Queen, February 20, 1976: The Show I Missed; the Program I Prized.

Question: what's the next best thing to seeing your favorite artist perform at a rock concert? Answer: receiving a copy of the show's program from a friend who attended the gig. Okay, I know that's a stretch. Sure, you can drool over a concert program all you like, flip its pages till they fall out, and take it to bed and read it under the covers with a flashlight. But it will never sing to you. It won't make your ears ring for hours on end. And it will never blind you with pyrotechnics. Nevertheless, I experienced a true rock-shock when my friend Tony Vigliotti walked into sixth period French class and presented me with a souvenir concert program from the Queen show he'd seen the night before at Pittsburgh's Stanley Theater. Nobody but a fellow rockaholic like Tony could have imagined how much I wanted to see that concert.

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My Queen-Size Crush on Freddie Mercury

When I was 16 years old, Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury was the man I most wanted to meet. I didn't want to sleep with him, mind you. I wanted to BE him. Or at least go shopping with him. Seriously, he was one of the people who inspired me to get out of my tiny Pennsyltucky hometown. I figured that if I studied hard enough, I could go to college, get a good job, and afford to move to London and hobnob with him and my other Brit rock idols. As it turned out, I went to college, got a job, moved to Monroeville, and got to hobnob with Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Harold Denton in the backroom of Tivoli's Restaurant in Penn Hills. But that's another story.

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Brian May – The Asteroidal Axeman

Lots of rockers and actors have had asteroids named in their honor, but Brian May is no doubt the only true scientist of the bunch. The brainy guitarist/astrophysicist best known for his work with Queen turns 67 today. I could always recognize his distinctive style. He used his custom-built "Red Special" guitar to produce sounds that mimicked all kinds of instruments, such as trombones and piccolos. In 2012, readers of Guitar World magazine voted him the 2nd greatest guitarist of all time, and Rolling Stone pegged him at #26 in their list of Top 100 guitarists.

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