For those afflicted with a trainspottery love of music the first album you buy yourself is a rite of passage akin to losing your virginity. You remember who, what, where, and how much it cost (that last part may or may not apply to how you lost your virginity). In my case it was Queen’s “Sheer Heart Attack” at the Beggars Banquet record store in Fulham and it cost me the princely sum of £2.10.

I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure Queen are still about as unfashionable as high-waisted trousers and unlike some other pompy 70s rock bands (coughELOcough) haven’t gained even a modicum of retrospective hipness. They were probably just too excessive and bombastic and recorded ludicrous things like “We Will Rock You” which was the sort of rock music they’d have played at a Nuremberg Rally. I hate the concept of a “guilty pleasure” so I don’t feel the slightest bit bad about admitting that I quite liked some of their records. I still like some of them a lot, in fact. “Sheer Heart Attack” was their third album and is probably the first one where they became Queen with all the camp theatricality and stylistic dilletantism we either loved or hated them for. It’s funny how while the rest of the band expanded their horizons both musically and sartorially, good ol’ Brian May never stopped looking and playing like an early 70s heavy rock dude.

“Tenement Funster” doesn’t sound much like a Queen record at all, probably because it’s written and sung by drummer Roger Taylor and like a lot of his songs (“I’m In Love With My Car” being the most famous) has more of a gnarly tone and is quite atmospheric and edgy sounding with some very Mick Ronson-ish spacey guitar. Apparently this is a tribute to Marc Bolan (he was still alive then by the way) and has lots of glam Bolan-y imagery like purple shoes and open cars going at the speed of light. For far more than you ever wanted to know about this track, go here. Who knew it’s signals were heavily flanged!

Download: Tenement Funster – Queen
Buy: “Sheer Heart Attack” (album)