City:	New Orleans, LA, USA
Venue:	Municipal Auditorium
Date:	October 31, 1978

Presumed setlist:	We Will Rock You (fast), If You Can't Beat Them, Somebody To Love, 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, Spread Your Wings, Dreamer's Ball, Love Of My Life, '39, It's Late, Brighton Rock, Fat Bottomed Girls, Sheer Heart Attack, Keep Yourself Alive, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen
Before the show, Brian May is interviewed on TV via telephone where he mentions the concert and pending Jazz album launch party. The show was delayed while the band's limo driver had to go back to their hotel to retrieve Freddie's ballet slippers. Freddie introduces Spread Your Wings: "Some people call this song Spread Your Legs. And I like it that way." About ten minutes later he insists Dreamer's Ball (then unknown to the audience) was especially composed for New Orleans and that the band wouldn't play it again on the tour, but that would not be the case as it'd remain a staple in the set. Before Love Of My Life, Freddie quips, "I'm going backstage for a rest - maybe get a blow job. Hell, it's Hallowe'en, right?" The middle row of pictures are from the outrageous and infamous party that took place after the show in the The Imperial Ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel, which included strippers, unicyclists, and drag artists. The party was so off the wall that the album actually didn't end up being played. James Henke of Rolling Stone wrote, "Queen threw a bash in New Orleans that featured snake charmers, strippers, transvestites and a naked fat lady who smoked cigarettes in her crotch." Above all, there are the now-legendary stories about the hermaphrodite dwarves with trays of cocaine. Roger Taylor commented on it years later: "It never happened. Well, I never saw it." And when asked about sex and drugs in general throughout Queen's career, his response was, "There wasn't any s... well, there wasn't any drugs." He wisely lets the mystique remain as it keeps the dialogue flowing. Queen manager, Jim Beach, however, was rather revealing on Belgian TV in 2011: "I went there before [the party] to hire as many odd acts as we could possibly find. We found one midget who was happy to lie under a large plate of liver at the buffet, and every time anybody went up to the buffet the liver would wobble. And I have to confess, we did have a dwarf with a pile of cocaine on his head, and he had little straws in his top pocket." A 1996 article in London's The People reported the New Orleans festivities as "a non-stop 12-hour marathon of excess featuring a nude model hidden in a huge salver of raw liver. Half-naked girls danced in bamboo cages suspended from the ceiling of a massive ballroom converted to look like a swamp with hanging vines and dry ice smoke. Guests were mesmerised by female mud wrestlers, snakes, strippers and topless waitresses serving endless drinks. At one stage, Freddie signed a stripper's bottom as she leaned over a table." Brian May's take in a 1999 interview for Mojo magazine was rather poignant: "It was deliberately excessive, partly for our own enjoyment, partly for friends to enjoy, partly because it's exciting for record company people - and partly for the hell of it. There were all kinds of weird acts, including a guy who sat in a pile of chopped up liver, women who did unusual things with their anatomies. We made friends with all the strippers and transvestites, people who felt as misplaced as we did. On the face of it they were outrageous and promiscuous, but some of them were great souls. We had a hoot." This more recent article from Uncut gives a pretty detailed account of the proceedings. The last eight pics were taken at a press conference the next day (at Brennan's, one of the French Quarter's most elegant restaurants), most of which were submitted by Alessio Rizzitelli. By some miracle, the band don't appear to be hung over or underslept. Nonetheless, the band have wisely booked a couple more days off before the next show. The first concert picture was taken by Ed Fink, and most of the others were submitted by Nino Trovato. Here are some reviews (1, 2, 3, 4, 5a, 5b, 5c) and pro pics (1, 2, 3) from the show. Articles mentioning the concert and party can be found at http://www.queencuttings.com and the official Queen website. Here are a few pro pics from the press conference: 1 2 3 4 5 Another article mentions the party, as well as the tour in general, and Roger's desire to play at Wimbledon Centre Court because of its size and acoustics - a request that would ultimately be denied.

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