Queen

Last weekend we went off to the Museo de Arte Popular, which is opposite the Teatro Metropolitan. It’s a nice old theatre – we went there ages ago to watch Jamie Cullum. And seeing as we were so close, we stopped by the window to see what’s on and noticed that Queen was playing! Ok, not the original Queen. In fact it wasn’t even a tribute band. It was a Philharmonic Orchestra along with the UNAM choir. UNAM being Mexico’s biggest university.

So we bought a couple of tickets, which were only $100 each. Ok, they were the cheapest balcony seats, but the Teatro Metropolitan is a smallish theatre so their cheapo tickets are as good as most places best tickets.

Anyway, it was a really impressive show. Queens back catalogue is littered with tracks that are just made for an orchestra conversion, and the pitfall they avoided (that tribute bands cannot!) is a feeble effort to imitate Freddie Mercury. Some singers can easily be replaced – let’s face it, as good as Pink Floyd are, there are a million tribute singers who could pull off a passable Roger Waters or Dave Gilmour. But Freddie? Forget it.

They began, predictably with the most famous, and most orchestral track of them all – Bohemian Rhapsody. And before finishing with that as their final encore, they stuffed in plenty of other tracks – Crazy Thing Called Love, We Will Rock You, Innuendo, We Are The Champions, I Want It All, Flash, Killer Queen, I Want To Break Free, Somebody To Love, Another One Bites The Dust, A Kind Of Magic, Radio Ga-Ga, and Save Me.

But…have you ever watched The Wedding Singer? The bit where the Boy George imitator gets abused during a performance – “You Suck!!!” The orchestra was backed up by a British Quintet, on electric guitar, drums etc to add a a little spice. The electric guitarist did suck. Big time. Wrong notes, bad timing, the lot. I was tempted to give him the “You Suck” treatment, but I don’t drink anymore….