best for them quickly, and by the mid 1970s they hit success all over the globe. 

Enough of that. Back to the DVD. The crowd looked like they were having the time of their lives because of  these 4 middle aged men running around on stage singing and playing their instruments. In theory it sounds ridiculous, but honestly I completely understand. These guys, no matter how weird they were or what kind of lifestyle they lived, used what they could do to make different people across the world have at least one thing to enjoy. Their music. They wanted to share it with everyone else, and it led to that moment at Wembley where they have just made an extremely memorable night for everyone who attended. Random people all over the globe will probably say the music changed their life forever. It doesn't have to be that extreme, it could just be a "oh I really like this music" sort of change, but still. The band has some part of influence in millions of people's lives, even 30 years later or whatever. 

The point is that everyone everywhere has some sort of influence in someone's life. I recently began thinking about all of the people that I remember coming in to contact with throughout the 18 years I've been living. Obviously, most of the people that came to mind are the people I consider my family and friends (and the bands I've really grown to love), but even some random people I only remember coming across once in my lifetime but they made some sort of memory popped up in my mind. I'm not going to get all gushy and crap over how much everyone means to me in some long bloated paragraph with over used phrases... but believe me, some people may have no idea how much I love them or how much I've appreciated their presence on my life. I would need to sit down with every single one of them and have huge chunks of time set aside so I could truly tell them how they've impacted me over the amount of time I've known them.

(See, I only used two bloated cheesy sentences to get my point across.)

However, that is not the end. Jumping back to the men of Queen, I know they have no idea how much of an impact they've made on music and the people who chose to listen to it. They may have small clues and a couple examples, but the full impact they don't understand. And I doubt they ever will. They were just doing what they loved. 

It makes me wonder what kind of impact I actually make on other people. It's not really something that I consciously think about all of the time. I just go about my life doing what I love to do or what I have to do. Even though I'm not a famous person running around singing giving everyone the joy of listening to music and a chuckle to the bad fashion choices, I still come in contact with people every day. And maybe, possibly, I don't truly know how much of an impact I could have made on someone. I know there's people I know who have no idea how much one small thing they did really helped me out. They've probably forgotten by now. I know I've forgotten some things I've said or done for people. 

The conclusion? Stop feeling like you're useless in the world or that nobody cares about you. You're probably just not looking hard enough at the impact your actions have on everyone around you. You don't have to become an international superstar to make somebody's day or to be a person they'll never forget, even if you do part years down the road (which isn't fun, but it happens). Obviously, I'm only 18 years old, so I haven't lived a lot, but I know I've lived enough to say this to some merit. 

Now excuse me, I have to go find eye bleach because of an incident on the concert DVD involving a very bad camera angle and a very short pair of yellow shorts.