Queen at the 02

[seany t]

That said, hope I'm wrong and that it's a good night. I tend to be quite regularly, so you're in luck!

 

[Firestorm]

I'm partly with MK on this one. I Liked the early stuff , Seven seas of Rhye and the Sheer heart attack Album were quite good, but A Night and the Opera and Bohemian Rapsody were a tad to pretentious for my taste, and i have never really liked them since
Anyone here see them at the Kursaal in 73 (supporting Mott the Hoople IIRC) or on Canvey the next year ?

 

[graysblue]

Seeing this clip from 86 still sends shivers down my spine....

I have never known another charismatic, peacock strutting genius performer be able to unify a 70'000 crowd like he does in this song....the second verse when they put the lights on is simply beautiful


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=U0jw0IPYRAM&feature=related

brilliant stuff from fred,

as you say he could control the crowd any way he wanted.......true genius.

i also love "lap of the gods" which was performed quite superbly.


sean,
i do hope you are wrong,however may and taylor should maybe have used a different band name because without the govnor it aint Queen.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I'm partly with MK on this one. I Liked the early stuff , Seven seas of Rhye and the Sheer heart attack Album were quite good, but A Night and the Opera and Bohemian Rapsody were a tad to pretentious for my taste, and i have never really liked them since
Anyone here see them at the Kursaal in 73 (supporting Mott the Hoople IIRC) or on Canvey the next year ?

Mate.....Death on 2 legs from ANATO ia genius

 

[MK Shrimper]

Sorry mate....i respect your musical views but on this one......you are talking out of your *** mate

I don't even own a donkey!

Musical is subjective David - to me, Queen are bloated and over hyped. Some of their albums are utter rubbish. Maybe a nod, like Firestorm, to early Queen - Tie Your Mother Down, Seven Seas of Rye but some of the later stuff is prentious dirge.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I don't even own a donkey!

Musical is subjective David - to me, Queen are bloated and over hyped. Some of their albums are utter rubbish. Maybe a nod, like Firestorm, to early Queen - Tie Your Mother Down, Seven Seas of Rye but some of the later stuff is prentious dirge.

well i disagree mate....you have to see them live to appreciate what they were all about. At the end of the day they were a performance band simply because they were good enough to unlike a lot of the bands today who can knock out a few ok albums but could not fill a toilet let alone 250'000 people over 2 nights that could not even speak English.

some of the later albums might not have achieved the standard of the early work but as i said they were all about taking it to the masses on a live performance and for me there are very few bands that can challenge Queen on that level.

 

[Firestorm]

well i disagree mate....you have to see them live to appreciate what they were all about. At the end of the day they were a performance band simply because they were good enough to unlike a lot of the bands today who can knock out a few ok albums but could not fill a toilet let alone 250'000 people over 2 nights that could not even speak English.

some of the later albums might not have achieved the standard of the early work but as i said they were all about taking it to the masses on a live performance and for me there are very few bands that can challenge Queen on that level.

To me thats a reason for not liking them ......
Stadium bands have never done it for me personally. In 76/77 the "yoof" were all about knocking the big rich mega bands down and putting music back to the ordinary person and I tended to agree with that. Bands which go massive then charge ridiculous ticket prices to play massive arenas where the stage is miles from a large percentage of the audience are, to me (and this is only my opinion) selling out their roots a bit.
In all my days of watching bands, apart from taking the wife at the time to see Rod Stewart at Wembley Areana, the largest places I have been are Hammersmith Palais and the Rainbow.
I tend to go off bands when they get too popular (Even the Clash later stuff didn't appeal a great deal)

Thats not an argument against Queen, just an explanation of my stance really

 

[MK Shrimper]

I hate seeing bands in big venues. And lets not forget Queen played Sun City at the height of apartheid...

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

Fair comment Gaz......but i don’t get the "Fashionable" we have to stop liking something because it is popular....to me that smacks of people that want to have something to them selves like “they” discovered it but when other people start to agree and start to like them just as much, then all of a sudden they have sold out and are not fashionable anymore.....i really do not get that.

My opinion of a band is not changed because they become popular. I wonder how people would react if all of a sudden a Russian billionaire brought Southend and after 5 years turned them in to a top 3 Premiership side with a host of household names and an average of 45'000 fans a week. Different playing field to music but it is again the concept of would you go off them because they became popular??

 

[MissWestStand]

I saw Queen at the O2 last week and they were brilliant, am going again to the 7 November date too :) we all love Freddy and I glad that Paul Rodgers doesnt try to be him, he does a great job though!

