Note: Moved here from the 7-19-2014 news thread since I didn't know which concert this fan went to but Q3 said it was Philly.
TALCvids @talcvids Lovely (Philly) MT @14gelly: GREAT REVIEW FROM A LONGTIME QUEEN FAN W PICS
nordique1972.tumblr.com/post/92235888711/the-show-must-go-on …
The Show Must Go On
Growing up in the mid to late 70’s, my childhood revolved around a few basic things. They were Kiss, Star Wars and baseball. Nothing else really mattered. Why should anything else matter. The first two dominated pop culture for the second half of the decade. Every now and then, though, something else would creep in and grab my attention. Few of those things stuck with me, but one that has is Queen. The songs weren’t as edgy as Kiss, they were a little more on the poppier side. The guitar work of Brian May, and especially the voice of Freddie Mercury, had me hooked. Two legendary talents in the same band. Add in Roger Taylor and John Deacon and it’s an incredibly talented and entertaining band.
I had very mixed feelings when I heard Queen was going to tour with Adam Lambert this Summer. I am a huge Queen fan, as I’ve said. I have every album they ever released, even the ones from the 80’s that didn’t do as well here in the US. I even have a bunch that weren’t legitimately released and piles of concert recordings from back in the day. I’m still in awe of what I witnessed on stage at Live Aid. Queen stole the day. I never got to see them with Freddie, though. They didn’t tour the US with Freddie after the very early 80’s. I think I was only 8 years old the last time they were here. My parents would have never considered taking me to see them at that age. I did see them a few years back when they played a show in New Jersey with Paul Rodgers. It was a good show, and I will never forget seeing Brian May play guitar live for the first time, but as good as a singer as Paul is, it just didn’t seem to fit Queen, They also played a few of Paul’s songs from Bad Company and Free, which just didn’t seem to sit right.
So fast forward to this year when the tour with Adam was announced. I have nothing against Adam. He is an incredibly talented singer and his style is an exponentially better fit with Queen than that of Paul Rodgers. My concern was the age difference and, strangely, I was worried about him being too much like Freddie. I thought he could very easily come off as a Freddie tribute rather than making the songs his own. I had all of this going through my mind as the tickets went on sale, but I decided I didn’t want to miss seeing Queen. So instead of going crazy and getting stage side seats for a lot of money, I took it easy and got relatively inexpensive seats upstairs for the Philly show. Our seats were in the first row of the second deck. Reasonably priced and still perfect viewing.
The day of the show kept getting closer, and I was keeping tabs on the set list. I had heard part of the show they did together back in Kiev, and I was impressed with how good it sounded, but I avoided listening to any clips from the current tour. I wanted to be a little surprised, especially since I already knew what songs they were going to play.
We got to the arena early and made our way to our seats after getting some food and drinks. The usher showed us our seats, and as I thought, we were in the first row of the second deck, with perfect viewing seats for the concert. No one could stand up in front of us to block our view. There was, however, one of the very large in-house cameras next to us. It wasn’t obstructing our seats, or our view, so there was no reason for concern. We weren’t in our seats for a minute and the usher came back down and said they didn’t want us to have to sit that close to the camera and that someone would be by shortly to give us tickets to different seats. Sure enough that happened. I tried to explain to them that the seats were fine, we wanted to be there, and that we liked the seats, but they wouldn’t listen. They said they were giving us floor seats. Normally, I guess, that would be a huge upgrade, and most people would be thrilled. We’re short. As soon as someone stands up in front of us, we can’t see anything. We were very skeptical of this move. Since they really weren’t giving us a choice, we reluctantly went to our new seats.
That turned out to be an excellent decision. They had moved us to the floor as they said, but these seats were front row for the second stage, and still had an unobstructed view of the main stage, Since the second stage was right in front of us, no one could stand in front of us. Needless to say, we were pretty excited about the upgrade once we got to the seats.
The moment finally arrives. The lights go down and Procession starts to play. Then the live music starts and Queen goes into the first song, Now I’m Here. Sheer Heart Attack is my favorite album, so I’m already impressed with the set list. They go into Stone Cold Crazy next, which is one of my top five favorite Queen songs. The rest of the set list is a fantastic mix of hits, along with some deeper cuts (Seven Seas Of Rhye, In The Lap Of The Gods, and ‘39).
As I said, we had a perfect view of the main stage, but when they started wandering out to the second stage, our view was ridiculous. We were close enough to Adam that we could have reached out and grabbed him. I could have played a couple of chords on Brian’s guitar. Standing there, 10 feet away, watching Brian play Love Of My Life and ‘39 was surreal. Adam spit champagne on the crowd after singing Killer Queen from a purple couch right in front of us. We got some on us. Roger Taylor played his drum solo, with his son, right there. These were rock and roll legends, with 17,000 fans there to see them, performing right in front of us. It was absolutely amazing.
The one thing that really surprised me about the show was the crowd. I didn’t know how it was going to sell since it isn’t Freddie singing. The place was packed. It may not have been a complete sell out, but it was very, very close. The shocking part was that it was a lot of younger people there to see Adam. There is no way a lot of these people were Queen fans. They were Adam fans. It was amazing to see their reaction when he would sing and come close to them. I had no idea his fans would make up that much of the crowd. I know he is tremendously talented, but for people to come see him sing songs that were almost all older than him was kind of amazing. I should also point out that he did an amazing job with the songs. He’s not Freddie, but no one is. He can’t be replaced. Adam was great, though. He rode the very, very fine line of giving the songs his own signature without disrespecting the original. That is not an easy task, and he did it perfectly.
The show overall was absolutely fantastic. It was the right mix of hits and deeper cuts, tribute to Freddie and also moving forward. The encores were of course We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions and God Save The Queen. Brian May came out to the second stage one last time during We Will Rock You and played that insanely perfect guitar solo right in front of us. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. It was the perfect way to end one of the best concerts I’ve seen. Hopefully we’ll get to see them again sometime soon.
Plus photos
