From BrianMay.com
The only thing that is unnecessary is your 'review' Mr. oh-so-clever Vrabel. It's sad, because you obviously liked so much of the show - there are compliments all over the place ... but you just couldn't bear to admit it was great, could you, young sir? We're going to print your article on this web site, only because it's such a great example of someone who doesn' t quite 'get it' - doesn't quite understand that people who devote their lives to music have guiding forces beyond your comprehension. Maybe you were afraid of appearing uncool with your pals? Let me educate you. Entertaining people and sending them home happy is NEVER unnecessary. But in the grown-up world of which you will shortly may be a part, there is little room for unnecessary writers of crap reviews. The music speaks for itself. Jacksonville doesn't need you, Mr. Vrabel, and nobody likes you !! ha ha! Go get a proper job ! Go make music, instead of being negative about it. The people of Jacksonville made up their own mind. They ROCKED !! And god Bless 'em ! This show will live in my memory as a great meeting point. It's nice at my time of life to make new friends. A privilege.
If Brian wrote that.....
Jeesh....for selling millions of albums...playing for millions of people...being a multi-millioniare.....Brian is way too thin skinned.
Scratching aobut some podunk writer from Jacksonville Florida? He really needs to let a lot of things go. It makes HIM look like the small one. So not everyone likes you Brian....so the fuck what?
I sent Brian the link because I was a little ticked off by the review. The guy who wrote it is entitled to his opinion of course, but to call the show "unnecessary" is an obnoxious and arrogant insult to the thousands of people who paid good money to be there. We did not think the show was unnecessary at all. And to call the band a second rate cover band shows that he has little idea about what he is talking about.
Brian May is way too sensitive about these types of things. I mean, it is pretty dumb in the first place for them to call themselves "Queen" without Freddie Mercury. What do you expect the average person to say about that?
Here's teh entire review
Queen + Paul Rodgers: They just can’t handle it
Spliced-together band simply makes you pine for Freddie Mercury.
At worst, Queen + Paul Rodgers comes off as an adequate cover band, one made only a little less creepy by the participation of two original members of Queen. At best, it comes off as a marginally more- than-adequate cover band.
Here’s a show throughout which you can spend two hours going: “Oh, come on.” This is Queen like I’m Lou Rawls. Freddie Mercury being rock’s most irreplacable dead frontman, the best that this sewed- together simulacrum billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers (not to be confused with The Doors of the 21st Century or Creedence Clearwater Revisited) can aspire to be is an effective tribute outfit.
Well, to be fair, they can be. Brian May’s liquid-fingered tone is in great shape; Roger Taylor is fine behind the kit and on his occasional vocal (original bassist John Deacon opted out) and both are appropriately reverent to Mercury, who died in 1991.
But it’s hard to imagine that in hatching this ill-conceived quasi- reunion sorta-hits exhumation, May, Taylor and voice-for-hire Paul Rodgers truly envisioned playing a ’70s K-Tel compilation to what had to be a distressingly sparse Veterans Memorial Arena crowd.
To May and Taylor’s credit, they didn’t replace Mercury with some cut- rate sound alike. But Rodgers, of Bad Company and Free fame, wasn’t an over-the-marquee name in his glory days, which took place three decades ago. His bluesy rasp does the job on Fat Bottomed Girls, Tie Your Mother Down and Hammer To Fall, but comes up well short on standards Another One Bites The Dust and Crazy Little Thing Called Love. (As for We Will Rock You, well it was better than Warrant’s.) But they’ve surrendered too much of the show to him. When the band turns up Can’t Get Enough, Feel Like Makin’ Love and All Right Now, the show awkwardly careens all over the road; it’s like listening to a Queen mix tape over which someone accidentally recorded 10 minutes of some classic rock station.
In fact, the only time Rodgers or the band reaches any sort of emotional connection is on a version of Bohemian Rhapsody, which co- stars a video of Mercury performing the first half of the song on piano. Shot from the back, Mercury’s “performance” is moving, if an unfortunate reminder of what’s been lost.
This all sounds like a bad review, but in fact Q+PR (which required six guys to replicate Queen’s bombastic attack) have crafted an arena- sized spectacle — they certainly put forth a full sound, and May came out with guns blazing. That the show was bad is up for debate. That it’s utterly unnecessary isn’t.
Zebonka12 wrote: "IMO they are indeed a second rate cover show. Anyway ... looks like the Fat Bottomed Guys are each time crankier."
Hahaha. Bloody ABBA fans...
"nobody likes you !! ha ha!"
- this kind of stuff, and basically the whole reply from Brian, make him look like a total idiot. Really cringeworthy stuff.
What in the world is wrong with this review? I agree with it 100% Does Brian May really think that all of those millions of people came to Queen concerts over the years to hear his puny guitar sound? Get real, man!
I agree with most of it...but those last couple sentences are, well unnecessary. You can't tell what the reviewer actually thought: in one place he gives praise to something he rebukes elsewhere. His review is careening all over the place.
And it brings up a good point: Why in the world don't they just tour with Freddie Mercury?!?