One Sweet Moment (Wardour-032)
St. James’ Park, Newcastle, England – July 9th, 1986
Disc 1: One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down, In The Lap Of The Gods…Revisited, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Tear It Up, A Kind Of Magic, Day-O, Under Pressure, Another One Bites The Dust, Who Wants To Live Forever?, I Want To Break Free, Impromptu, Guitar Solo, Now I’m Here
Disc 2: Love Of My Life, Is This The World We Created?, (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, Hello Mary Lou, Tutti Frutti, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You, Friends Will Be Friends, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen
DVD St. James Park, Newcastle, UK – July 9th, 1986: One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down, In The Lap Of The Gods…Revisited, Seven Seas Of Rhye, Tear It Up, A Kind Of Magic, Day-O, Under Pressure, Another One Bites The Dust, Who Wants To Live Forever, I Want To Break Free, Impromptu, Guitar Solo, Now I’m Here, Love Of My Life, Is This The World We Created?, (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, Hello Mary Lou, Tutti Frutti, Bohemian Rhapsody, Hammer To Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You, Friends Will Be Friends, We Are The Champions, God Save The Queen
One Sweet Moment is the kind of comprehensive and satisfying release that makes collecting these titles worthwhile and fun. Wardour picks Queen’s show at St. James Park in Newcastle for their very first A Kind Of Magic tour release and they’ve release almost all of the available audio and video sources for this great show. The audience source used for the audio is a very good to excellent complete recording. There is a cut in the tape in the reprise of “Now I’m Here” that is filled in by a poor sounding source that may be from this show or not, it’s hard to tell.
Tickets were sold out in an hour and this set an attendance record in Newcastle at the time. This was the first of five shows in England that summer and occur right before the famous Wembley shows. It is unfortunate that Freddie was in such poor voice during Queen’s final tour but that really does not detract from these concerts.
The “God works in mysterious ways” intro leading into “One Vision” is very exciting. Freddie addresses the audience as “my beauties” after “Tie Your Mother Down”. Brian comes in too early in “I Want To Break Free” and Freddie says “that’s better” when he corrects the mistake.
“It seems like yesterday we played the Newcastle City Hall” Brian says before “Love Of My Life” and announces that the proceeds from the show will go to the Save The Children organization before “Is This The World We Created?” The Magic tour contains the longest acoustic set Queen ever performed with the standards “Baby I Don’t Care”, “Hello Mary Lou” and “Tutti Frutti”.
This was done to remember their roots and, as May explains in a later interview, because Zeppelin did it. By this time in the tour “Friends Will Be Friends” was inserted between “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions”, introducing another anthem that would unfortunately have no future airings.
The silver pressed dvd included in this set is from an audience member’s camcorder. It is just off of the floor and gives a good view of the entire stage and all of the action. The lighting is horrible with the band members being washed out from both the sun and the stage lights so you see a white silhouette of Freddie running around the stage.
It improves a bit when the sun goes down during the acoustic set but is not something that will be watched too often. There is also a cut in “Radio Ga-Ga”. At least fifteen minutes of the show was professionally filmed which appeared on television and was released on video tape, but none of that is used here.
Nonetheless One Sweet Moment is a wonderful and comprehensive set and definitely worth having.
