Live At The Rainbow

jamster1111 wrote:

live at the rainbow was NOT  overdubbed at all...it was just probably the best queen performance caught on video. Freddie's voice sounds amazing and everyone is at the top of their game.

They should remaster it even more and release it as an official dvd. They shouldn't release live at the hammersmith '75.
[/QUOTE]



Have you actually read this thread ? Have you watched the youtube links ? Have you actually LISTENED to the audio ? If at least one of the answers is yes, I don't understand why you do believe that there are no overdubs.
Or are you the director / editor of the film ? :-)

If you're sure about it, could you write some arguments ? Because I personally think that Now I'm Here is almost completely overdubbed, only the drums, the vocal echos and some of Brian's guitar work appears to be "real".

 



on my way up wrote:

I sincerely hope Queen Productions will do this era justice, I think it is possible.

Ok, this was off-topic:-)



 

This is never off-topic. This is always a topic lurking behind all threads. :)

 



 



 



Sir GH wrote:



 



 



 

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



Yara wrote:



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



Besides Freddie, none of the guys were really great singers - and one can easily notice that the lush vocal harmonies are the part of their music which suffers the most live.



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

Certainly, in the later years.  But in the early years their vocal harmonies were very often bang on.  Roger Taylor had one hell of a voice in his prime.

Believe me, despite all those differences between live&studio, or maybe because of them, I love Queen's live performances in general, even in the later years. I'd go as far as saying that I like the live versions of many songs better than the studio versions; and I'd also go as far as saying that if they don't release Hammersmith '79 soon I'll blow myself up in the QP building and become the first jihadist against QP's imperial greedy policies.   
 
I know I made a silly exaggerated point above ("basically the studio..."), and I'm the first to recognize it, but it was not intended as something literal, it's just my impression that this concert in particular at the Rainbow was heavily edited or tampered with. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe I haven't watched it for a long time. But that's the impression I have.
 
I like Roger's voice. My point is not bashing the guys. I like the way Roger & Freddie interacted and harmonized some of the high-notes Freddie couldn't or didn't want to go for live -> a good example would be If You Can't Be Them, starting at "hanging around for sooomeone to call..." when they beautifully modulate the song to E - it's an A4 in the studio I guess, if my memory serves me right - for a good deal of time.
 
I really enjoy listening to their live recordings. But the edits in "At The Rainbow", exactly because they make it sound so polished and even "robotic" to me, especially with regard to some vocal harmonies, spoil a bit of the fun. To my taste at least. 

I love the footage, though, and I remember it seemed to be a great performance anyway. 

My point being: it's normal and understandable that the vocal harmonies would suffer the most live, even in their prime. I have no quibbles with that because, giving the goals they set themselves, they faired very well live and many times the vocal harmonies were just beautiful and sounded much more natural - I love their vocal harmonies in Montreal '78, for instance, and I think even though Freddie's voice is suffering a good deal, my favorite version of "Spread Your Wings", studio included, comes from that concert. 

So...I'm not attacking them as live performers, by no means.   

I find the overdubbing disappointing solely because as I never got to see Queen live, I'd always hoped to be able to experience it through the videos of their concerts.

Can someone please tell me is there any live footage on you tube that is NOT overdubbed?

Is Live At The Bowl overdubbed?

Rather naively I supposed that overdubbing was only used where cutting/editing really required it, or on the odd totally bunged note.  I'm so disappointed!

[img=/images/smiley/msn/sad_smile.gif][/img]

Yara wrote:































































But the edits in "At The Rainbow", exactly because they make it sound so polished and even "robotic" to me, especially with regard to some vocal harmonies, spoil a bit of the fun. To my taste at least.

Yeah, I totally get that.  Albums are made to be polished, and live albums should be "live", as per their name.  If a couple of wrong notes are played or sung live, that's the beauty of it.. the fact that they're human.  That's why my all-time favourite live album is Chicago at Carnegie.  It's full of wrong notes... so real and raw.

Angeline wrote:































































Can someone please tell me is there any live footage on you tube that is NOT overdubbed?

Look up footage from Hammersmith Odeon '75 and Munich '78 for starters.

But the best way to hear concerts in their complete, unedited form is to listen to audience recordings.  While many of them are bad, many are quite good - for example, Boston '76, Montreal '78, and Chicago '80.  They're all available for download here.

Angeline wrote:

I find the overdubbing disappointing solely because as I never got to see Queen live, I'd always hoped to be able to experience it through the videos of their concerts.

Can someone please tell me is there any live footage on you tube that is NOT overdubbed?

Is Live At The Bowl overdubbed?

Rather naively I supposed that overdubbing was only used where cutting/editing really required it, or on the odd totally bunged note.  I'm so disappointed!

[img=/images/smiley/msn/sad_smile.gif][/img]

Yes, some minor edits, to my taste. But both Montreal 1981 and At The Bowl '82 have very minor edits. Those performances were really very good. To my taste, again.

What's interesting about Queenzone is that you can download some live concerts which have never been edited or overdubbed and see for yourself that many of Queen's most impressive performances haven't even been oficially released. They were really very good as a live act.

