I said I would torrent this when Pittrek shared this amazing DVD just before Christmas 2008; over two years later, I finally get around to doing it!
The original thread is here
http://www.queenzone.com/forums/1156552/earls-court-77-pittrek-remastered-edition.aspx and here are his notes which say it all:
Hi folks,
many people requested this and since I promised a Christmas gift to you, here you are :
Queen : Live At Earls Court, London, UK - 6. & 7. June 1977 (pittrek remastered edition)
Review from QueenLive.ca :
Queen capped off the A Day At The Races tour with two shows at London's Earls Court Arena. The band dropped ?50,000 on a new lighting rig, which was a giant crown on top of the stage. The music of Chopin (Freddie's choice) plays as the audience enter the venue. At this point, one can barely see the stage, as the crown is only a few feet above it, with black drapes below it, so you couldn't see anything on stage (perhaps causing audience members to wonder where the band will be playing!).
Procession is heard (revived only for the Earls Court shows, and never to be used again), and then the usual ADATR overture rings through the speakers. Part way through, the crown slowly begins to rise, and out comes the dry ice (the fourth picture above was taken during this moment; Brian later recalled that hearing the ADATR overture is when they would get nervous, as they knew they were about to go on at any time!). Queen then burst onto the stage to perform Tie Your Mother Down, and the show goes on as usual.
Tonight the band cover Elton John's "Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting" during the Jailhouse Rock medley. Freddie apparently emerged from a trap door (sporting his dazzling silver lurex outfit) at the beginning of the medley, but the videos from both nights unfortunately don't focus on him during that moment. The whole band (especially Roger) are a joy to watch during the medley. At the end of the show, the lights continue to sparkle as the crown descends to its original position.
Freddie's voice is in pretty good shape tonight, but he has problems hitting a few of the higher notes, unlike the Bristol and Glasgow shows. You can feel a slight tension in the air; nothing like Hyde Park, but they (especially Brian) still seem a bit nervous at times. It has been said that this is one of the band's greatest shows, but we must bear in mind that the high quality of the recording has made us impartial to this one. Still, there are many incredible moments throughout. Brian's Brighton Rock solo is one of his best, and he really shines at the end of Doing All Right. Freddie puts in great performances of Doing All Right, White Man, and Gods Revisited. Hearing Roger scream in the background between songs is always fun to hear, not to mention the duck quack before '39, which is also heard in many other shows at this point in the set.
During this time period, Freddie wasn't heard singing "I see a little silhouetto of a man" on the tape of BoRhap's
opera section, and it isn't heard on any audience recordings earlier than Richfield 11-25-78 - this leads me to believe that the opera section as heard on the video was most likely tampered with after the fact (bearing in mind that at one point the Earls Court shows were a potential official release). It has been suggested numerous times that they panned the idea because of Freddie's "microphone problems", but we must remember that all we've heard from this show is a video feed. Similar to the Hyde Park "echo" issue, what we are hearing is what was recorded from the video feed, not the soundboard mix, what was heard in the monitors, or from the audience.
SETLIST:
(DISC 1)
Procession
Tie Your Mother Down
Ogre Battle
White Queen (As It Began)
Somebody To Love
Killer Queen
Good Old Fashioned Loverboy
The Millionaire Waltz
You're My Best Friend
Bring Back That Leroy Brown
Death On Two Legs
Doing All Right
Brighton Rock
(DISC 2)
'39
You Take My Breath Away
White Man
The Prophet's Song
Bohemian Rhapsody
Keep Yourself Alive
Stone Cold Crazy
In The Lap Of The Gods
Now I'm Here
Liar
Rock n' Roll Medley
Lucille
Jailhouse Rock
Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting
Stupid Cupid
Be Bop A Lula
God Save The Queen
LINEAGE: 2st Gen (PAL) VHS > SA DVDR > DVD Decrypter > Elementary Streams > Professional NLE and Video
Editing/Remastering software > Frame-served to CCE SP2 > DVD Chaptered/Authored
Size : 8.39 GB
Loads of artwork included for the audio, and the Earls Evening Races DVD jacket as well; if someone made artwork for this I didn't include it - sorry! Also note that I unpacked it from Pittrek's ISO files so it should not cause any of the problems I (and others) experienced due to disk formatting setups.
Good download and enjoy! :)
