Your 5 favorite legs/tours of Queen (also the 5 least favorite).

Sir GH wrote: Yara wrote:

The GameTour from 1980 features some of the best versions of a couple of songs, "Let Me Entertain You" from Oklahoma being for sure one of them.

Oklahoma 80?  Have you heard something we haven't.. ?
Greg is right, sorry, I was thinking about Oakland 80!

Singing all those notes in Killer Queen in 1980 were totally fine. In fact, one of my favorite versions is from Brussels 1980. And I agree he oversang save me many times but he never over sang your my best friend. Hitting that A4 was totally fine and fit with the song. That was his making up for the fact that he never went for the C5's.

You LOVE oversinging!

Hey, you should check out the New York 1980 versions of Killer Queen--boy, was I wrong about Harford/Brussels/Frankfurt being the most ridiculous!

Oversinging Killer Queen doesn't fit! Sustaining and over-vibratoing G4s and Ab4s, plus going up the scale (instead of down), completely messes the song's meaning up.

You gotta be fucking with me here!

[i]Gregsynth wrote: Oversinging Killer Queen doesn't fit! Sustaining and over-vibratoing G4s and Ab4s, plus going up the scale (instead of down), completely messes the song's meaning up.

You gotta be fucking with me here! [/i]
I agree that oversinging Killer Queen doesn't work, but I'd go even further: Killer Queen never worked live. It's a charming, delicate and ironic tune which was made live into a dull and minor footnote to whatever came before or next.

I mostly agree with you about KQ not working live--but there's some REALLY good versions from 1974-1975!

Some of you have said the Magic tour is repetitve, maybe only to the band, im sure not everybody would of gone to every single show

I quite like the wembley gig, the band as a whole have so much energy on that one and freddie especially  he gives everything

Wembley and Milton Keynes gig are my current favorites, somebody to love is just awesome

from all the gigs that i have managed to see, the only one that slightly disapoints me is the japan 85 gig, the sound quality of the dvd is awful and it makes the band seem less good than usual

Live aid on its own is blooming fantastic

freddiefan91,

The "Magic Tour" featured the same songs, played the same way in the same arrangements night after night for the whole tour when the band had a HUGE wealth of material from which they could choose.

Of course, they had the new album to promote and rightly, they played a lot of material from that period, but there was NOTHING in the set list to excite, stimulate and thrill.

Brian looked bored shitless for much of the time and rightly so - a large number of  "us" were too.

The magic tour was quite sucessful according to the band themselves

I like the montreal concert, shame about the crowd though!!!

Have seen bits and pieces of some 70's concerts but i couldnt say what was best or worst

You guys have way too much time on your hands lol!

I have just about every *well known* live recording in some format or another, whether shit in quality or the most up to date "remasters" and I don't think I've even had the chance to listen to them all, let alone analyse every note of every track and be able to comment on which song was played better when.  You guys are fuckin amazing!

I have no idea which tour was the best, but I can say that I absolutely hate Freddie's warbling through most of the early 70's shows although the setlists were interesting,  I absolutely fuckin hate Hyde Park'76,  '77 picked right up and then they flopped again in the latter 70's.  The Hot Space stuff, I thought, was good, '84/'85 was rank but I did like the Birmingham '84 show.  Magic tour seems stale to us because it's been overdone over the years on TV and radio (Wembley and Budapest, obviously!!!).  Same with Montreal '81.

Songs I LOVE live, though - Save Me (Montreal is best!), Father To Son, Spread Your Wings, You Take My Breath Away, My Melancholy Blues, It's Late, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, If You Can't Beat Them, Need Your Loving Tonight, Play The Game, Rock It, Put Out The Fire, Fat Bottomed Girls., Flick Of The Wrist, Death On Two Legs, Flash/The Hero.

Songs I HATE live - Killer Queen , We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, Get Down Make Love, That fuckin Guitar Solo that's never changed in the past 500 years, I'm In Love With My Car, Another One Bites The Dust, Crazy Little Thing Called Love.

