He will rock you
So I was on a couple of gigs last week. A local band called Queen and this crazy kid Adam Lambert, you might have heard of them.
I'd taken a quick look at the Youtube videos from the previous shows in Ukraine, Russia and Poland to get an idea what we'd be treated to but I didn't want to spoil the evening by seeing too much. I wanted to experience it in person for the first time.
Our tickets for the first day were for the floor. The doors opened at 18:30, so with N leaving work an hour before, there was no chance of making it to barrier, but we ended up just a few metres away from the walkway. Plus the floor at the Apollo turned out to be sloping, which is such a brilliant idea. I don't know why every single venue can't have that. It wasn't steep but even that little bit helped to see better from further back.
The audience was an interesting mix of Queen and Adam fans. Judging by the conversations around us while we waited for the band to take the stage, quite a few people had only a general idea of who Adam even was but I didn't hear anything negative about him; mostly everyone was just very expectant to see how he would perform.
The show started late, and everyone was shuffling kind of nervously, clapping and starting chants to encourage things to move along. Then the curtain dropped, we heard the first notes to Flash, and it was on. I'm obviously a huge Adam fan, so I inevitably view anything to do with him through rose-tinted glasses, but I've also been a Queen fan since I was a little kid and my mother used to listen to them a lot, and wanted Adam to do justice to their legacy. I was expecting nothing less than perfection from this combination and boy did they deliver that.
Adam's voice is so good and his range is pretty much unparalleled. He didn't try to imitate Freddie Mercury's singing or stage antics but paid homage to him, like leading the audience into a call-and-response for Another One Bites the Dust (and then took it so high that the laughing crowd had no chance of following him). He strutted, jumped, danced, spun, snapped. He was, in a word, perfect.
The set list was almost identical to the previous shows. They did all the big hits but also some less well-known (or at least less played?), such as '39 and Dragon Attack. My personal favourites were Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga (hands!) and Who Wants to Live Forever. During Love of My Life, when the image of Freddie led the audience to a group song, I just started bawling on both times.
Wednesday's set
Flash (intro)
Seven Seas Of Rhye
Keep Yourself Alive
We Will Rock You (Fast)
Fat Bottomed Girls
Don’t Stop Me Now
Under Pressure (Roger/Adam duet)
I Want It All
Who Wants To Live Forever
A Kind Of Magic (Roger)
These Are Days Of Our Lives (Roger)
The Show Must Go On (part) (Brian)
Love Of My Life (Brian)
'39 (Brian)
Dragon Attack
Drum Battle / Guitar Solo
I Want To Break Free
Another One Bites The Dust
Radio Ga Ga
Somebody To Love
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Bohemian Rhapsody
---
Tie Your Mother Down (Brian)
We Will Rock You
We Are The Champions
So Adam wasn't the only one singing. Roger Taylor dueted Under Pressure with him and then led These Are the Days of Our Lives while old footage of Freddie was played in the background. And Brian May took on The Show Must Go On, '39, and Tie Your Mother Down.
As a side note, the lighting was incredible. @doktored said on Twitter: I want this lighting guy, and I want him now. I also learned the next day that there were some pretty distinguished guests in the audience, such as Bob Geldorf and Tony Iommi.
It was such a good gig. The energy was really great but due to the median age of the fans, there was no shoving or elbows to the face. Adam remains an amazing performer and he kept a perfect balance between not mimicking Freddie and not changing the songs too much. And Brian May is such a fanboy, seriously. He and Adam were taking turns talking up each other. Extra bonus points to Adam for wearing a Queen shirt and for being bare-foot (again! I love how he mixes that gilded rock god with complete casualness).
Afterwards, as we were queuing to get out, everyone was dissecting the performances. A couple of either American or Canadian (I can’t tell the difference in accents) were saying things like “they need to take this on the road” and “they will, I bet this was just a test run”. I’m going to chalk that up to them being diehard Queen fans and not knowing Adam, because he’s consistently denied any plans of becoming their new lead singer.
And why on Earth wouldn’t he? Adam can finally make exactly the kind of music he likes, so why would anything think he’d give up his own successful career to sing someone else’s songs? From what I’ve seen, old Queen fans have been pretty accommodating of him but that might be just down to these concerts being a special occasion. If Adam was trying to permanently replace Freddie, he’d have to put up with constant comparisons to a man that is all but immortal to his fans.
