Freddie Mercury - Time Waits For No One

The blues impulse understands a world in which there are no good choices; in which we have made terrible mistakes already; where we have innocent blood on our hands, even though we had our reasons; a world in which we are damned if we go deeper and damned if we duck out; and yet a world in which we nonetheless have to make choices.

The gospel impulse takes us one giant step beyond the blues. Gospel begins with a brutal history, too, asking: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” In fact, this song in some ways is more blues than gospel, despite its formal genre. The gospel impulse testifies to the same burdens that the blues carries. Rather than simply enduring, however, the gospel impulse seeks to transcend those burdens by expressing itself in relation to others and to God. The gospel impulse reaches out and reaches up and always moves toward higher ground... The gospel impulse bears witness to the burden and upholds the tradition, but it extends a hand to humanity and to God, and works toward redemption. Where the blues endures, the gospel transcends, lifts up, sees the divine light within us and finds God in the beauty of Creation. Gospel vision holds out the hope for a better tomorrow.

Like blues and gospel, the jazz impulse is rooted in that same burden of a brutal history and in traditions of addressing it. A jazz artist keeps one hand wrapped in what Ellison calls “the chain of tradition,” and yet improvises outward, finding new ways of phrasing and rephrasing the problem and innovative means of dealing with it. Jazz keeps one foot on the old melody, testifying to the burden just like blues and the first turn of gospel, and then tries to work its way forward, keeping the world in motion. Louis Armstrong said that “jazz is music that is never played the same way once.” The jazz impulse is a means of rethinking the human condition, not just an approach to the saxophone. Jazz says we don’t have to do it the way we have always done it.
Source: Blues, Gospel and Jazz Impulses: A Way of Understanding of African American Culture and Damn Near Anything Else, For That Matter by Timothy B. Tyson

Freddie Mercury - Time Waits For No One

• Produced by: Dave Clark
• Recorded: 1986
• Genre: Rock, Pop

"Starting off as a rhythm track, the session recorded 48 tracks of backing vocals (Freddie plus John Christie and Peter Straker), 2 x 24 track tapes locked together which had never been done before for that amount of backing vocals."

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