City: | San Diego, CA, USA |
Venue: | San Diego Sports Arena |
Date: | July 5, 1980 |
Setlist: | Jailhouse Rock, We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Play The Game, Mustapha, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, Ming's Theme, You're My Best Friend, Save Me, Now I'm Here, Need Your Loving Tonight, Rock It, Love Of My Life, Keep Yourself Alive, drum/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (reprise), Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen |
The fast version of We Will Rock You is now performed without the third verse. This is the earliest live tape of Play The Game, and it's played with a great deal of energy towards the end as their current arrangement has an extra chorus to play with. Later Freddie takes some liberties in the intro to Get Down Make Love and Deacon waits for him to resume, coming back in a cycle later. The band were amidst writing the material for the Flash Gordon soundtrack while recording The Game, and at this gig Mercury plays a bit of his composition Ming's Theme before You're My Best Friend. On the piano instead of the synth it almost sounds like something Rachmaninoff could've composed. Brian May adds a couple textural dive-bombs to mimic the synth. Now I'm Here sees Freddie doing some adlibs from Another One Bites The Dust early in the tour. 1980 saw the band playing some of their loosest versions of the song. They still aren't quite in their stride yet early in the tour and there a few slight miscues made. Mercury's moment is in the breakdown of Need Your Loving Tonight where he messes up the syncopation, after which he shouts "balls!" as they go into the next verse. This piece has effectively replaced If You Can't Beat Them in the setlist, as they were both penned by John Deacon. Rock It is also being played early in the tour, replacing Fat Bottomed Girls for the time being. Mercury never sings the intro of Roger's rocker from The Game on stage better than he does here. "We used to do this song in total silence but times have changed since then, but I'm sure you all feel like a little singing," says Brian before Love Of My Life. All that's changed is there are more firecrackers than singers in the audience on this night. Freddie nonetheless turns in a beautiful version of the ballad. They've dropped most of the material from first five albums by 1980, but one of the biggest cheers of the night is when they launch into the verse of Keep Yourself Alive. But it's followed by a pretty lackluster solo from Brian that doesn't really seem to take off anywhere. By the time they get to Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Bohemian Rhapsody, any prior transgression is completely forgotten. Deacon is barely heard most of the time amidst the boominess of the arena, which might've been an issue on stage too as Roger doesn't do the stop before the first verse of Sheer Heart Attack, probably because he can't hear Deacon's cue into it. But it doesn't seem to bother him too much as he lets out a helluva scream in the next verse. There are lots of fun and adventurous fills from Roger throughout, even in the second chorus of We Are The Champions. This review from the July 8 Los Angeles Times accurately reports that seven songs from the last two Queen albums were played. A brief TV spot around this time included footage of either this show or one of the four nights at the LA Forum. A better copy of the pro picture from this show used for the review (incorrectly dated as 1978) can be seen at http://www.gettyimages.com. |
Recording length: | 105 minutes (complete) |
Quality: | A- |
Source: | Audience |
Lineage: | AUD > 2x SuperScope stereo mics > Marantz SuperScope CD320 cassette recorder > 2x Maxell XL-II Master Cassettes > Audacity > AIFF > WAV (Adobe Audition and iZotope RX adjustments, Audacity EQ) > FLAC level 8 |
Track listing: | Jailhouse Rock, We Will Rock You (fast), Let Me Entertain You, Play The Game, Mustapha, Death On Two Legs, Killer Queen, I'm In Love With My Car, Get Down Make Love, Ming's Theme, You're My Best Friend, Save Me, Now I'm Here, Need Your Loving Tonight, Rock It, Love Of My Life, Keep Yourself Alive, drum/guitar solos, Brighton Rock (reprise), Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Tie Your Mother Down, Sheer Heart Attack, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen |
This is a great recording of the complete show. The taper did an excellent job, marred only by the poor acoustics of the arena, including (and not limited to) slapback echo on the drums. Tapes like this make it clear why Mike Millard often went to audit shows in San Diego just to get a sense of the setlist and pacing so he could plan his tape flips, and then later tape the artist in Long Beach or LA. Taped from Loge section 24, left side about half way back, the recording is in stereo because the taper used two stereo mics that separated the sound by about ten feet, perfectly capturing the atmosphere in the crowd. |