Yesterday (Monday) saw a proper day out for me - went to see QUEEN at Brixton Academy, with best man Andy. We were apprehensive about this, obviously we knew it wouldn't really be Queen, just Brian May and Roger Taylor and Paul Rodgers1. Our day started long before the concert, with a tour of Wetherspoons pubs of London, an aborted trip to Madam Tussauds (hour and a half queue to get in) and a look round a Sherlock Holmes museum2. This is a recreation at (roughly) 221B Baker Street of how Holmes house might have looked. Every description from the book that could be made real in this place was, and there were characters from the books as slightly ropey waxworks. That's SIX POUNDS we'll not see again, not recommended.
Got to Brixton Academy early, saw queues going right round the building, so went for a Nandos. By the time we'd eaten we could walk straight in, just about in time for the opening song "Tie Your Mother Down". This was ace, and everything we'd hoped really. Paul Rodgers vocals seemed to be turned down quite low, so as not to be compared too unfavourably with Freddie's I think. Lots of songs were sung more by the audience by him too. I'd forgotten he was in Bad Company too, so there were more non Queen songs than I'd thought. Lots of fans in the audience seemed pleased, but it was a lowlight for me. Some of the song choices seemed odd, could have been because it was a fan club show, but my fellow attendee suggested they were playing more of the songs they wrote, less of Freddie's and John Deacon's. Who knows? Was good to hear songs like Brian's "39", just done solo by him. Bohemiam Rhapsody was actually quite good, though I was dreading it. They used video footage of Freddie performing it, like they did at the tribute concert3, though that time they had Elton John and Axl Rose sharing the live vocals, and this time not.
I'm pleased that I saw the show, and that it wasn't at Wembley or anywhere too huge, but not entirely sure it was worth the ticket price. Left during the encore of Paul Rodgers stuff, maybe they ended with We Will Rock You and we missed it. Ah well.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + dad to two, I'm a full stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubs, running, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.