When we got back home around midnight, my clothes were soaked through, my feet were killing me and my voice was barely working from all the shouting, but I couldn’t have been happier.
Since I'm not a particularly evocative storyteller, here's another perspective into the night. And a Yahoo news piece.
I got a proper fright regarding the Thursday show. Tuesday night we started looking for the tickets to have them at the ready, and the Thursday's set (which had been my responsibility) was nowhere to be found. We turned over every single item that wasn’t nailed down, looked into bathroom cupboards and emptied kitchen drawers.
To no use, and I was about to go nuts, cursing my idiocy. It was too late to contact customer service that night, so the only thing left to do was give them a call on Wednesday morning. It took me several hours to get through, and their entire system is really idiotic. There are several automated recordings about this and that event, with repeated instructions to look things up online, before you get to any menus. And when you’ve finally hopped through all the menu hoops, you get told that they’re extremely busy and that your call will be disconnected.
After a few terrible hours I finally got to speak to someone and then it was just as easy as cancelling my old tickets and issuing replacement ones to be collected at the box office on Thursday. I was so relieved I hadn’t in my stupidity caused us to miss the (okay, second) opportunity of a lifetime.
This time we had seats, which I foolishly believed meant I could rest my poor feet for a few hours and just enjoy the music. But the second the first notes of Flash were out, everyone was up on their seats. And there we went again.
Highlights of the evening included Adam pointing at Sauli when he sang 'I've fallen in love' during I Want to Break Free.
I Want to Break Free also gave us a wardrobe malfunction, when Adam ripped his "pants" (*g*) when climbing back on stage. (If the combined legacy of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson won't be enough for the history books, at least they've given us this delightfully descriptive term.)
The songs were the same but I felt Adam was more comfortable on his second night at the Apollo. Both the city and the venue have a history with Queen, so I can imagine he felt some pressure. But there he was, being his incredible, awesome self, and I can't imagine he left a soul cold.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can also comment there using OpenID.
I'd taken a quick look at the Youtube videos from the previous shows in Ukraine, Russia and Poland to get an idea what we'd be treated to but I didn't want to spoil the evening by seeing too much. I wanted to experience it in person for the first time.
Our tickets for the first day were for the floor. The doors opened at 18:30, so with N leaving work an hour before, there was no chance of making it to barrier, but we ended up just a few metres away from the walkway. Plus the floor at the Apollo turned out to be sloping, which is such a brilliant idea. I don't know why every single venue can't have that. It wasn't steep but even that little bit helped to see better from further back.
The audience was an interesting mix of Queen and Adam fans. Judging by the conversations around us while we waited for the band to take the stage, quite a few people had only a general idea of who Adam even was but I didn't hear anything negative about him; mostly everyone was just very expectant to see how he would perform.
The show started late, and everyone was shuffling kind of nervously, clapping and starting chants to encourage things to move along. Then the curtain dropped, we heard the first notes to Flash, and it was on. I'm obviously a huge Adam fan, so I inevitably view anything to do with him through rose-tinted glasses, but I've also been a Queen fan since I was a little kid and my mother used to listen to them a lot, and wanted Adam to do justice to their legacy. I was expecting nothing less than perfection from this combination and boy did they deliver that.
Adam's voice is so good and his range is pretty much unparalleled. He didn't try to imitate Freddie Mercury's singing or stage antics but paid homage to him, like leading the audience into a call-and-response for Another One Bites the Dust (and then took it so high that the laughing crowd had no chance of following him). He strutted, jumped, danced, spun, snapped. He was, in a word, perfect.
The set list was almost identical to the previous shows. They did all the big hits but also some less well-known (or at least less played?), such as '39 and Dragon Attack. My personal favourites were Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Ga Ga (hands!) and Who Wants to Live Forever. During Love of My Life, when the image of Freddie led the audience to a group song, I just started bawling on both times.
