April 18th 2019 – Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre
I’m not a massive fan of Queen, but I loved the first album of Keane, Hopes and Fears. It had the classics track “Somewhere Only We Know” and “Everybody’s Changing”. They played in 2003 at the De Montfort Hall, with 808 State supporting…..I’m in two minds as to whether I was there or not? As I have no ticket stub to prove it, I’m veering towards not going. I definitely remember around this time loving both Keane and Travis (Travis a few years earlier), but not being drawn to seeing either of them as a live show. So I think the first time I caught Keane would be Reading Festival 2003?
I digress, Tom Chaplin, being the lead singer of Keane, also ran into few issues along the way which thankfully he overcame. This was an interesting show as Keane had been away for quite a while and we were thinking now that this may be our only chance to see Tom……a surprise would await us later in the year when Keane would actually tour again 🙂
Now Queen were immense as a band. Not one I particularly took to, but you had to admire the strength over Freddie’s vocals and pomp of the band. This would be interesting to hear these songs with Tom’s vocals…..also very strong, but in a very different way.
This was a really interesting concert as Tom explained his passion for Queen and how the songs had affected his musical upbringing, which was fascinating.
The concert started quite slowly with the fairly soft “I Want to Break Free”, “Play the Game” and “Save Me”……can’t say I’d ever heard Queen sing “Save Me” so was a nice to hear. Tom sand really well and gave a different interpretation to the songs.
“We Will Rock You” was the one to start the crowd off dancing and of course, clapping!
“Somebody To Love” for me, was his best on the night, closely followed by “Another One Bites The Dust”….and this was just in the first half of the show.
A special mention required to the backing band, which was actually the Leo Green Orchestra, who seemed to be having a fantastic time performing Queen classics, Leo himself was a renowned saxophonist (although he just conducted tonight).
After the interval, the second half of the show, again, started with a couple of slow ones so your ice cream/beer could settle, and then moved up a gear to all the sing along classics. Tom hit some pretty high hold notes on “Under Pressure” and “Killer Queen” before an extremely stirring rendition of “Who Wants to Live Forever”…..just wow….I won’t mention the tears next to me (it’s a gift).
By now, everyone was either dancing in the aisles or in their seat areas…….very very good show.
Set List
Set 1
- I Want to Break Free
- Play the Game
- Save Me
- We Will Rock You
- Breakthru
- It’s a Hard Life
- The Show Must Go On
- Another One Bites the Dust
- Somebody to Love
- Radio Ga Ga
Set 2
- These Are the Days of Our Lives
- You’re My Best Friend
- Under Pressure
- Killer Queen
- A Kind of Magic
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Who Wants to Live Forever
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love
- Don’t Stop Me Now
- We Are the Champions
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