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I hate seeing bands in big venues. And lets not forget Queen played Sun City at the height of apartheid...

I have seen bands in tiny venues from a pub to a club to the Cliffs to Brixton going right up to Wembley and for me it is a number of different experiences that make the night. Big stadium gigs are more about the experience than the quality of the music due to the size and acoustics but they are equally as popular as small venues which is the reason they get filled!!

 

[MissWestStand]

I hate seeing bands in big venues. And lets not forget Queen played Sun City at the height of apartheid...

Have you ever actually been to the O2? One of the best venues around in my opinion, been there so many times and love it

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

I hate seeing bands in big venues. And lets not forget Queen played Sun City at the height of apartheid...

Point taken but lets also not forget that Queen insisted that the concerts were played before integrated audiences

 

[MK Shrimper]

Point taken but lets also not forget that Queen insisted that the concerts were played before integrated audiences

Hmm, but were they? I doubt it. As South Africa were banned from international sports etc, it was a bit sickening that a band as already rolling in it as Queen took the money.

I guess Freddy had to pay for his prodigious drug habit somehow....

 

[MK Shrimper]

Have you ever actually been to the O2? One of the best venues around in my opinion, been there so many times and love it

Yeah, saw Snow Patrol there last year and I was so far away from the stage I watched the action on a TV screen.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

Freddy Mercury is one of Rock biggest legends and very few command the respect and popularity that followed him during and after his death.

On 20 April 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium. Performers included Def Leppard, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Annie Lennox, Guns N' Roses, Extreme, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Zucchero, Metallica, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor and Spinal Tap, along with the three remaining members of Queen, performed many of Queen's major hits. It was a successful concert that was televised to over 1 billion viewers worldwide. The concert is listed in The Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert." It raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.

 

[MK Shrimper]

Ooh, Zucchero and Extreme. Musical Legends. :D :p :p

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

Hmm, but were they? I doubt it.

Well neither you nor i was there so we can not really comment with any degree of accuracy but it is reported that it was in fact an integrated audience

 

[MK Shrimper]

Well neither you nor i was there so we can not really comment with any degree of accuracy but it is reported that it was in fact an integrated audience

Queen played a run of shows at Sun City, the entertainment complex located in Bophutswana, one of 10 South African Bantustans: tracts of low-quality land supposedly enshrined as independent black homelands that were in fact one of the struts of the apartheid regime. They amounted to parched rural ghettoes; the fact that the Sun City complex - a casino-and-golf resort, akin to an Afrikaner's Las Vegas - was located in one of them only underlined their cynically conceived place in the apartheid scheme.

"We've thought a lot about the morals of it a lot," claimed Brian May at the time, long alleged to be one of the cleverest men in rock, "and it is something we've decided to do. The band is not political - we play to anybody who wants to come and listen." "Throughout our career we've been a very non-political group," said bassist John Deacon (aka The Other One). "We enjoy going to new places. We've toured America and Europe so many times that it's nice to go somewhere different ... I know there can be a bit of fuss, but apparently we're very popular down there ... Basically, we want to play wherever fans want to see us."

The cloth-headed, deluded, impossibly arrogant nature of these pronouncements hardly needed mentioning. Queen were swiftly fined by the British Musicians' Union, and briefly turned into music press pariahs. They were not alone: the likes of Rod Stewart and Status Quo also played Sun City, easing their consciences by making donations to local charities. Queen were no exception: they attempted to make up for the breaking of the cultural boycott by handing some spare royalties to a school for the deaf and blind. It didn't wash: the UN stuck them on its list of blacklisted artists, where they remained until apartheid was finally dismantled.

In these washed-out, relativist, non-ideological times, bearing a grudge based on all this might look rather churlish, but what the hell: in the wake of their Sun City season, I have always found Queen's alliance with rock's liberal bleeding hearts a little too much to take. Towards the end of Live Aid, for example, Mercury and May played a recently written song called Is This the World We Created?, which took issue with disease, suffering and human evil in general. I waited in vain for a specific reference to the heart-stopping wrongs they had witnessed in Bophutswana, but none came. And what about the utopian sentiments of One Vision, released a year after their South African trip? "No wrong, no right," sang Freddie. "I want to tell you, there's no black and no white." Well, phooey, frankly.

 

[Aberdeen Shrimper]

Ooh, Zucchero and Extreme. Musical Legends. :D :p :p

Elton John, David Bowie, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Robert Plant, Annie Lennox, Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard and Mick Ronson

Ermmmmm

Yup!!