Hmmm… Now, That Strikes a Chord…

I've recently begun playing my guitar again. I can't play for long periods of time yet, because my chording hand is still rebuilding the calluses on its fingertips, but it feels good to get back to it. It's actually quite relaxing to strum or pick away at a familiar song or just noodle around with fingerings and rhythms.

While I'm no virtuoso, I can play a few songs reasonably well and entertain myself for a while. I have a few music books and pieces of sheet music, but I also find chords for popular songs on the internet. There's a wealth of resources out there for budding guitarists, and I've delved into quite a few of them.

Every once in a while, I'll be trying out a chord pattern or sequence, and it will remind me of something I've heard before. The other day, a couple of chords I played brought to mind the song "'39" by Queen. It's a great song with a lot of acoustic guitar in it, so of course I immediately set out to find the chords for it.

And find them I did.

It turns out to be a not-too-difficult song for a non-expert. There were a couple of new chords I had to learn, but for the most part it was pretty smooth sailing. Another one to add to my repertoire.

I also had to listen to the original recording of the song again, just to refamiliarize myself with the melody. I'd forgotten what a great song it is, and how different it is from most of Queen's other stuff. It has very folky feel, and, except for Brian May's trademarked layers of electric guitar in between the verses, it has a pretty simple arrangement.

The song is from the album A Night at the Opera, which also contains a few of Queen's best known songs, such as "Love of My Life" and, of course, "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Oddly, I'd been thinking about Queen quite a lot even before this. I've actually had "Bohemian Rhapsody" running through my head ever since I discovered the YouTube video of the Muppets doing it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Muppets doing "Bohemian Rhapsody". It's absolutely hysterical. I love the Muppets, and I love that song, and putting the two together is beyond genius. It's "full of win", as folks are wont to say these days.

When I first saw the video, I thought that it was a bit from The Muppet Show that I had somehow missed. Turns out it's not. It's a new video. And, thanks to some kind folks on Twitter, I found a couple of articles that explain how that clip came to be.

Disney bought the Muppets from the Jim Henson Company in 2004, and Hollywood Records, Disney's pop/rock music subsidiary, acquired the CD rights to the Queen catalog in 1990. Now, as it happens, Disney has announced that there will be a new movie featuring the Muppets (entitled The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made), and Hollywood records recently released a Queen compilation CD entitled Queen: Absolute Greatest. What better way to bring attention to both projects than to marry the one with the other and come up with something that damn near everyone is going to get a kick out of?

It's pretty brilliant marketing, I must say, and if Disney is going to get that creative with its properties, I might have to rethink my recent grumbling about its acquisition of Marvel Comics. I still think Disney is a bit scarily wholesome, but I give full marks to anyone who can release a video where Fozzie bear cries "Let me joke!" while Statler and Waldorf, the two old-timers, reply "We will not let you joke!" in the operatic section of the song.

The video is now on my favorites list on YouTube, and while I don't think I'll be trying to learn the guitar chords for "Bohemian Rhapsody" anytime soon, I've certainly been humming sections of it over the past few days.

Ah, nostalgia. There's nothing like it.

Mind the gap.

(And here's the video. You've probably seen it already, but who cares? Watch it again. It's that funny.)