Wednesday's set
Flash (intro)
Seven Seas Of Rhye
Keep Yourself Alive
We Will Rock You (Fast)
Fat Bottomed Girls
Don’t Stop Me Now
Under Pressure (Roger/Adam duet)
I Want It All
Who Wants To Live Forever
A Kind Of Magic (Roger)
These Are Days Of Our Lives (Roger)
The Show Must Go On (part) (Brian)
Love Of My Life (Brian)
'39 (Brian)
Dragon Attack
Drum Battle / Guitar Solo
I Want To Break Free
Another One Bites The Dust
Radio Ga Ga
Somebody To Love
Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Bohemian Rhapsody
---
Tie Your Mother Down (Brian)
We Will Rock You
We Are The Champions
So Adam wasn't the only one singing. Roger Taylor dueted Under Pressure with him and then led These Are the Days of Our Lives while old footage of Freddie was played in the background. And Brian May took on The Show Must Go On, '39, and Tie Your Mother Down.
As a side note, the lighting was incredible. @doktored said on Twitter: I want this lighting guy, and I want him now. I also learned the next day that there were some pretty distinguished guests in the audience, such as Bob Geldorf and Tony Iommi.
It was such a good gig. The energy was really great but due to the median age of the fans, there was no shoving or elbows to the face. Adam remains an amazing performer and he kept a perfect balance between not mimicking Freddie and not changing the songs too much. And Brian May is such a fanboy, seriously. He and Adam were taking turns talking up each other. Extra bonus points to Adam for wearing a Queen shirt and for being bare-foot (again! I love how he mixes that gilded rock god with complete casualness).
Afterwards, as we were queuing to get out, everyone was dissecting the performances. A couple of either American or Canadian (I can’t tell the difference in accents) were saying things like “they need to take this on the road” and “they will, I bet this was just a test run”. I’m going to chalk that up to them being diehard Queen fans and not knowing Adam, because he’s consistently denied any plans of becoming their new lead singer.
And why on Earth wouldn’t he? Adam can finally make exactly the kind of music he likes, so why would anything think he’d give up his own successful career to sing someone else’s songs? From what I’ve seen, old Queen fans have been pretty accommodating of him but that might be just down to these concerts being a special occasion. If Adam was trying to permanently replace Freddie, he’d have to put up with constant comparisons to a man that is all but immortal to his fans.
When we got back home around midnight, my clothes were soaked through, my feet were killing me and my voice was barely working from all the shouting, but I couldn’t have been happier.
Since I'm not a particularly evocative storyteller, here's another perspective into the night. And a Yahoo news piece.
I got a proper fright regarding the Thursday show. Tuesday night we started looking for the tickets to have them at the ready, and the Thursday's set (which had been my responsibility) was nowhere to be found. We turned over every single item that wasn’t nailed down, looked into bathroom cupboards and emptied kitchen drawers.
To no use, and I was about to go nuts, cursing my idiocy. It was too late to contact customer service that night, so the only thing left to do was give them a call on Wednesday morning. It took me several hours to get through, and their entire system is really idiotic. There are several automated recordings about this and that event, with repeated instructions to look things up online, before you get to any menus. And when you’ve finally hopped through all the menu hoops, you get told that they’re extremely busy and that your call will be disconnected.
After a few terrible hours I finally got to speak to someone and then it was just as easy as cancelling my old tickets and issuing replacement ones to be collected at the box office on Thursday. I was so relieved I hadn’t in my stupidity caused us to miss the (okay, second) opportunity of a lifetime.
This time we had seats, which I foolishly believed meant I could rest my poor feet for a few hours and just enjoy the music. But the second the first notes of Flash were out, everyone was up on their seats. And there we went again.
Highlights of the evening included Adam pointing at Sauli when he sang 'I've fallen in love' during I Want to Break Free.
Click to viewI Want to Break Free also gave us a wardrobe malfunction, when Adam ripped his "pants" (*g*) when climbing back on stage. (If the combined legacy of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson won't be enough for the history books, at least they've given us this delightfully descriptive term.)
The songs were the same but I felt Adam was more comfortable on his second night at the Apollo. Both the city and the venue have a history with Queen, so I can imagine he felt some pressure. But there he was, being his incredible, awesome self, and I can't imagine he left a soul cold.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. You can also comment there using OpenID.