Regarding Montreal 81 and At The Bowl 82: there's some minor - to my taste, at least - editing, but both represent these Queen's concerts quite faithfuly. You can even notice the flaws: e.g, Freddie forgetting the lines in "Save Me" and "Dragon Attack" in Montreal, 1981. Nevertheless, it's a stunning, wonderful and impressive gig throughout. Ironically it's one of the best live versions of Save Me and the way he recovers the line is one of the highlights of the gig. :op There's always the silly stuff of doing some collage of the two nights, but that's always sounded to me so minor. Nothing that would spoil my joy at listening to these gigs.   

Don't be like that...hey, smile, cheer up, come on. Hehe. Like, it's not as if they played the whole concert again in the studio. There are to my taste some very minor edits in "At The Bowl" and "Live in Montreal". The performances were really top-notch and, as I wrote above, I think the very best Queen concerts, including some of the best from the Hot Space Tour, haven't even been released: the Leeds gig in 1982, for instance - a pristine performance, even better than "At The Bowl", I think. Or the gig at Hammersmith in 1979 which is jaw-dropping. And I could go on and on. 

Cheer up. I stopped writing my paper just to help you out...

...kidding. It's just to make you feel guilty. In fact I'm bored stiff of having to finish this thing and I'm using every single pretext not to do it. It's all ok, I just have to write the conclusion, and I did wrote one, but I'd like it to sound like a great coda. Hehehe. I don't think I'm gonna make it. Should I ask someone to overdub for me and write the coda? : -))      

Thanks Yara!

I do love the Montreal and Milton Keynes performances and will review the Hammy '79 as a break for writing my paper which I can guarantee is more boring (Derivative suits in Company law, anyone...)

I never noticed FM forgetting the words in Dragon Attack, can't wait to check that out because I agree with you, these little fuck ups are the interesting bits to watch, they are what make a performance come to life for me.

Hi Yara,
which edits are you talking about in Live At The Bowl ? I've been under the impression that the DVD is complete, just the CDs are edited (Freddie's speech before Staying Power and Brian's solo). Have I missed something ?
Also the only overdub I noticed on "Bowl" is Freddie's "this locality" during Fat Bottomed Girls, did anybody find something else ?

 



 



 



pittrek wrote:



 



Hi Yara,
which edits are you talking about in Live At The Bowl ? I've been under the impression that the DVD is complete, just the CDs are edited (Freddie's speech before Staying Power and Brian's solo). Have I missed something ?
Also the only overdub I noticed on "Bowl" is Freddie's "this locality" during Fat Bottomed Girls, did anybody find something else ?



 

I've got probably one awkward moment for your concering Live at the Bowl. Just when the second verse of Save Me starts, you will see several snippets of the concert edited together (watch Roger's drumming for instance, it doesn't make sense with the aforementioned song, plus an audience shot which was (probably) during Freddie's vocal exchange, as you can see a guy clearly mouthing 'ooooh')

It could be that the video was damaged at that point, hence the decision of showing some random moments.

Starts around 1:24 -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwR1ENJeReI

Live At The Rainbow has overdubs taken from the studio masters of the material that was recorded for the first three albums.  None of the vocal overdubs were FRESHLY done for inclusion on the film's soundtrack as this would have been cost prohibitive in terms of studio time & production.

"Did you all know that "Live At The Rainbow" was shown in some theaters?! Did you know that it was shown before a certain other film? Do you know what film that that was? It was Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains The Same". Supposedly this was only done in select theaters. "

Not sure about anywhere else, but here in the UK, I definitely saw it as a support feature for Jaws!

Tim

Benn wrote:

Live At The Rainbow has overdubs taken from the studio masters of the material that was recorded for the first three albums.  None of the vocal overdubs were FRESHLY done for inclusion on the film's soundtrack as this would have been cost prohibitive in terms of studio time & production.

Interesting thought.  But how can you be sure?

At the time, A Night At The Opera was the most expensive album ever made, so they had the coin.  Why wouldn't there be a budget for doing overdubs for a live album or video?

Has anyone seen this - Queen in Caracus

Now this sounds really live to me - am I wrong? (I could just have a very poor ear...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=essUVapB9EU

Sir GH, re:

>Interesting thought.  But how can you be sure?
>
>At the time, A Night At The Opera was the most expensive album ever made, so they had the coin.  Why >wouldn't there be a budget for doing overdubs for a live album or video?

Well, surely, it makes perfect sense.  In order to present the material recorded LIVE in 1974 and then have the (allegedly) perfect vocal hamonies required for a commercial release, they simply had to access the masters for the material recorded for the first three albums and 'cut-and-paste' over the LIVE soundtrack.  This as opposed to either interrupting touring (by this time they were almost exclusively on the road) or their prescious time off and trying to get them all back together to try to replicate something that took so long to do originally.

I fail to believe that Queen, *then* would have been happy re-viositing old material in the studio just as they were going through their most creative period of all.

No one in their right mind would have watsed the time or the energy.

Ironically, the result is embarassing in the extreme.  The harmonies dubbed on don't sync with the visual and the sound is *SO* clearly removed from the live elements.  Just about the only thing *LIVE* on the release is Stone Cold Crazy......

Benn wrote:

Ironically, the result is embarassing in the extreme.  The harmonies dubbed on don't sync with the visual and the sound is *SO* clearly removed from the live elements.  Just about the only thing *LIVE* on the release is Stone Cold Crazy......

Hi, Benn. So I was right before I said that I was wrong? It's basically studio stuff with some live snippets? Would you agree with this statement? : -)))

[whispering to Benn: Say yes!, please, I'm driving so many points home. Holly2003 has granted me one recently. Hehe]

:op