Customer Reviews

Pre Ordained

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This record It's not what you think!!!

First of all, the tracklist displayed in the back has no relation with the song order itself, but this ain't really relevant... the worst thing is that only the half of the record from 1 to 7 are the originally recorded by the members of Queen, the rest are heavy metal or folk songs recorded by someone else, not even a colaboration or production it's made by Queen on those songs.

Honestly I think that if you are looking for a good rare compilation try to buy the record "Queen In Nuce" where you'll find the songs by Larry Lurex (Freddie Mercury before joined Queen) Smile (Brian May, Roger Taylor & Tim Staffel) and the first song as Queen "Mad the Swine".

Also there is another record that I strongly recomend that was released by Tim Staffel called "A Ghost of a Smile" in which appears all the Smile songs and also "Doing alright" a demo or first recording of this song under Smile, re-recorded years later for the first Queen album.

I wish I had read the reviews here before buying this CD at the store. The sound quality is horrible, as if someone burned off an ancient casette.

As for the songs, an Internet search revealed to me that the songs that don't sound like Freddie are actually by someone named Peter Straker, an original cast member of "Hair," and who possibly lived with Freddie in the early '70s. (?) The songs were produced by Freddie and Roy Thomas Baker, and come from a 1978 LP called "This One's On Me," with Freddie supposedly on backing vocals. Tear Down The Walls and Black Swan apparently have no relation to Queen or Smile, and are more Peter Straker, from his second (forgotten) album.

Avoid this disc at all costs.

I agree that the sound quality of this disc is awful. The Smile and Larry Lurex material is available elsewhere in much higher quality. However ... Stephen Rider's Queen bio "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" mentions that during the "Night at the Opera" sessions, Brian May and Freddie Mercury assisted a soul outfit named Trax and that this material has never been discovered. Is it possible that the six tracks on "Pre Ordained" which are not from Smile or Larry Lurex are, in fact, these lost Queen-assisted tracks from "Trax"? The quality is terrible, but the material is at least interesting, and I believe I do hear a certain Brian-ness in the guitar parts, a certain Freddie-ness in the piano parts, and a certain Queen-ness in the arrangements and background vocals. Maybe we do have some provenance, and there is some historic value to this low-quality CD.

I have been a lifelong (25+ years) Queen fan and was excited to see a CD available of the early days of Queen ... Ooops! I was suckered in. This album is a joke in its representation as an album by Queen. Do not buy this album! If you're desperate for non-discography Queen material check-out their website instead.

I beg Brian and Roger to please release a proper CD of their early/rare recordings in an anthology so we no longer have to subjected to this horrendous trash. I mean heck, put all the money to AIDS research if they don't want to keep the money. I've heard better sounding bootlegs. I was hoping and expecting to be the best versions I've yet heard of I Can't Hear Music and Going Back and they were just plain awful. The liner notes are wrong about the performing musicians. The song list is even wrong. You want to talk about a piece of garbage. I mean the packaging is even messed up!!! I agree with one of early reviewers that said some of these songs might not have had any of Queen members playing on it. I will never buy another thing like this unless I see Hollywood Records put it out. Not even for a true Queen collector!

The ridiculously poor sound quality on this CD would not even pass for a 10th generation cassette bootleg. Many of the songs are on other collections. See the Freddie Mercury box set . . it's pricey, but "I Can Hear Music" and "Going Back" sound MUCH better, leading me to believe that whoever "mastered" this CD wanted to pass these off as "very rare, and thus with low fidelity quality." Rubbish. Also check out "In Nuce," which isn't much better, but at least the sound on that one is a bit superior to this. Also, Brian May fans need not get their hopes up when looking at the track list and seeing pre-Queen song titles. If he's even playing on some of these tracks (which I'm also certain he is NOT), there's nothing new under the sun to groove to. This is so bad, even the worst track on "Hot Space" would be essential listening!

C'mon, gentlemen, what did you expect ? There is, and forever, only one first Queen album. This is not a "number zero" album.
This album compiles 14 historical recordings, recorded before Queen's first efforts. So, it is very interesting to hear what they were doing in those days, alone or with friends. No more, no less.
If you have every official recording by the group, this will complete your collection.

This CD is designed to separate an unsuspecting Queen fan from his or her money. I think that the way it works is as follows: Someone with some mediocre quality recordings of some music somewhere puts it out on a nice CD and then it finds its way to a record store. The dedicated Queen fan who likes to collect everything that has to do with Queen sees it and recognizes many of the songs as being early Queen or Smile (1-7/14). Being a collector, he owns all of these songs on other CD's, but then he sees six more songs in the collection that he or she has never heard of (8-13). He figures that since this is a Queen CD they must have something to do with Queen. Perhaps they're early lost recordings, or maybe they're songs from some group that one of the members was in before Queen. So, the unsuspecting Queen fan pays his money and takes the CD home. He may even finance the purchase over the next 30 years by putting it on his credit card. He doesn't know exactly what those six songs are, but he figures he must get the CD so his Queen collection is complete, and he will find out what they are when he gets home and opens the CD and reads the liner notes. Only after he opens the CD and reads the liner notes does he realize that he has been had. The liner notes give almost no information on these mystery songs (8-13). They say that songs 8-11 were produced by Freddie Mercury and Roy Thomas Baker (a Queen producer), and that 12 and 13, Tear Down the Walls and Black Swan were produced by Tim Green, whoever that is. There is no word on who is singing on these songs, when and why they were recorded and published. A little internet research reveals that these songs were recorded by a guy named Peter Straker on an album produced by Freddie Mercury. That is their only connection with Queen.

The liner notes give almost no information because whoever wrote them probably figured that the less they say about the songs the less likely you are to notice that they have almost nothing to do with Queen, and that you wasted lots of money when you bought the CD.

A final note, many of the reviewers have been commenting that the quality of these recordings is very bad. They are correct. The sound quality is horrible. However, it should also be pointed out that these Peter Straker songs are just really bad songs. They're just terrible. The Smile songs (2-6) are fine. After all, they were mostly written by Brian May. But the Peter Straker ones make Spinal Tap look like Beethoven.

I have been a Queen fan since I was fourteen years old(I'm now 28 now) Needless to say that I was very excited when I saw this cd at the store. I thought I was in for an amazing treat, and what did I get? - pretty much all rubbish - aggh! I can't believe this cd was compiled and I agree with another fan in that I wonder at the exceedingly poor quality of these songs. If there ever was any doubt that Freddie WAS Queen, you will realize it after listening to this CD and the early Smile tunes. If you love Queen, please do yourself a favor and don't even bother with this. Freddie doesn't seem to sing on most of the songs, and whoever it is is terrible, or at least the production is terrible. I don't know...IS it Freddie singing on those songs that sound nothing like him? I know Freddie is gone, but I don't think we need to stretch this far in an attempt to release new(old) material. Nontheless, this sub-par piece of work doesn't change the fact that Queen were, and always will be the greatest band this world will ever know.

What is this!?!?!? As a loooong time Queen fan i am glad i only paid [$$$]for this disc. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the songs performed by "Smile" and "Larry Lurex", but these are terrible mixes of the songs...you are better off buying the "In Nuce" collection if you can find it. I am also confused as to what tracks 3,4,5,6,7, and 9 are...I'm no Queen 'expert' but, i'd never heard of these songs before and therefore question their authenticity...my tip is buy the "In Nuce" collection.