Random thoughts from an epic night:
(this is going to be way too long cause I’m still kind of in an adrelanine rush so bear with me)
I was one of the lucky members of the opening night of Q+AL; just me and 40,000+ other people, including a ton of other Atopians whom I regretfully never got to meet. If anyone else was wearing green wristbands, I never saw them and it turned out to be a rather inefficient way to identify people because even at the beginning it was too dark and smoky to see (they must have been testing the smoke machine beforehand). I suggest the glow bracelets instead -at least they would pop.
The arena filled up slowly because they were wanding people and searching purses, or because it was just basically in an Adam time zone, which we all know is at least 45 minutes behind normal time. The crowd around me was every age and a number of nationalities, including one very grumpy man who was really annoyed that people were standing throughout most of it (he actually left before the encore). But everyone else seemed mesmerized by everything happening before them.
The scope of the set was awesome - that gigantic Q filled up the space so well that you never felt like it was a cavernous arena. I’ve been to Bulls games there and that place is huge, but tonight it seemed almost intimate. I’ll admit that I came to this concert as an Adam fan all the way - I’ve always like Queen a lot but never delved into the earlier catalog and am usually too busy to click all of Talon’s links. So I actually didn’t recognize Now I’m Here and Lap of the Gods, but it was really cool to hear something that was totally new to me. I was taken aback by the microphone malfunction in the first song, afraid it was going to throw him off, but he handled it like a complete pro and just laughed it off. The special effects were terrific and the videos in the big Q were so huge that everyone could see everything. But Adam seemed larger than life himself - the set never dwarfed him. It was very, very loud - I had earplugs and totally forgot to wear them. It seemed like it was a little hard to understand him in the beginning (at least where I was - in the 100s section which was actually great because it was almost the same height as the stage). Don’t know what it was like for people on the floor.
Killer Queen was fabulous - no one will accuse Adam of downplaying the gay in this one. He was funny and campy and sounded great, fanning himself with a gold fan and lounging on a velvet chaise. The concert had been so full frontal rock up to that point that I wasn’t expecting anything like this and it was a wonderful zig zag in another direction.
He sang the first 9 songs and I was starting to wonder how the hell he was going to do this every night for the next three months when he left and Brian came out for Love of My Life. Brian talked a little to the audience and the first thing he said was “What do you think of our Adam?” I love the idea that they’ve claimed him as their own.
The whole next section included the audience’s first sighting of Freddie and all the wonderful archival footage of Queen during their heyday and the place went nuts. I think there were way more Queen fans there than Glamberts, although everyone seemed to be his fan by the time it was over. This part with Roger singing Days of Our Lives brought me to tears - I don’t know how any Queen fan can watch this and not be thrilled that these guys get to do this again. They moved the whole drum set and band down to the end of the thrust so Roger was much easier to see, and he stayed there through Under Pressure
Under Pressure sounded great, although I really missed the glory note at the end. Wonder if he’ll ever do it or if they’ve changed it so that he doesn’t have to. I seem to remember that during London, he was doing Somebody to Love OR Who Wants to Live Forever but not both of them - now he’s doing those two as well as The Show Must Go On and Love Kills plus everything else. His voice is so strong he practically blew the roof off. My one complaint was that they struck the drum set right in front of him when he sang WWTLF and it was distracting - I wish he had moved to another part of the stage so all the focus would have been on that song.
Then it just built and built as each song topped the last and you wondered if the whole place was going to explode - which it pretty much did as soon as they started BoRhap. People were waving lighters in the air, which I’m pretty sure is illegal these days but it was awesome. And finally the encore and WWRY - and the crown.
I know there has been some discussion on the board about this but I have to say that in the context of the concert, it was fucking perfect. When he came out in that thing sparkling like Miss America and walking the runway in that hilarious leopard suit, he owned that entire arena. Brian could barely look him because you knew he was about to lose it, and Adam was the one who took the crown off. It looked like he was going to put it on Brian’s head, but Bri handed him the guitar and took the crown and then put it BACK on Adam’s head - as if to say we think you’ve earned the right to wear this and we won’t take no for an answer. And the look on Adam’s face was like “Oh shit, Bri, look what you’re doing to my hair!” It was my favorite moment of the show and a perfect ending. They didn’t do Don’t Stop Me Now, but frankly, it would have been anticlimatic at that point. ALso, gold confetti cannons! And lasers! And a disco ball!
I know there was a live stream and kudos to whomever held their phone up through this entire show - I was shaking the entire time and didn’t even get any decent pictures. This is the only one I’m going to and it was incredible, but I’m very sad that I won’t get to see how the show looks after they’ve done it 30 or 40 times. My guess is that it’s just going to get better and better. Lucky us to be able to experience this, live or through the computer. Pretty fucking awesome.