Milton Keynes '82 has the best Somebody To Love, apart from that I couldn't care less if I heard it live or not.

Doin' Alright was interesting but lasted too long....

Just my opinions, don't kill me lol

freddiefan91 wrote: Some of you have said the Magic tour is repetitve, maybe only to the band, im sure not everybody would of gone to every single show

I quite like the wembley gig, the band as a whole have so much energy on that one and freddie especially  he gives everything

Wembley and Milton Keynes gig are my current favorites, somebody to love is just awesome

from all the gigs that i have managed to see, the only one that slightly disapoints me is the japan 85 gig, the sound quality of the dvd is awful and it makes the band seem less good than usual

Live aid on its own is blooming fantastic
==========

That 5/11/1985 gig doesn't do the band justice during that leg: The original VHS/DVD mix has an AWFUL audio mix. There's a bootleg of that show (LemonySnick123 uploaded it on his channel), that has a much better mix.

5/8 and 5/9 are overall much better gigs: Those are considered to be some of Freddie's best Works Tour gigs--I agree.

Benn wrote: freddiefan91,

The "Magic Tour" featured the same songs, played the same way in the same arrangements night after night for the whole tour when the band had a HUGE wealth of material from which they could choose.

Of course, they had the new album to promote and rightly, they played a lot of material from that period, but there was NOTHING in the set list to excite, stimulate and thrill.

Brian looked bored shitless for much of the time and rightly so - a large number of  "us" were too.
===============================

That's really the only criticism I have of the Magic Tour: The set-list. If I had to change the set-list, I'd drop Seven Seas Of Rhye (every version seems "average"), and the Acoustic cover section. I'd replace it with songs like Somebody To Love and probably a song that got dropped from the last tour (It's A Hard Life).

I'm probably in the minority here, but I think the Magic tour setlist was perfect.

After Live Aid, the man on the street was aware of Queen again.  To have mass appeal for stadium-sized audiences, they played most of the older hits, plenty of songs from their last two albums, and 50s rock and roll stuff to please middle-aged folks.

Sure, in retrospect it was a greatest hits setlist, but back then, the songs from The Works and A Kind Of Magic were pretty current and popular.  The band were wise enough not to spend more than 5 minutes playing old songs that 75% of the audience didn't know.

Sir GH wrote: I'm probably in the minority here, but I think the Magic tour setlist was perfect.

After Live Aid, the man on the street was aware of Queen again.  To have mass appeal for stadium-sized audiences, they played most of the older hits, plenty of songs from their last two albums, and 50s rock and roll stuff to please middle-aged folks.

Sure, in retrospect it was a greatest hits setlist, but back then, the songs from The Works and A Kind Of Magic were pretty current and popular.  The band were wise enough not to spend more than 5 minutes playing old songs that 75% of the audience didn't know.
i agree with you.

In my opinion one of the great talents of Queen as a live band is that they knew how to put together a setlist that works and they clearly had a concept. I'd even go as far as to say that they perfected their typical Queen concept for the Magic tour.

I agree with Greg tabout the section with the 50's songs though. Some nights it worked but at other nights less so.

Gregsynth wrote:

That is a very good point about the Crazy Tour (and a point I've failed to realize): There's only 4 available audio downloads from that concert (out of the 20 or so). We don't know what he sounded like!

That's why I'm so wanting more bootlegs from that tour--I don't mind the quality!
-----------------

Listen to an amateur video is available, in addition to Hammersmith.

Waaaaahh, why do not more epic bootleg from this tour? : (

PD:

About which I consider better tour, it is quite clear ...

1. Crazy Tour
2. Crazy Tour
3. Crazy Tour
4. Crazy Tour
5. Crazy Tour

And the worst:

1. Live Killers (Japan)
2. Hot Space Tour (U.S.)
3. Works Tour (1984, except the concert brussels)
4. Day at the Races Tour (Japan)

Good, but not exceptional:

1. Hot Space Europe
2. The Game Tour
3. Magic Tour