5. A Night at the Opera by Queen

 5. A Night at the Opera by Queen

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mz4wksGpUUokxRpbyFKZ8pmRY51dWvDH8

I think it was the autumn of 1976 after the wheat harvest when Dad said it was time to buy a new stereo for the family. I was excited to go to Pocatello with Dad, but it was Renda that made sure he paid the extra money to get a decent system. She also talked him into buying a couple of new albums that she said would sound really good on the stereo. One of those albums was A Night at the Opera. And she was right. I cannot explain just how awesome it was to hear this album on speakers that were spaced far apart across the room from each other. Before that day, all of the records we listened to were played on a record player with a single built-in speaker. Having listened to the album at a friend's house, Renda had the good sense to make sure that the first song my parents heard on the album wasn't "Death on Two Legs," what with the line "And now you can kiss my ass goodbye." Instead, she skipped straight to "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon." Both Mom and Dad quickly lost interest in listening to the rest of the album and walked off to do something else like cook dinner or watch TV, but us kids laid on the floor in front of the stereo downstairs and listened to the whole thing straight through to "Bohemian Rhapsody," which in stereo is an absolute mind-blowing listening experience. So we begged to listen to that song repeatedly until Renda finally insisted that we listen to something else. And from that moment on, all the kids in the Olson family became fans of Queen.

Over the years of growing up in Arimo, this album was always a favorite that anyone could put on the stereo and everyone else was okay with it. And that's kind of a big deal when you've got six (sometimes seven) people living in the basement together. We would even sing some of the songs together. And we didn't need to be listening to the album to do that. We could be out doing chores together and start up a Night at the Opera song, and others would chime in without hesitation. In fact, this Christmas when I gave my brother's family a gift of a microphone, microphone stand, and a small speaker, his kids wanted to sing karaoke, and he put on "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Jared, Ruth, and I could still belt out all of the lyrics. Of course, that song has been played so often on the radio, and the lyrics are readily Googled up, that it's probably not that big of a feat anymore. But back in the late 70s, this six-minute long song wasn't played all that often, so knowing the lyrics to that song was something only someone who owned the album could do, as some of the lyrics were more than a little weird. (Scaramouch, scaramouch, will you do the fandango?)

Anyway, A Night at the Opera has become one of those albums that is so engrained in our collective memory that it has become part of the Olson family identity--much like the Beatles White Album and Johnathan Livingston Seagull. Of course, not everyone knows the lyrics to "I'm in Love with My Car" like I do. But if I start singing it, they'll recognize it as belonging to A Night at the Opera. And that's why I've ranked this album so high on my list. (The White Album should probably be up here in the top 10 with the other two albums, but I purposefully started off this list with that album because it's the one album with my earliest memories of listening to it on our old record player.) And because we're all grown and living our own lives now, there won't be any more albums like this that help define the eclectic nature of the Olson family's musical tastes.

I do want to mention that one of my favorite memories of cruising Arimo with my friends is whenever "Bohemian Rhapsody" came on the radio we would all sing along with it and bang our heads during the rock-out ending. That's why I loved that Bohemian Rhapsody scene in Wayne's World so much -- it was a direct link to some of my favorite sing-along with friends memories. So my memories of this album include family and friends, so I have definitely been able to keep good company with this album. But I also had moments of solitude where, as a teenager during the Great Depression, I listened to the songs by myself in the basement and contemplated what it would be like to have a girlfriend that was my best friend (never happened), or to meet the love of my life (which I think is now my poodle Weezy), or be in love with my car (I do really, really like my 4runner, but I haven't given it a name yet, so can I really say that I'm in love with it?), or have a lady call me sweet like I'm some kind of cheese (also never happened---oh, wait, Julie does that all the time!). 

Hmmm...maybe it's time to take this album on a roadtrip with Julie for a seaside rendezvous where I can be her Valentino.

What a damn jolly good idea! Give us a kiss!

Nardo