Has anybody seen any Queen Tribute acts and what did you think of them?

Seen the folowing...

Gary Mullen & Works - Gary does an excellent Freddie. He used to be quite predicatable with set list i.e Wembley 86, but more recently he is mixing it up a lot more. He has fantastic vocals... he just sings a little too fast IMO whci is bizarre cos when he slow's it down he sounds more like Freddie. (Glasgow)

Gary Mullen doing karaoke...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0eI2l3Xe3o

Mercury - Best I've seen. Great set list, best all round band wise. (Southport)

Magic A Kind Of Queen - Didn't like them at all sadly. Really poor lead singer. His voice gets on your nerves very quickly. (Glasgow)

Ga Ga - Don't dress up, they just perform Queen's music... very well indeed. They are the best musicians I've seen performing as a Queen tribute. (Seen in Glasgow)

QEII - The guy looks a lot like Freddie, but that's were it ends. Light hearted fun, but not as good as others I've seen by a long way. (Seen at Blackpool)

Most Queen tributes are just that... a tribute. They all obviously love the music and put on a good show. Have a beer and relax when watching them... and don't judge them in terms of the real deal cos you'll only be dissapointed.

I've seen a few great Freddie's on the internet.  I even had the pleasure of working with a stunning Freddie a bit over a year ago.  I have never (and I mean never) heard a Brian that sounded terribly good, and I rush to include myself in that statement, as Brian was the role I was playing.  

Some are fine guitarists but I've never heard one that emulates Brian as accurately as some of the Freddie's impersonators seem to do their job.  I find that to be a bizarre paradox because it really should be (on paper) far easier to imitate the end product of some vibrating strings + magnetic pickups + someone's guitar rig, as opposed to a wholly unique set of vocal cords + a peculiarly shaped skull that resonates a certain way.

The thing I do like about tribute acts (and their Freddie players, in particular) is that they all seem to specialise in a different aspect of his live career, whether it's intentional or not.  Mullen's got a great 80's thing going on.  One of the American acts is pure 70's.  The guy from Killer Queen has the look down (the voice less so).  The one that I worked with has the long vowel sounds from the 80's down to a tee, but without the harshness.  

I'll say this much, the Freddie I played with is just about the most tremendous singer I've heard with my own two ears.  It used to sound spooky with his voice coming out of the monitors as loud as it was - it was even spookier when he'd just be mucking about in between shows, and I'd get to hear all the stuff that we didn't do live (Don't Try So Hard, stuff like that).  I was very lucky to get work with those guys - say what you want about tribute bands, but the love of the music itself is very strong.

Zebonka12 wrote:

"I find that to be a bizarre paradox because it really should be (on paper) far easier to imitate the end product of some vibrating strings + magnetic pickups + someone's guitar rig"

...which goes to show how unique Brian May is.  Most guitarists can't appreciate him because they can't even begin to figure out how to play Tie Your Mother Down properly, never mind his more challenging stuff.  Even if they do try, they usually give up quickly and join the group of millions who can play Zeppelin and AC/DC riffs.  I've heard very few guitarists in my lifetime of listening who come close to capturing Brian's feeling.  One of them is our friend Luke from Australia who posts here.  Consider yourself plugged - you deserve it.

As much as I love Dream Theater, with enough practice anyone can play that stuff, challenging as it is.  There are surely hundreds of guys around the world who are Petrucci clones.  But to figure out guys like Brian May, Tom Scholz, and Jeff Beck, it takes supreme dedication of getting into someone's head.

The aforementioned three are victims of their own brilliance - they are so brilliantly unique to the point that most can't comprehend what they have contributed to the evolution of the guitar.  This is largely why there is no definitive Queen tribute out there, and probably never will be.

"One of them is our friend Luke from Australia who posts here."

Indeed!  I was his fill-in boy last year.  I've never met him in person unfortunately; we're on opposite ends of the continent.  Top fella - the whole band are great guys.  Thanks for plugging them - I don't have the audacity to do it myself, haha.

"The aforementioned three are victims of their own brilliance - they are so brilliantly unique to the point that most can't comprehend what they have contributed to the evolution of the guitar. "

I think they players themselves fall into that latter category.  True, it could be false modesty on their part - but Brian in particular, when he gets down to basic and just talks about guitar, speaks like any other joe.  He talks about it in a language that I can really understand as someone who just likes to play the damned thing; all bullshit out-the-window.

"As much as I love Dream Theater, with enough practice anyone can play that stuff, challenging as it is."

With regards to the really techie stuff, I found that it wasn't learning how to do it that was the problem; it was the way it made me sound.  Sweep picking is the readiest example I can think of - when I was about 19 I saw some Jason Becker for the first time and thought "to be taken seriously as a guitarist, I should learn a bit of this".  I gorged myself on some tutorials and spent a lot of my time getting acquainted with it as a technique, and just as I was getting somewhere I really began to feel disillusioned with it because I was sounding like 'someone else'.  As a discipline, there just wasn't enough room in there for my to put my own expression into it.  I'm not saying that anyone who sweep picks is not an individual player - but for me personally, some of those disciplines don't fit with my way of thinking, and so they're basically worthless as a form of communication.

As far as tribute bands go, I can honestly say that I didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to sound like Brian.  For starters I did a lot of my chop-building on Queen songs, so I fall into that idiom somewhat by default anyway.  Secondly, I don't view a tribute as 100% imitation.  I think you can do it at the same time as leaving a bit of room for yourself to breathe.  I'm not sure how other tribute-band folk would feel about that though!   Maybe one can pop in and beg to differ...