My Thoughts On Queen: A Night At The Odeon

Now that I've listened to the Night a the Odeon for a while, I have to say that I'm more pleased with it than I thought I would be. I like the fact that the backing vocals are not overdubbed as in both Rainbow concerts. However, I like the overall sound more on the Rainbow sets. I don't know whether it is due to the fact that they had better source material (the Rainbow concerts were recorded by Roy Thomas Baker as opposed to the A Night at the Odeon being recorded by BBC engineers) for the Rainbow concerts or what, but I wish they could have mixed the drums on A night at the Odeon more like they are on the Rainbow concerts.

Now, I've always wondered about the guitar(s) on Now I'm Here. Both the Rainbow concerts and A Night at the Odeon have the high "squealing" guitar part after "I'm just a...". Since they seemed to be so against using tapes, I'm not sure how else Brian could have achieved that sound since he is clearly seen playing the chord at that moment. He could have pre-recorded the high guitar part to his tape-delay box and triggered it at the appropriate moment? What is also quite strange is the fact that the effect is not heard again on the subsequent official live releases. Why stop using such a cool effect?

^^ I seem to remember that on some of their latter days tour that part of NIH was played by the keyboard player, whoever it happened to be at the time.

The squealing guitar part was indeed from a tape - they did a similar thing with the screams from the middle section of Ogre Battle. With both those things in mind, I don't think they were against using tapes at all, really.

I'd guess that they stopped using the playback for that part of Now I'm Here because they were starting to play it with a much faster tempo. They could have gone into the studio and sped the part up to suit, but I guess they weren't attached to it enough/didn't think it was essential enough for the effort.

Guitarist Brian May, “There weren’t any tricks to be had. It’s all live and dangerous, as it is now with us."

http://www.queenonline.com/en/news-archive/roger-brian-discuss-live-at-the-rainbow-74-on-inthestudio/

But technically it is not all live because a tape was used. :)

It's Roger's quote that gets me.

"I said to Brian, ‘These tracks are great!’ I forgot that we were a really heavy band.”

Early Queen live shows were awesome rock spectacles, today's too slick pop shows are like a different band entirely.

Tape is also used for the intro of Father To Son live

I got the Bluray version with the audio CD. I'm more than happy with the result of this great old concert. Hope we see more of these old concerts released in the future still.

I got the Bluray and CD too ... Just my only one qustion is - Why I must hear so terrible sound of the Taylor's drums ?... Where is a snare drum and a hi-hat there in the sound mix ??? WTF ???

The hihat is terrible. It's just a constant hiss. :)

Yes, hi hat has very strange sound... On rainbow (november) it is very powerful...

There would be a more consistent quality to the Queen releases if they stopped and thought about employing professionals, instead of seemingly taking people on who have blagged their way into their jobs. You've got amateurs like Greg Brooks and Gary Taylor involved in not only archiving and cataloguing but even doing sleeve notes etc, and Josh MacRae and Justin Shirley-Smith mixing. Fucking hell. You would with a company headed by several multi-millionnaires, they would stick their hands in their pockets, and get the very best people in to work on their music but they don't. And that's the worrying thing about a potential anthology type release, is that anything that's needed to be mixed fresh they will suffer at the hands of these fools who radically change the drum sound etc etc as the couple of outtakes that turned up on the re-issues showed. Any cunt can take the new digital multitracks of professionally recorded and engineered recordings and create something that sounds OK, it takes a real pro to get them sounding great.

It's all very odd in QPL land.

[QUOTE] [b]Negative Creep wrote:[/b]

There would be a more consistent quality to the Queen releases if they stopped and thought about employing professionals, instead of seemingly taking people on who have blagged their way into their jobs. You've got amateurs like Greg Brooks and Gary Taylor involved in not only archiving and cataloguing but even doing sleeve notes etc, and Josh MacRae and Justin Shirley-Smith mixing. Fucking hell. You would with a company headed by several multi-millionnaires, they would stick their hands in their pockets, and get the very best people in to work on their music but they don't. And that's the worrying thing about a potential anthology type release, is that anything that's needed to be mixed fresh they will suffer at the hands of these fools who radically change the drum sound etc etc as the couple of outtakes that turned up on the re-issues showed. Any cunt can take the new digital multitracks of professionally recorded and engineered recordings and create something that sounds OK, it takes a real pro to get them sounding great.

It's all very odd in QPL land.[/QUOTE]

Couldn't have said it better.

+1.
It seems since Jim Beach arrival into Queen camp, band started to be surrounded by wrong personnel. With exception of David Richards.

[QUOTE] [b]Negative Creep wrote:[/b]

There would be a more consistent quality to the Queen releases if they stopped and thought about employing professionals, instead of seemingly taking people on who have blagged their way into their jobs. You've got amateurs like Greg Brooks and Gary Taylor involved in not only archiving and cataloguing but even doing sleeve notes etc, and Josh MacRae and Justin Shirley-Smith mixing. Fucking hell. You would with a company headed by several multi-millionnaires, they would stick their hands in their pockets, and get the very best people in to work on their music but they don't. And that's the worrying thing about a potential anthology type release, is that anything that's needed to be mixed fresh they will suffer at the hands of these fools who radically change the drum sound etc etc as the couple of outtakes that turned up on the re-issues showed. Any cunt can take the new digital multitracks of professionally recorded and engineered recordings and create something that sounds OK, it takes a real pro to get them sounding great.

It's all very odd in QPL land.[/QUOTE]

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Don't forget the executive producers were Brian May and Roger as stated in the endcredits.They must found the mix excellent for a release and THEIR will is law.

[QUOTE] [b]Queenman!! wrote:[/b]

Don't forget the executive producers were Brian May and Roger as stated in the endcredits.They must found the mix excellent for a release and THEIR will is law.[/QUOTE]

Sure, of course Brian and Roger OK everything. I would be surprised if they gve stuff like this that much of a critical listen though, particularly Roger.... and they must both have serious tinnitus and hearing loss from years of touring etc. If they gave this kind of material to serious mix engineers to work on, the results would blow away what we're getting... but beggars can't be choosers in this situation!