Everyone knows Queen‘s hit Bohemian Rhapsody from their album A Night at the Opera, or perhaps We are the Champions from the album News of the World. But between those two albums there was A Day at the Races. An album that often gets overlooked.  A Day at the Races was released in December 1976.

At the time I was not a Queen fan. Please recall previous blog postings where I stated I didn’t like bands that had keyboards. I wanted my bands to be guitar-bass-drum oriented. Well Queen wasn’t one of those bands in 1976, so I was not aware of this album or any previous albums being released. I can’t say when I learned of Queen. Somewhere between 1976 and 1979 I discovered them and proceeded to purchase their albums.

I love A Day at the Races. The title comes from an old Marx Brothers movie. The album holds a place in my memory for having one of my favorite Queen songs ever and also the only Queen song my post-high school band, Second Chance, played.  Tie Your Mother Down. A great rocking song. I always enjoyed singing the song and posing like Freddie Mercury. And it was always a fan favorite that went over well in bars and parties. It doesn’t hurt that I can play the song on the guitar as well. Taught to me by my late buddy Dennis.

Another great song off the album was Somebody to Love. A big hit in the UK and a modest #13 in the US. Besides Tie Your Mother Down, my other favorite song from the album is Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together).  It is a love song with the chorus sung in Japanese. The English version:

Let us cling together as the years go by,
Oh my love, my love,
In the quiet of the night
Let our candle always burn,
Let us never lose the lessons we have learned.

Whenever I listen to this album it brings back many memories from the late ’70s and early ’80s. For this reason I chose A Day at the Races by Queen as this month’s Vinyl of the Month.