Review
by Collectors
music
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Hail To Majesty contains two interesting tapes from early 1974,
when Queen were touring off of the new album Queen II.
The first show is the April 28th, 1974 Portland, Maine Joe Maloney tape.
The Breakdown CDR label released a high generation copy of this tape
on Early Battle which has tape deterioration by the end of the
tape and runs too fast. When the master transfer surfaced, Breakdown
released it again on First American Tour (with the 1977 BBC
session as filler) and also on Portland Expo + Rainbow Theater
1974 (EOW-011) with the March, 1974 Rainbow Theater as filler.
Wardour follows the latter release by offering the master transfer of the
Portland tape with Rainbow as filler, making this the first silver
release of the concert. This runs at the correct speed and
there is no drop in sound quality making it one of the best sounding
audience tapes from Queen’s first tour of the US.
Since Queen were opening for Mott The Hoople and were
sharing the bill with Aerosmith, the forty-five minute Portland tape
represents the entire show. The tape begins with the majestic Queen
II opener “Procession” and “Father To Son.” Another new
song “Ogre Battle” follows and one can’t begin to imagine the
audience’s reaction to the pounding drums, slashing guitars and
whimsical lyrics of this epic piece. Brian introduces “Son
& Daughter” as “something you might know a little bit better.”
May’s guitar goes out of tune at 5:57, right at the end of the guitar
solo and plagues him for the rest of the show. In the New Orleans
show the week before this they played “Great King Rat,” but in
Portland that is dropped as Freddie explains, “What we’d like to do
for you is what we do from time to time. Sometimes we leave it out
but since you’re a special audience we’d like to keep it in.
”They play a rare version of “See What A Fool I’ve Been.” During
“Keep Yourself Alive” May loses his place in the solo. The set
ends with a fast version of “Modern Times Rock And Roll.” The
encores include their rock and roll
The disc is filled with the popular March 31st, 1974
Rainbow Theater tape. Some sources claim this is an excellent
audience recording, but is a professional multi-track recording probably
intended for Queen’s first live album. This recording is an edit
between a pre-LP tape and the LP to fill in some gaps surpassing in sound
quality previous releases like Master Of “Sheetkeekers” and High
Voltage. Wardour released this previously on Majestic Rock,
a bonus CDR issued with Dressed To Kill (Wardour-033). This
is the same EXCEPT they chopped off the final two minutes of “Liar” to
make it fit with the Portland tape. Quite why they cut the tape
instead of using something else is a daft decision on the label’s part.
The thirty minute May 4 Waterbury, Connecticut tape has never been
released on silver and would have made this a killer release with some
extremely rare material.
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