Queen, for those of you interested, was pretty good.  It wasn’t the best concert I’ve been too, and there were some specific things I didn’t care for, but it was good.  Of course, I can’t imagine it had the same energy it would have with Freddie Mercury, but Paul Rodgers shook his butt off the best he could.  Ironically, the Bad Company songs they played were dead on, while a few of the Queen songs didn’t seem as tight as they should be, whether this was due to experimental changes in the arrangement or, as Keen pointed out, changes made to compensate for Paul Rodgers register I don’t know.  There were also a couple of pacing issues (for me) of the concert in general.   Specifically they broke the concert up a few times with solo guitar acoustic or metal sets (by Brian May) so that the rest of the band members could go do costume changes.  I know the hard core fan wants to hear a 15 minute Brian May solo, but they were long enough I was getting a bit bored.

Some highlights of the concert?  They played every hit (yay!).  From where we were sitting we could look directly down into the green room and watch those costume changes and other backstage scurrying (which I always find interesting).  The light show was pretty cool though we couldn’t see much of the video screens (more on that in a minute).  And the crowd, for someone who’s a people watcher like me, provided much entertainment.  There was a woman probably about 6-7 months pregnant in the box next to us rocking out.  Plus an older couple who were also listening to the Sharks game on radio so every once in a while they broke out into spontaneous shouting out of time with the rest of the concert crowd.  And there was ANOTHER woman in the stands below totally, freakin’, tweaking out!  She looked stoned and/or drunk off her ass, was doing the typical Grateful Dead-esque dancing, and yet somehow was still managing to keep time with the band.  It was pretty cool.  And to her credit, she only toned down slightly when she got chased down by an usher for wandering too far away from her seat.  A concert just isn’t a concert until you seem someone like that. 

So I guess I should give a slight explanation about our seats.  Keen’s boss owns a sky box at our local arena.  When you buy a box, they seat 12, you get tickets for every event.  Keen’s boss isn’t much of a rocker so, besides taking lots of people to events, he basically offers up tickets for shows he and his family aren’t using.  This is how we’ve been able to score so many last minute tickets to events and why we can take Chance to hockey games.  If it was a matter of seating in the stands with a one-year-old I wouldn’t do it; too loud and too many people.  But boxes are great because they’re private, quieter, and they have plenty of floor space for kids to crawl around.  The downside to the box is its position for concerts.  We’re basically one box away from the cutoff point where they stop seating, and the box faces the side of the stage.  Depending on the stage setup we can see more or less of whatever background light/video show they have.  Every once in a while, part of the stage might even be obstructed.  However, they’re FREE TICKETS!  Trust me, no complaints here.  I just feel lucky to be a relatively new mom and to get out in the evenings as often as I do.                   – the weirdgirl