Greg Brooks, Queen's Official Archivist is currently working in Japan on the Bohemian Rhapsody Exhibition and the release of his co-authored book 'Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words'.

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Today was unexpectedly interesting and unusual. Myself and new pals, Japanese Roger and Yoshida-san from Shinko/Music Life, headed off into Ginza district to check out the new Sony sponsored QUEEN IN THE PARK exhibition, or Installation, call it what you will. It was great fun. It offers a lot and various things come at you from some seriously obscure tangents. It's innovative, surprising, clean, slick and beautifully executed… as is everything here.

As we walked down the concrete steps to enter the building, each step has an unseen laser-type scanner that picks up your foot movement, and thus the first three-step sets off a startling STAMP, STAMP, CLAP sound effect, with accompanying spotlights. And then again with the next three steps, and so on. If you descend the steps in the right order and at the appropriate pace, the We Will Rock You familiar opening notes ring out for all of Ginza to hear. But if you do it too slowly or out of sequence, it’s like a chronic migraine. But great fun for big kids like me!

There is a high tech booth inside, where you sit and position yourself in front of a camera and it proceeds to ‘ingest’ your face into the Bo Rhap video. I chose to be superimposed into Freddie’s face, JR chose to be Roger, and our Shinko chums chose to be Japanese Brian and John. We all did our thing, awkwardly in my case, then got to watch it back. It was surreal, to say the least, and NO, emphatically not, will I put it up here. You then have the choice of zapping some icon thing and the video is sent to your mobile. It’s like being in the 24th century!!

QUEEN IN THE PARK is great fun. I recommend it without hesitation. And lookout for the Magic-cloaked Spock-san, otherwise known as Freddie robot dog (complete with moustache and weird unsettling charisma!). See the video here.

Roger, Adam and Brian are now in town, so best behaviour and no more chatting to computerised canines. 

I’m going to take the advice of my final photograph here. So bye for now.

Greg Brooks