Artist | Queen + Paul Rodgers |
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Date | 21.09.2008 |
Venue | Velodrom |
City | Berlin |
Country | Germany |
Setlist | 01. Intro: Cosmos Rockin' [tape] 02. Surf's Up... School's Out 03. Tie Your Mother Down 04. Fat Bottomed Girls 05. Another One Bites The Dust 06. I Want It All 07. I Want To Break Free 08. C-lebrity 09. Seagull 10. Love Of My Life (Brian on vocals) 11. '39 (Brian on vocals) 12. Bass solo (Danny + Roger) 13. Drum Solo 14. I'm In Love With My Car (Roger on vocals) 15. Say It's Not True (Roger, Brian and Paul on vocals) 16. Bad Company 17. Warboys 18. Feel Like Makin' Love 19. Guitar Solo 20. Bijou (Freddie's studio vocals) 21. Last Horizon 22. A Kind Of Magic 23. Crazy Little Thing Called Love 24. The Show Must Go On 25. Radio Ga Ga 26. Bohemian Rhapsody 27. Cosmos Rockin' 28. All Right Now 29. We Will Rock You 30. We Are The Champions 31. God Save The Queen |
Support band | none or unknown |
Attendance | 8500 |
Audio recording | Length: 140:30 Quality: VG+ [a very enjoyable recording] No download link available |
Video - information | 140 minutes, amateur recording. |
Line-up | Paul Rodgers (lead vocals, acoustic guitar) Brian May (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lead/backing vocals) Roger Taylor (drums, lead/backing vocals) Jamie Moses (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals) Danny Miranda (bass guitar, backing vocals) Spike Edney (keyboards, backing vocals) |
Photos supplied by: Zbigniew Kaminski, Lukas Schäfer, Sarah Watkin
Berlin... returning to a tour venue of yesteryear. But in those days, of course, Queen played in the west part of the then divided city. The location of this next piece of cosmos-rocking placed us in the former east – near to a street that was once called the 'Leninallee' (now Landsberger Allee).
For the opener Surf's Up, School's Out, a leather-jacketed Paul, sporting a harmonica, made a crest-of-a-wave entry with vocal effects provided by Spike. There followed those two trusty offerings Tie Your Mother Down and Fat Bottomed Girls, and then came Another One Bites the Dust with an absolutely bullet-ripping rhythm. The intervening energy of I Want It All preceded Paul’s announcement of the next number with the question, "You wanna break free with me baby...?" And we were off, two of John's greatest being among those songs carrying us...
Later, thanks to a slick operation by the technical crew to assemble and dismantle the drum kit, an exercise that may become as legendary as the show itself, Roger was able to perform his drumming craft on the catwalk, right among the audience. Thus he accompanied Brian for '39 on the bass drum, which Spike, Jamie and Danny joined halfway through, creating a rousing new genre – the space shanty! Roger's drum solo and I'm in Love with my Car followed, and he appeared to be relishing his new-found opportunity – no longer back-of-stage - for his lead pieces. Away from the drums, he also played some well-known Queen riffs by means of a novel percussion-string-combi with Danny. Say It's Not True was performed as on the album, with vocals from Roger, Brian and finally, with a tremendous crescendo, Paul.
I found the video screen images a useful accompaniment in the case of some songs, particularly Bijou, where there appeared an eye, blinking and awake, invisibly shedding tears that were flowing through the strings of Brian’s guitar. There was also a poignant depiction of Freddie for his vocal part. By Radio Ga Ga though, now sung entirely by Paul, I really just wanted to concentrate on the way his voice, with its extraordinary quality, completely filled the place. I kept wondering if the microphone stand he was so frequently gyrating would magically mutate into rotor-blades, allowing him simply to take off, transporting the entire Velodrom with him!
All in all, it was two and a half hours of pure bliss, which received total appreciation from the audience. The encore started off with Cosmos Rockin', towards the end of which Paul changed the words, justifiably boasting, "We got Berlin rocking"!
It had been such a truly sensational show that I left the venue feeling a buzz all over from the sheer electricity of the evening!