Who
is Aussie Queens?
Aussie Queens is an Australian and New Zealand Queen Fan club. Aussie Queens
is run and owned by Nicole Pule-Leech (aka Isis) and Davyd Leech (aka Icarus
Falls). Aussie Queens mission statement is 'From the fans for the fans and
for Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Freddie Mercury'.
How did it come about?
Aussie Queens emerged from an online petition that we ran online in 2005 to
get Queen and Paul Rodgers to tour Australia. The petition was called 'Aussie
Queens Petition' and we started as a post on QueenZone. The aim of the petition
was to get 400 emailed in signatures and messages to Brian May.
We were going to email a note to Brian May at his website www.brianmay.com
along with the signatures and message from his fans down under asking him
to reconsider touring Australia as it was dropped from the first tour list.
It was only a matter of a week before we realised that this was not going
to be enough to convince Brian to tour Australia and it was going to require
them to make this as big as they could to get the old boys attention. We knew
that they would need to get everyone that was needed to make the tour happen
to table to start to talk with Queen about a possible tour. We moved the project
from the Boards and created a formal petition website www.freewebs.com/aussiequeens
with an official post up for the campaign that was hosted and permitted to
run by the official Queen Forum Queen Online.
It was on the Aussie Queens Freewebs website that the action for the petition
took place. Various online communities, media houses, significant associated
Queen businesses and Queen fans supported this project. The support did not
stream in from just Australia and New Zealand but it came in from all over
the world. This became a global online event and people were coming in from
all over the world to us.
The decision from the Aussie Queens Queen + Paul Rodgers to tour Australia
and New Zealand petition is still awaiting a formal response to the possible
2008 tour that is possibly planned by the band. We have had one formal response
to the petition once it closed and the details to all that can be found on
this post in our forum:
Aussie
Queens Petition Post
We were formally asked by the bands representatives to submit a presentation
the band showing them what we had done. This was submitted and was passed
on to the band for their viewing.
As the petition grew in size and support from the online Queen community,
there was a call for the organisers and owners of the project (Nicole Pule-Leech
and Davyd Leech) to formalise and protect Aussie Queens. It was from this
call that the Aussie Queens Australia and New Zealand Queen Fan Club was created
and Aussie Queens Pty LTD TM opened.
Why
is it a New Zealand and Australia Fan Club when the owners live in Australia?
New Zealand was added on to Aussie Queens after Nicole was flooded with message
from New Zealand Queen Fans that were signing the petition to open the petition
and club up to New Zealand.
Aussie
Queens has a formal Aussie Queens New Zealand representative aka Shellz. Shellz
represents Aussie Queens in New Zealand where she can. If we want to know
things that are on in NZ or want to keep an eye out on Queen activities Shellz
is our eyes and ears down there. We also have other members and contacts that
also keep us in the loop if we need to keep an eye on New Zealand and what
is happening down there on a ground level.
There are many New Zealanders that are subscribed to the Aussie Queens newsletters,
members of the fan club and visit the Aussie Queens forum.
So
what sort of things does your club do?
Aussie Queens tries to create new online community projects that involve the
various factions of the online Queen community with the aim to give the fans
that are part of our community what they want from the Queen community and
at the same time try help keep the Queen wheel spinning when it may slow down
at time. We try to look at ways to give the fans an avenue to get their voices
heard. This is what our projects are about.
Do you have to be a famous or well known fan
in the Queen scene to get involved with your community projects?
No way. Aussie Queens has spent most of its time and developed itself to ensure
that all fans no matter how new or old they are to have a place where they
can have some space to get their point of view across about the Queen and
the scene that goes with it.
There are many old fans that had splintered off from the main stream scene
as they were not happy with various aspects of what the official scene had
become since Freddie died. These older original fans had over time lost their
passion in the band Queen and were now isolated from the main Queen community
with no desire to return. Aussie Queens has tried to fix this wedge and bring
them back to the Queen community even if they only keep themselves in the
loop with the Aussie Queens newsletter. New fans are always welcome at our
doorway and we try to include them in our community projects if they want
to get involved.
Are
you official yet?
No not yet as we were not sure what we were going to do after the petition.
We are still discussing this matter today. It is something we will need to
sort out with Queen Productions if we want to head down this track.
Do you have other websites and where is the
fan club site?
Yes we have other sites out there. You can find them here:
www.aussiequeens.com
www.rogersmeadows.com
www.fmspiritoffire.com
www.myspace.com/aussiequeens
How many people run and are part of the design
team of Aussie Queens?
Nicole and Davyd are the think tanks and drivers of the Aussie Queens machine.
So the answer
is 2 but they are supported in a massive way by the various communities and
Queen fans out there that are supporting them to keep it all going.
