City: | Richfield, OH, USA |
Venue: | Coliseum |
Date: | January 23, 1977 |
Presumed setlist: | A Day At The Races overture, Tie Your Mother Down, Ogre Battle, White Queen, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, The Millionaire Waltz, You're My Best Friend, Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Sweet Lady, Brighton Rock, '39, You Take My Breath Away, White Man, The Prophet's Song, Bohemian Rhapsody, Stone Cold Crazy, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited, Now I'm Here, Big Spender, Jailhouse Rock, God Save The Queen |
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Richfield is a small suburb of Cleveland. A blizzare has the show beginning an hour and a half late, and Mercury's voice is not in great shape due to the weather. Freddie, after Ogre Battle: "The nasty Queenies are back to entertain you." This is perhaps the last time he would refer to the band as such. "As you are staying seated, right now we'd like to change the mood a little bit. And this is a number you're familiar with. It's a number called White Queen." Brian, after Somebody To Love: "Thanks a lot. We have to play the hits. Thank you for making it a hit." Their vocal harmonies are beautiful in You're My Best Friend - especially at the beginning, sounding almost like the studio version even with only three voices. Freddie, after Sweet Lady: "Every time we do a show we like to do a number that features Brian May on the guitar. Is that alright? This time we've chosen a number called Brighton Rock." But this is the usual rock star babble, when one pretends that they're doing something only for a particular audience, when in fact they do it every night. Brighton Rock was played on the previous US tour as well. Brian, after Brighton Rock: "We're gonna try something which we weren't accustomed to doing on stage until very recently; something off the last album which got requested last time. It's a song about a man who goes away and dreams of coming home, and when he comes home, it's not like how he thought it was going to be. This is '39." Brian very rarely explained the meanings of his songs during Queen's heyday, so this is a rare moment, even though he still didn't fully explain everything. In 2005 he opened up furthermore, saying how it was perhaps the first general relativity song. The astronomy bug never did leave him. Freddie, after '39: "Thank you. I bet you thought we weren't gonna do that one. We're gonna try out all kinds of new things this year. And this is another one. This is off the current album, A Day At The Races. This is a little song called You Take My Breath Away." The North American 'A Day At The Races' tour as a whole wouldn't be Mercury's strongest in terms of vocal range, but it surely didn't slow down the growth of his stage persona. And his versatility as a singer is exemplified on this tour in his jump from a ballad like You Take My Breath Away right into a rocker like White Man. The concert highlight this evening is a spectacular version of the White Man and The Prophet's Song combination. Here is a review of the show (unfortunately the scan isn't great). The photo is © Janet Macoska. You can purchase prints of her fine work at http://www.janetmacoska.com. Another picture was snapped by George Shuba (it's mislabelled as 1975 on his website). |
Recording length: | 90 minutes (2 CD, incomplete) | |
Quality: | B- | |
Source: | Soundboard | |
Lineage: | Soundboard > ? > CDR (x) | |
Track listing: | A Day At The Races overture, Tie Your Mother Down, Ogre Battle, White Queen, Somebody To Love, Killer Queen, The Millionaire Waltz, You're My Best Friend, Bring Back That Leroy Brown, Sweet Lady, Brighton Rock, '39, You Take My Breath Away, White Man, The Prophet's Song, Bohemian Rhapsody, Stone Cold Crazy, Keep Yourself Alive, Liar, Big Spender, Jailhouse Rock [cut] | |
This is a stereo soundboard tape, but a high generation copy buried in a lot of tape hiss. In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited and Now I'm Here are missing from the recording, as is God Save The Queen, as Jailhouse Rock cuts out. Listen as the techies put Brian into stereo during his Brighton Rock solo, White Man, and Keep Yourself Alive (the same goes for Freddie's solo spot in The Prophet's Song). |