The Great Tour7.20.14 by Q3
“The Great Tour” has taking over my life – and I could not be happier.
I am a bit more than halfway through my part of the Queen + Adam Lambert Tour. At this point I know the show by heart – and can ID any deviation, any change, any flaw. But I do not care. Because I have learned that every show is perfect. And every show is a separate memory with its own unique perfect moments.
I am 2 days past my double concert event of Philadelphia-Madison Square Garden. I really am not yet coherent. I have been keeping notes on the concerts and will eventually post something coherent. Really I will. But it is all still floating in my head, my heart --- still floating. But I am honestly not pushing myself to return to earth.
Once when the world was young
I am old and finally age has afforded me a few benefits. I saw Queen perform when the world was young, in the 1970’s. I honestly did not appreciate them the first time I heard them perform. In fact, they are not very good. The second time I saw them they were wonderful and I proceeded to buy both their albums and their 45 (there was only 1 at the time, Killer Queen), even though it was identical to the album track (OK there is 0:01 difference which I cannot understand – dead space edit by the label?).
I did not read any reviews. I am not sure there were any reviews of my first two Queen shows. They were the opening act. Forgettable to most people in the audience. (No matter what they claim now.)
My first two Queen performances were just another concert to me. But for some reason – and frankly mostly because of the guitarist (who was Brian May but really who the fuck was he in 1974. F’ing no one.)
Fast forward to 2014
As of today, I have seen Queen, Brian May, Roger Taylor and Q+AL a total of 71 times. I think it may be the most I have seen any artist. (Note: it might be 72 or 73 times, part of the 1970’s is a blur for me. So perhaps I should say I recall 71 concerts – the rest of the decade I do not recall so well.)
No one was writing reviews of those 1974 and 1975 concerts. They are awesome and bad and all kinds of “politically” incorrect things to write. Queen, Brian and Freddie, were trying to figure out how to be rock stars. (Roger and John were as they are IMO). Freddie most of all seemed to be trying to figure out how to be who he was and yet had to be who he was.
No one really gave a shit about another British rock band trying to make it in America in 1974.
So why do the same papers who could not deign to send a reporter to the Uris Theater in NYC to review the opening act in 1974 – get on the f’ing high horse 40 years later to review the MSG show in droves. Because they did not understand greatness in 1974 and they do not understand greatness in 2014.
Q+AL
I know that I would not be at a Queen + ? concert. I am attending these concerts, flying coast-to-coast, driving thousands of miles because of the “+ Adam Lambert”. There is no doubt. I am a Queen fan but my heart is owned by Mr. Adam F. Lambert. (And Mr. Q3. )
Yet watching there concerts, so grand, I am taken back to 1974. To seeing an artist, this time not Freddie but Adam trying to figure out how to be who he was and yet having to be who he is.
And thus the circle is a circle. And two men who never met are connected across time. Two men so different and yet so much the same. I think I need a scientist, an astrophysicist to figure this out. Does anyone know one?
All I know is “The show must go on.” And so it does.
******
Q3, thankyou!for being there to witness the journey!!!Are you going to Australia as well?? How exciting if you are. I made it to 3 concerts and still replay those in my head. I thank everyone who takes videos and posts them. It allows me to relive those concerts and to see them from different perspectives and to view all the ones I will not get to see in person. 