Why do you have free membership to your club?
The philosophy of Aussie Queens is that a fan club to any band should be free.
Nothing much more to it really - just a personal belief system.
Did you think Aussie Queens would ever get to where it is today?
No not really. We had a big vision for it if the tour went through when the
petition closed. It was a matter of looking at where that stopped and looking
at what to do with everything they had created and managed from the petition.
There are so many more things Aussie Queens can do out there. Just a matter
of time, interest and support for Aussie Queens to level and direction it
will take in the future.
Does
it take you heaps of time to do all this?
Yes the both of us spend what little spare time we have modifying our websites
and developing them even further. If we think up a community project that
we want to run we both many hours getting it to work and spend months in closed
door chats with critical online communities that they feel will enhance the
project and therefore community as a whole.
Was
all this worth it for you both?
Yes we both enjoy
what we have created and continue to create. As long as we can do it and there
is a drive to keep this all going we will stay out there. Why not?
Why
is your newsletter so important?
The Aussie Queens newsletter is important as this is where Nicole and Davyd
bring all the Queen and Aussie Queens news. You will find heaps more news
in their newsletter than you will on any of their websites news pages and
even the forum. If you are not on the newsletter mailing list then you are
really out of the Aussie Queens underground news loop. It is free and you
have to tick a box to subscribe to it when you go to join
the club
Do
I have to join all three registration databases (ie Fan Club, newsletter and
forum) with Aussie Queens?
No. The way we have set it all up allows our users to pick from the three
locations. Many subscribe to all three though. If you want to be part of all
three sections of the club please make sure you are subscribe to all three.
If you are not sure email us and we can check. aussiequeens@hotmail.com
What
online community projects has Aussie Queens run?
The
Freddie Mercury 60th Birthday online radio show (Joint project with FM2000)
Live Feed with aka Lamo from the Aussie Queens Petition Hub of the Vancouver
Queen + Paul Rodgers Concert
The Aussie Queens petition to get Queen + Paul Rodgers to tour Australia and
New Zealand
USA Press pressure campaign to help get Queen + Paul Rodgers media coverage
during their major USA tour
Do you do anything with club members in the
real world?
Yes at times we have had meetups or attend concerts together. It really depends
what our members require us to do for them and what we are doing in our private
lives. We tend to keep most of our outings online as such. This way we can
all stay together.
Where
is the club physically located?
The club is a virtual club with real people behind it and in it. It is hosted
from Bendigo, Victoria, Australia where we live. We have had members come
up and visit them and look over their Queen collection in the past.
Why don't you open up a physical shop for the
club?
It is not something we as the owners of Aussie Queens want to lay out our
money into. As it is a free club for our members and Aussie Queens does not
generate an income directly from the Queen fan club side of the business it
is just not at all viable for us to do such a thing. We would not even consider
this move especially since the Official International Queen Fan Club has shut
down from their physical site and have now had to move their fan club into
a virtual space. There is just no demand or need for a physical Queen Fan
Club with an office space in the street these days. Times have changed.
What
makes you two so special?
We are not special at all. We are from the other side of the fan base - the
people out on the streets that have loved Queen for ages and just kept to
ourselves with it all for our own enjoyment - "punters" the music
industry refers to people like us. We just walked into the slip stream of
Queen and had no idea what was awaiting us when we put up that post in QueenZone.
We were only thinking small at that point. When we realised just how big it
was becoming and the speed it was travelling at we had to do all we could
to try and keep up and sort out what was going on. We got there in the end
and what you are seeing now is what we have created along the way of the petition
and since the petition closed. The delimma we as the owners were in was 'do
we switch this all off and shut out those that were linked into Queen through
us out?' We did not want to turn the lights out on these people as we were
the link to Queen for them. So for all these people that supported us from
the begining and stayed with us until today we have kept the lights burning
and kept it all going. We intend to keep it all going for as long as we can
and as long as our members need us to be out there. We absorb all the clubs
running costs.
What is Aussie Queens working on now?
Right now Aussie
Queens is working on our Australian and New Zealand Queen Archives. So far
it has has some media attention and some great donations from our members
out there. Come and take a look -
http://www.aussiequeens.com/OzNZArchive.asp
Can you help us out? Please feel free to email us if you have something you feel you can contribute to this project. aussiequeens@hotmail.com
We talk about the Archives Project at some length in our last interview with Hobart Radio International. You can get more details from this podcast:
http://hriradio.podomatic.com/enclosure/2008-02-05T16_33_06-08_00.mp3
(Chin Wag Interview)
You can find
more podcasts with HRI from us here: http://www.hriradio.org/aussiequeens.htm
