22. Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen-Live In Frejus: 7/30/1986)

Throughout my history as a live concert enthusiast for Queen, I have seen many live recordings receive upgrades from generous traders and tapers. Recently, two kind men by the name of "Davide Traversi" (head of the Italian Queen Fan Club) and "Leonardo Archivist Pelz" made Queen fans happy when they provided a brand new source of Queen's last show in France (Frejus)! With this new source, it allows everybody to completely enjoy the show (the old source had pitch waver and sounded pretty rough)! Thank you Davide and Leonardo!

This source has excellent quality (unlike the previous sources), and is complete (except for one small cut at the beginning of "I Want To Break Free"). After going through this show, I can now safely say that it is one of the best shows on the Magic Tour (possibly a top ten show), and has some really surprising live performances from Freddie Mercury! He is in pretty good voice during this show, and sounds very powerful throughout (and pretty daring)! The onstage banter from Freddie is hilarious, and the atmosphere is awesome! The crowd is also awesome--they sing along to the songs, and there's someone close to the taper that doesn't know the words to the songs that he's singing (though he tries)! Now, it's time for the song-by-song analysis!

"One Vision" is a great version (probably one of the best post-Wembley versions), "Tie Your Mother Down" has great vocal phrasing by Freddie, "In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited" has some very nice falsettos by Freddie, and he sounds really powerful on the song, "Seven Seas Of Rhye" is one of the better versions from the tour (Freddie changes the phrasing up--making it an interesting listen), "Tear It Up" is great, and Freddie delivers the song in a way that he could only dream about during the Works Tour, "A Kind Of Magic" is strong, "Under Pressure" is great, "Another One Bites The Dust" is brilliant and is one of the "elite" versions on the tour, "Who Wants To Live Forever" has a brilliant vocal by Freddie, but sadly--Brian's guitar has problems throughout the song, "I Want To Break Free" is a great version, "Now I'm Here" is one of the best versions on the tour (some of Freddie's note choices and phrasing are excellent), "Love Of My Life" has a beautiful, soothing vocal delivery by Freddie and he sounds like his early 80s voice (it's so good, that DOGS bark on the recording), "Is This The World We Created" is one of the best versions ever, and the oldies section is great (especially "Tutti Frutti")!

Now, onto probably one of the most surprising things Freddie has done in a live setting: "Bohemian Rhapsody." He sings the first verse with the studio phrasing (like many Magic Tour versions), but then he goes all out and hits the "this time tomorrow" Bb4, then nails the "Carry On" Bb4 reminiscent of Newcastle 1979. When I played that back to "tsskiller08," he said: "That's fucking STRONG." The rest of the song is good, and ranks as being a top Magic Tour version! "Hammer To Fall" is good--but John has some technical problems with his bass (although Freddie's phrasing and the jam make up for that), "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" has John making up his own bass parts during the breakdown section--but Freddie saves the day with his great vocal performance of the song (and the guitar solo is great as well), "Radio Ga Ga" is a strong Magic Tour version with Freddie reaching for many of the higher notes and delivering the song well (plus you can hear John sing), "We Will Rock You" is a solid version, and "Friends Will Be Friends" is an excellent version (plus feedback is an instrument)!

The final song of the set deserves its own paragraph. The performance of "We Are The Champions" is combination of surprising and funny. Freddie sings the first verse (with some nice phrasing) and chorus pretty well (it's the typical Magic Tour version up to this point), and then the song starts to get interesting: He starts singing the second verse and he ad-libs, "Party and all" (instead of "thank you all). He then completely flubs the piano part (the audience notice and start laughing). To make up for that mistake, Freddie completely forgets that he has vocal nodules and belts the hell out of the second chorus with his massive vibrato. The rest of the song is your typical Magic Tour version! All in all, the new source really shows how great this show is!

ENJOY!!!

Note: An audience member close to the taper sings along to some of the songs (but doesn't know the words)!

Note 2: Freddie's stage banter is hilarious on this show--he even says "it smells like a hamburger" during "Radio Ga Ga!"

Note 3: Roger Taylor adds many interesting fills to songs on this show!