City: Paris, France
Venue: Pavillon de Paris
Date: February 28, 1979

Setlist:
We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, If You Can't Beat Them, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


               

The second night in Paris is one of the best performances of 1979. The fast We Will Rock You opens the show with an incredible amount of energy, and Now I'm Here sizzles as well, particularly in the improv after the second verse. It seems that they're going to jump back into the vocal section, but Brian responds to the level of energy by soloing again for a few more bars just to keep it going. Freddie attempts to get the audience to sing in larger numbers during the vocal exchange. "Chantez, tout le monde!"

This version of Spread Your Wings is a fine example of Roger's drumming technique. In the improv at the end of the song, he never plays the same thing for more than 8 bars, ensuring each fill is different.

After Dreamer's Ball, Freddie addresses one of the members of the 'royal family': "You must be from the worst part of England. I can tell." He then adds, sarcastically, "They make the best kind of people!" and laughs to himself.

After the first line of It's Late (You say you love me, and I hardly know your name), Freddie quickly adds, "What's your name?"

A slight bit of Brighton Rock made it onto Live Killers. See the Live Killers analysis for more details.

In Keep Yourself Alive, Brian palm-mutes the scale run before the final choruses as a fun little change from the norm. He later breaks a string during Sheer Heart Attack (as seen in the tenth picture), so he resorts to making various sound effects for the rest of the song, as seen on the video. The punk element in Queen's set at its finest. This version of the song was released as a bonus track on the 2011 remaster of the News Of The World album.

Some bits of footage from this show were used for the promo video of Love Of My Life (the bits with Freddie in silver suspenders). The bulk of the footage comes from Japan (see Tokyo '79 for details).

This entire show likely exists on film in Queen's vaults, but much of the footage has become available over the years. Most of the footage from the Paris shows was filmed with a single camera, but there is some exquisite multi-cam footage from the second night. See this table for details).

The first nine pictures were taken by Gillian Parry. The tenth one was submitted by Valery Oganov.


Recording length: 123 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: "Bonsoir Paris" (Gypsy Eye) silvers

     
Track listing:
We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, If You Can't Beat Them, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


This plays a bit too slow, and is plagued with the infamous Gypsy Eye crackling sound, not to mention how they almost completely eliminated the lower frequencies. The first 10 seconds of the tape are missing as well.

The only redeeming value of this version is that it doesn't have the tape flaws during Don't Stop Me Now and It's Late heard on all the other source tapes.

Keep Yourself Alive is cut for a tape flip.


Recording length: 118 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: B+
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > ? > CDR (x)
Track listing:
We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, If You Can't Beat Them, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here, Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Keep Yourself Alive [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


This is a clean version of the audience tape, although a tape gen or two worse than the one used for the Gypsy Eye bootleg.


Recording length: 117 minutes (2 CD, incomplete)
Quality: A-
Source: Audience
Lineage: AUD > ? > CDR (x)
Track listing:
We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Somebody To Love, If You Can't Beat Them, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, Bicycle Race, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, You're My Best Friend, Now I'm Here [cut], Don't Stop Me Now, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock [cut], Keep Yourself Alive [cut], Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen


This is the overall best-sounding recording of this show, although it has a variable amount of tape hiss throughout. Brighton Rock has a couple cuts (the second one being just a split second), and Now I'm Here has a very brief cut as well.




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