Okay, so there was this thing last night where this band calling itself Queen with Adam Lambert played and I got to go for free thanks to my niece getting tickets and inviting me and my brother. Now, Im a Queen fan going back to 1976 and seeing them on Midnight Special doing Tie Your Mother Down. They were the first band that I REALLY flipped for and I bought every record and magazine and anything else I could up through to The Game (1980) and then punk/new wave/industrial came along and changed everything. And though I kinda set them aside for many years, I later embraced them again and still love their music to this day (at least their 1970s works). Now, theres this little problem of Freddie Mercury being dead and John Deacon being retired for many years, so I have to wonder what kind of Queen would be performing last night. Especially for the front man duties. You just cant surpass Freddie, ever. And this guy is a former American Idol contestant (and not even a winner)! How can I take this seriously? But Brian and Roger are still alive and ready to rock it out and Im thinking that, if theyve got the goods, let them deliver and lets at least give this Lambert character a fair shot. So Im there and theres this ominous drone music playing to set the mood and you can feel the excitement in the air and then, finally, the massive shroud emblazoned with the Queen crest looks like it gets sucked into a black hole and there they are! Brian with his curly hair and Roger pounding the drums and some guy on bass, another guy on keyboards and some kid on a second drum kit (who is Rogers son or something?). And theres this Lambert character out front and hes actually belting it out rather respectably and hes got some flair and a dash of fabulous and you cant front this band without some of that. Sorry, Paul Rogers, you no have FAB, but, Adam? He glitters and poses and hits the high notes and lounges on the chaise and spits out champaign like a decadent fountain and hes actually got some balls to get out there and have that confidence and, at the very, very least, conjures some kind of essence of Freddie that brings these songs back to life. For the next two hours the band blaze through a set studded with all the expected hits, but also woven into this fabric are some older, less expected pieces that, at some points, become truly moving. When Brian takes centre stage on his own and sings Love of My Life accompanying himself only on acoustic guitar, thats moving enough, but then the ghost of Freddie shows up on the giant Q shaped projection screen and starts to sing the remainder of the song, there wasnt a dry eye in the place and that includes yours truly. The rest of the show delivered everything you could ask for in an event like this with a band of this caliber and reputation. The drum solo, the endless spaced out guitar solo, and Brian emerging for Bohemian Rhapsody in one of his old silver flair sleeved 1970s outfits like he wore in the original video shoot. It was all there and more all wrapped up in a gloriously decadent production that is only fitting for this band. Freddie is dead, but hell live forever. Hes joined the pantheon of Godstars along with Elvis and Hendrix and Lennon and all the rest. You cant surpass him and you cant match him. All you can do is show your respect and try to embody the spirit of what he was. Lambert did as good a job at that as you could ever ask anybody to do. He worked his ass off and bless him for having the nerve to even look at those shoes. I think Freddie, if hes anywhere, is having a laugh at this young jester and thinking, like many are, that its good that this music still has some life in it and at least some of the people behind its creation can still get on a stage and light up the night for a couple of hours.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 18:37:33 +0000
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