Here is my story so far...
Earlier this year my now 8-yo daughter said "I wish I could see Adam sing live".
So I bought tickets for San Francisco #2 when the second round of concerts was announced.
And because it is a long weekend in Canada, we scheduled a 4 day holiday trip for the whole family.
I even purchased two sets of ear protectors, each pack coming with one large and one small set,
so we had one small pair spare - we got to protect those fine listening devices
On November 8th, we checked in for our flight at 9:45am on November 9th, and ordered a cab for 7am.
Of course, by 8pm of the 8th, my daughter started coughing and when we woke her up at 6am to start preparing for the trip, she had fever.
My natural instinct was "We are staying home. Let me cancel that cab order".
My dear wife's natural instinct was "I am staying home with her, you have been looking forward to this for months - go!"
So I put up my two extra tickets for sale on Ticketmaster at 6:15am, repackaged the baggage into a smaller suitcase, and off I went.
By 8:42am the two tickets had already sold!
The flight was nice, and at the SFO airport I installed the Clipper card in my Android Google Wallet so I could tap to ride anywhere in the Bay Area.
My hotel is downtown in a very sketchy area. I had to walk 10 minutes from the train station to the hotel, and I was almost happy I was alone. I made a mental note to book a nicer place next time we come here together.
Around 6pm I started my trip to the Chase Center. The walking to the Union Station to catch the red line to the arena felt like being in a zombie movie. See above.
At the station's entrance gates, ALL passengers were Queen fans trying to figure out how to use the concert tickets for the free ride, since event tickets are valid for SF MUNI trips the whole day. Being the organized person I am, I had researched online and knew that we needed to find a manned booth and show our tickets there, but there was no such contraption to be found. I decided that $2.5 is not that much, tapped my phone at the wider priority gate, and got a whole bunch of them through - their tickets were valid for the ride anyway...
Most of them were already tipsy, so they were chatty and behaved like teenagers. The most chatty lady of them all told me "I will close my eyes and imagine Freddie is being channeled through Adam". I should have told her how bad of an idea that would be - Adam was of course a sight to behold the whole evening. I hope she didn't.
We got into the Chase Center which is probably the nicest arena I have been to. There was barely any wait at the checkpoints. I went to check out the merchandise, but the shirts were more expensive than my ticket, so I passed. They are also available online if I change my mind or they have a sale. I was already wearing my Adam Lambert shirt with the picture from Ziggy Dome anyway. I ate a slice of pizza and went to find my seat.
The two seats on my left remained empty for a bit, but eventually the lucky last-minute purchasers of my tickets showed up about 10 minutes before the show started (more about them later). On my right side, I had two middle-aged FBGs who barely fit in their seats, but who were extremely respectful - the one next to me had actually dimmed her phone's screen so she could take videos without affecting my peripheral vision! I quickly did the same, although originally I had no plans to take any videos, knowing that the rest of the arena is taking them for me from much better viewing angles.
My seats were on the cheaper side - almost central to the right of the sound mix board, upper bowl sector 212, 13th row. Pretty high. On my previous 3 QAL shows in Vancouver I had watched from a left side view high up, 2nd row in front of the second stage, and lower bowl slightly off-center to the right. All three gave me a much better view, as it turned out that the lighting rig was in the way of Roger's main drumkit, obscured a bit of the main screen, and the curved crown screen overlapped with the main screen, producing a bit of a visual mix.
However I had come to listen live to a heavenly voice and the best rock group in the world, and the sound was PERFECT! The ear protectors worked fairly well for the price I paid on Amazon, and I had no issues hearing Adam or the band as clearly as a CD recording. (On previous shows I had experienced annoying distortions of Adam's high register when the PA system overdrove my eardrums, which sounded literally like the Chipmunks singing!)
From the start I felt that Adam was looser than in the beginning of the tour, making tiny variations of phrases that I had not heard before which was delightful. The vocals were (to quote Simon Cowell) "immaculate".
As a stickler for lyrics precision, there was only one word change I detected, and it did not distract me at all - in "Is This The World We Created" he sang "a lonely man" instead of "a wealthy man", and the change actually made sense on some level... He also did not sing "He created" in the second verse, but I suspect it might have been a deliberate choice and not a mistake. Naturally he was "hanging on his own two feet" in AOBTD, but he never sings the original lyric on that anyway. He got WWRY right from start to end, which is always something that makes me "hang on my edge of my seat" when listening
I got to hear an "only" 19 seconds of LOOOOOOORD in STL, but it felt like eternity when experiencing it live, and the audience was of course cheering louder and louder the longer it went. That alone was worth the price of admission!
I had decided to make a video of just that song to have my own "Long Lord" version, but ended up recording the vocal improvisations before IWIA (which turned out to be one of my favorite versions I have heard him sing so far), the whole of Bicycle Race, the complete AKOM, and ITTWWC as it is always sublime. Once TSMGO started, I put down the phone and did not touch it until the end of the show.
Btw, the beginning of STL had a wonderful piano intro by Spike which was either unique to this concert, or I must have missed it if it happened before. Instead of just giving a reference tone to guide Adam for the "Anybody...." a cappella part, he played the piano for what felt like 15 seconds (I have captured only 12 of them, so not sure how long it went before - need to search YouTube). I remember in 2019 during the first concert of the tour in Vancouver, Spike did the intro of Death On Two Legs while being introduced to the audience. He never did that again. I love it when he does something like that!
"The speech" was slightly modified for the worse, as he had to mention how nobody could replace Freddie. I liked the simpler original "Freddie Mercury in my heart" versions better. Also, the introduction of Brian and Roger went much faster, from Killer Queen solo finishing to Adam just pointing at Brian and announcing his title. I kinda liked that, it felt less rehearsed.
I am so spoiled by the WWTLF video from the Isle of Wight show (which I consider the gold standard and a top 3 best performance of Adam, if not #1), that I haven't been able to properly enjoy the song in the last few years. I am happy to report that I absolutely enjoyed the live experience last night. It was different, but still powerful, masterful, and unique in its own way. For all the other visual drawbacks of my seat, the laser show from my point of view was amazing. Good thing I decided not to film that and enjoyed all of it properly.
One thing that my ear protectors affected was my ability to judge the loudness of the audience, so I cannot tell how loud we really were. As the show progressed, I slightly relaxed the fit of the protectors to let more sound in, so at the Ayo-s, WWRY and the second RGG, the audience sounded to me like a football stadium. Maybe they were as loud earlier and it just got filtered down, I cannot tell.
When the show was over, I turned to my neighbors to the left and told them the story of their tickets. I specifically wanted to make sure TicketBastards weren't playing any funny games, but they told me they paid exactly what I had paid. Good to know. They told me they loved the show and were sorry to hear about my daughter's last minute problems, but it was their luck, so one good thing came out of it. I would have been devastated if the tickets were purchased by someone who after the concert would have complained that Freddie's hologram wasn't there all the time...
On the way out people were buzzing, but I did not get to hear any conversations to report
However, in the lobby I saw Claudia with her self-made copy of the Adam Lambert cape (posted earlier in this thread), and I asked her to take a picture!
On the train back to Union Square station, a fan had the same mirror ball costume Brian May usually wore during Bohemian Rhapsody. I said jokingly to myself that maybe she raided his closet so he could not wear it
Some fans traveling next to me could be members here (but I did not ask). One younger woman of their group asked another elderly woman - do you go to many concerts? "Only for Adam". If that lady was you reading this, Hi again!
Fun fact - the stop right after Chase Center is called "Mission Rock"!
Well, Mission Accomplished!
