Live At The Rainbow

I'm a big QUEEN fan so i bought this the minute it was available to buy off amazon uki Love the early QUEEN sound more than the late commercial rubbishthis RAINBOW November concert has been around as a bootleg cd for years on endand finally the wait is over and now is officially released on cdthere's 2 versions of this CD, the Single Disc release which only has the November showand the 2 Disc Deluxe edition which has both March and November concerts at the Rainbow theatreof course i bought the Deluxe edition Disc 1 has the march concert, Disc 2 has the November concertincluded is a 16page booklet that has rare photos of QUEEN from 1974all packaged in a Digi-pakthe March concert in my opinion sounds Thin with not much bass mix with the Drumsthe thick sound is more around the Guitar and vocalsso the Bass Drum sounds weak, maybe that's just how it was recorded back in '74or the Mixer for this CD release was at fault, it's anybody's guessbut i think the mix is average on the March concertplus the track Keep yourself alive is Dived by the Drum solo which only goes for 50secswhich the mixer for this cd decided to seperate the Drum solo from the songfor a solo that goes for only 50secs, it's pointless to seperate it i think.just leave that part within the keep yourself alive trackapart from that, the whole march show is excellent sounding overall, just the mix is averagebut that's my opinionThe November show is much better sounding, much better mix, more bass sound with the Drumsmeaning the mix sounds thicker, not as flat or thin as the march concerti have the bootleg cd version of this November concert and i definitely compared the 2the bootleg version is more raw sounding, where is this official cd is more polished soundi guess for a public release the Mixer had to clean up the sound qualitythe keep yourself alive track is the same on the November concertthe Drum solo is Divided as an extra track that only goes for 50secs, pointlessif the Drum solo was longer than 1 min or 2mins than it would make sense to make it an extra track on the Disc.the Guitar solo on Disc 2 goes for about 4-5mins, so yes it makes sense to make the Guitar solo an extra trackit's very annoying and not necessary for a solo that only goes for 50secs.the mixer should have just left it inside the songapart from that the November show sounds excellent 10/10, much better than the march show in my opinionso if you want to buy this cd,it's worth the cash to get the Deluxe edition release which has both concertsnot the single Disc cd which just has the November concerti gave this Deluxe edition 5 stars for sure, causes the amazing sound quality on Disc 2

This disc is a real treat, showcasing Queen on the tour for their third album. What a difference to all that twatting-around-in-a-yellow-jacket mid-80s Magic Tour stuff that the media tend to remember them by!The band's albums back then were a tour-de-force of lavish studio overdubbing - massed vocal harmonies and guitar overdubs... so you might wonder if they were going to sound a bit rubbish live on stage with only four people... but there was no need to worry, they sound huge! Taylor's drums in particular are just IMMENSE, great pounding beefy tom fills all over the place. May copes admirably with the task of translating his multi-tracked guitar parts to the stage - a lot of the time, he's just whanging out big power chords, with a delicious overdriven sound that's quite massive - his other trick is to use an 'echoplex' device to play in harmony with himself on many of the solos. Mercury's vocals are, of course, superb. By the 80s he sounded like he was blasting out of the bottom of an ashtray half the time, but here in the early 70s he still has a purity and sweetness in his voice despite the strident trumpet-blasts of power he belts out. Obviously the three-part vocal harmonies aren't as elaborate as in the studio, but when they do do them (e.g. Ogre Battle) they are glorious! John Deacon, as ever, provides a solid foundation on bass under all this showing off, bless :) Mercury's performance is what really dazzles of course - he prances around like some kind of bacchanalian satyr, giving it 110%, utterly ludicrous but utterly brilliant. He is usually too busy doing that to have time to play the piano, but when he does that adds a further lovely flavour: 'White Queen' for instance is beautiful, the mass guitar orchestration of the record being taken care of by Mercury's sensitive playing whilst Brian does a delicious howling solo over the top.Songs like 'Father to Son', 'March of the Black Queen' and 'Now I'm Here' are belted out with a raw power that arguably blows the meticulous studio versions away.On a technical level - the concert was shot on 625-line PAL video (the UK television standard of the day) and whilst it isn't "high definition", they've done a brilliant job with this BluRay of going back to the original source and getting the best out of it. It's amusing to see video artefacts like "microphony" (horizontal bands on the picture where the band were playing so loud it made the camera tube resonante!) and overloading the video signal (this actually looks brilliant when the dry ice is unleashed in Lap of the Gods Revisited). Another benefit of the video shoot over film is that there's a lot of great electronic vision-mixing, blending camera feeds in that Top of the Pops way, so you get to see two band members in closeup at the same time.As a bonus, some scraps of film are included from a concert 6 months earlier on their Queen II tour... with a message at the end asking if anyone knows the whereabouts of the rest of the missing footage! (come on, someone out there must have it in their attic!! Stop hoarding! ;)Really, this concert footage is as good as it can be, given the technology of the day. It's a brilliant performance. Some people might miss certain songs being in the set - obviously none of their later hits are there, as they hadn't written them yet! But if you love the early Queen albums you need to see this BluRay. It's brilliant.

This is sheer, hair on the back of the neck raising, heart attack, brilliance. Anyone who has ever joined the army of Queen fans from simply watching the Live Aid performance and then thought they knew all the Queen songs should be made to watch this excellent re-mastered 1080i 5.1 DTS-HD concert. I first attended a Queen concert in 1984, "The Works" tour, I was thoroughly smitten. Not only by the performance of the group but the stage effects, lighting and the reaction from the obvious hard core crowd who knew every word and sang their hearts out for the entire show. I remember being sat down by a teacher at junior school in 1975 and all the kids in the class watch Bohemian Rhapsody on television. So I knew a few of the older 'more popular' Queen songs and I decided to start from the beginning and listened to all the early albums. After watching Queen perform at several more shows including Wembley '86 (right at the front) I often wondered what the early songs would have sounded like 'live'. I had a taster when the BBC finally showed the 1975 Christmas concert a couple of years ago and of course on one or two documentaries that Queen produced over the years. When for instance was the last time they played 'Liar' together ? Great songs well performed on this Blu-ray, 'Ogre Battle', 'White Queen' (haunting), 'In The Lap Of The Gods' - and something that I always knew myself, how great was Freddie's voice during these early years. I thought he lost some of it after bulking up during the early eighties, but that's my opinion. I have not been to a Queen+ concert as I want to remember them how they were, and this is it.