As the surviving members of Queen continue their seemingly endless celebration of the band’s forty year anniversary – which kicked off with last year’sDeluxe Reissues of their entire catalog – an all new box set of Queen Tunes is about to be made available for fans who don’t mind throwing down $350: the Queen Orb Gift Box. A “true electronic age marvel,” the Golden Orb contains an ornately decorated USB drive, which holds all 15 (re-mastered) Queen studio albums – in both 320kbps MP3 and 24-bit 44.1kHz WAV format (fully PC and Mac compatible) – as well as a massive photo gallery to waste hours and hours of time looking at and downloading to your FaceBook page. Buyers also get a gold-plated Queen crest pendant necklace inside a tiny red velvet pouch, and, of course, the Golden Orb itself, which is quite impressive on its own (just look at it!). And it comes in a fancy black velvet box for storage. Fancy!
Produced in a limited edition series of 5,000 numbered units, The Queen Golden Orb (which quickly sold out its limited first run last December) will be available to purchase on April 2nd, 2012 at This Link.
See more details and the album listing after the jump!
“STORMTROOPERS IN STILETTOS” GALLERY EXHIBITION AND MORE
Queen’s 40th anniversary is now upon us, and the band plans to pull out all the stops to celebrate this historic occasion. “2011 is an important year for Queen,” said Brian May “and there will be a lot of activity.” Adds Roger Taylor, “I can’t believe it’s been that long and that we are still around in such a big way. I’m amazed and grateful!” This yearlong event will be marked by a series of releases, re-releases, special limited-edition items and events around the world.
It was in March 1971 that bassist John Deacon joined May and Taylor’s buzzed-about London group, which had changed its name from Smile to Queen nine months earlier, following the addition of multitalented singer/pianist Freddie Mercury, thus completing the classic lineup. The four simpatico musicians proceeded to take the world by storm. The band has released a total of 18 chart-topping albums and 18 #1 singles, while selling more than 300 million albums worldwide, making them one of the biggest rock acts of all time. They’ve received seven Ivor Novello awards in the U.K., were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, the UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and even received their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in October 2002.
As live artists, Queen literally conquered the world. Acknowledged as one of the greatest stadium bands of all time, Queen performed over 700 concerts, reaching into every corner of the world. They achieved rock history by being the first band to open up South America and the Eastern Bloc, with world record- breaking concerts in Argentina, Brazil and Hungary.
This is a timeless band whose music retains such immediacy and undiminished power that new fans continue to discover and embrace it, along the way inspiring a host of diverse artists from Lady Gaga (who took her name from Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga”), and Katy Perry, through to the Foo Fighters. It’s worth noting that Queen’s videos have collectively generated well north of 300 million views online—a remarkable figure that figures to expand exponentially with the launch of a dedicated Vevo channel this spring, in yet another iteration of the anniversary rollout.
As the centerpiece in the 40th anniversary celebration, Queen’s entire 15-album studio catalog is being reissued in a series of deluxe editions. Every note is being tweaked, every piece of artwork is being cleaned, freshened up and resourced, wherever necessary, with the legendary Bob Ludwig doing the remastering, working from the original source material. The albums will be released in three waves, staggered over the next year, with the first wave—comprising the first five LPs—coming this May.
