Band : Queen
Venue : Hammersmith Odeon Theatre, London, UK
Date : 24. December 1975
Title : Christmas Times Rock'n'Roll (fan-created multi-source compilation)
Tracklist :
1. Area Code 615 - Stone Fox Chase (taped intro)
2. Bob Harris (?) - concert introduction
3. Queen - Now I'm Here
4. Queen - Ogre Battle
5. Queen - White Queen (As It Began)
6. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (intro)
7. Queen - Killer Queen
8. Queen - The March Of The Black Queen (rock part)
9. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (reprise)
10. Queen - Bring Back That Leroy Brown
11. Queen - Brighton Rock
12. Queen - Son And Daughter
13. Queen - Keep Yourself Alive
14. Queen - Liar
15. Queen - In The Lap Of The Gods ...revisited
16. Audience - waiting for encore
17. Queen - Big Spender
18. Queen - Jailhouse Rock
19. Queen - Stupid Cupid
20. Queen - Be Bop A Lula
21. Queen - Jailhouse Rock (reprise)
22. Audience - waiting for second encore
23. Queen - Seven Seas Of Rhye
24. Queen - See What A Fool I've Been
25. Queen - God Save The Queen (taped outro)
This is definitely Queen's most bootlegged concert. It has been broadcast
countless times on the radio worldwide and shown many times on TV, and so for
decades it has kept the bootleggers busy! Originally, it aired live
simultaneously on TV (Old Grey Whistle Test) and the radio (Radio One).
For this reason, there are moments when the band sound nervous. Brian's vocal
harmonies are iffy at times, especially in Now I'm Here. Freddie hits couple
of bad notes on the piano in White Queen when he first enters, and then hits a
couple wrong chords at the end of BoRhap. Roger's snare seems to have
problems tonight. It may seem as if he forgot to turn it on when White Queen's
guitar solo starts, but it seems to actually turn itself off towards the end
of the song! The snare is off again at the beginning of the first chorus of
Liar. Later in the song, Roger misses his big flam to queue everyone into the
coda. They recover well, although Freddie, clearly startled to some extent by
Roger's mistake, sings "Everything you do is sin" for the first and second
lines, instead of starting with "They never ever let you win" as usual. Still,
all these things aside, it's a great performance, not even considering the
fact that both Freddie and Brian were feeling ill that day!
Listen carefully in Gods Revisited, as the sound engineer puts Brian into
stereo immediately after Freddie leaves the piano. Glorious! Despite his
illness, Brian has a superb night on his guitar, turning in fantastic
renditions of White Queen and Brighton Rock, particularly.
While listening to such a high quality recording, one realizes that Freddie's
live voice has not quite developed itself yet. In Seven Seas Of Rhye, for
example, he doesn't hit most of the high A's with clarity or precision.
Compare See What A Fool I've Been to the Champions shoot concert on 10-6-77,
where two years later he's much more confident and uses his voice to greater
lengths.
As revealed by the original live video broadcast on the Old Grey Whistle Test,
most of the speeches between songs mentioning the fact that it was Christmas
were later edited out of every (known) rebroadcast of the show, audio and
video. Before Ogre Battle, Freddie says: "Right now Queen would like to drink
a special Christmas toast to everybody here, all the viewers. So cheers!"
Before Liar, he says, "And now a special Christmas edition of a little number
called Liar." Roger, before he jumps into Big Spender, says, "Alright, Merry
Christmas. Thanks for a fab year. We're gonna do some rock and roll." However,
Freddie saying "Thank you, Merry Christmas everybody" at the end of Gods
Revisited is fully audible on the video rebroadcasts, although it was muted on
the recordings for later radio broadcasts.
This video is the best document of Freddie's strip act during Big Spender. The
kimono, worth about $500 (which doesn't last long, of course), was given to
him by a Japanese fan earlier in the year.
This is a multi-source compilation made with the intenson to finally have a
complete audio version of this excellent concert. During the years this concert
was re-broadcasted by both TV and radio in many countries. Therefore many audio
sources have appeared, but none was complete. Many parts, like the spoken
concert introduction or Freddie's christmas speeches appear only on the
original TV broadcast, I will call this source the "video mix". This video mix
covers the concert from the opening by the Nashville country band Area Code 615
- a taped song called Stone Fox Chase, which was used as the Old Grey Whistle
Test theme song, to the end of Queen's rock'n'roll medley. After this medley
finished, the BBC crew packed their equipment, the TV broadcast ended, which
is the reason why the rest of the concert does not exist on video.
It is also one of the reasons why this source can't be 100% used for this
compilation, the second reason is the sound quality, which is much worse then
the soundboard recordings.
Since this concert was also broadcasted on BBC radio, this concert was
recorded on soundboard. These multi-track master-tapes were later used to
create 2 different soundboard mixes.
The first soundboard mix, the "common mix" has great sound on the backing
vocals, but the drum sound is not very good. This was the only mix used for
all radio re-broadcasts, until the Swedish radio rebroadcast from 2005. This
broadcast used a completely new mix, the "swedish radio mix", which has
absolutely perfect drum sound, but on the other side, the backing vocals sound
very weird. Also this new mix has unfortunatelly some radio-added jingles
during some songs.
This compilation uses elements from both soundboard mixes with gaps filled
with the video mix.
Songs 1, 2, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and some other small pieces come from
the video source shared on Queenzone. Its lineage should be something like :
TV broadcast > VHS tape (unknown generation) > FLAC
Songs 4-9 come from the common soundboard mix. The recording comes from a
pre-FM CD, intended for broadcast on April 12/13, 2002 on the Westwood One
radio network. It is missing Bring Back That Leroy Brown, and everything
after Gods Revisited. The quality is outstanding, and surely better than any
radio broadcast (of this particular mix, the common mix).
Songs 3, 10-15 and 23-25 come from a bootleg CD called "There Ain't No Sanity
Clause", which uses the swedish radio mix. All songs from it except the last 2
tracks have the lineage : Swedish FM radio 'P3 Live' 4-29-05 > CDR (0).
The last 2 songs (See What A Fool I've Been & God Save The Queen) have the
lineage : BBC FM rebroadcast > Cassette (0)
This compilation was created in summer 2007 by pittrek using Cool Edit Pro.
I have always used crossfades instead of cuts always when the sources change.
ALWAYS APPEND THE ORIGINAL TXT FILE IN REUPLOADS !
NEVER SELL THIS RECORDING FOR MONEY !
NEVER SHARE THIS RECORDING IN ANY LOSSY FORMAT INCLUDING MP3, WMA, OGG ...
IF SOME OF THESE RULES WILL BE BROKEN I WILL STOP SHARING !
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