Many might already know of this live Queen performance or already have it in their collection. This concert has been available for many years on VHS and DVD under the title of We Will Rock You. Under the watchful eye of Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor, this concert from Montreal in 1981 has been beautifully restored frame by frame with an updated and re-mixed sound that now offers the listener full Dolby Surround Sound and a state of the art sound that makes it hard to believe that this show was recorded 26 years ago.

This 1981 tour was one of the biggest ever for Queen up to that point and was the very last tour to feature just the basic line-up of the four original members Freddy Mercury, Brain May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon onstage. Subsequent tours used off-stage keyboards and some additional guitar as well as other musicians. This was the last time the world would see Queen in it's most rawest and purest form.

This DVD package includes an entire performance from Montreal, Quebec, Canada's legendary Montreal Forum, a hockey shrine that has since fallen victim to the wrecking ball. Queen is in fine form with this show and we are treated to a unique and faster version of We Will Rock You for the show opener. Tracks from their current album at the time, The Game include Play The Game, Save Me, Dragon Attack, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Another One Bites The Dust. Get Down Make Love, Sheer Heart Attack and We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions are tracks representing the News Of The World album and from A Day At The Races, we get a killer version of Somebody To Love and Tie Your Mother Down. Night At The Opera tracks include I'm In Love With My Car, a great acoustic version of Love Of My Life with just Freddy and Brian at stage front and of course, Bohemian Rhapsody. Older material includes Keep Yourself Alive from their very first album as well as Killer Queen and an extended Now I'm Here from the Sheer Heart Attack album. A rare bonus is one of the very first ever live performances of Under Pressure, a track recorded as a duet with David Bowie. Roger Taylor shows off his drumming prowess with an extended solo during Keep Yourself Alive including some very intricate timpani drum work. I never really noticed how much he plays like Keith Moon until watching this DVD. A very underrated drummer if there ever was one. Brian May takes his turn with a solo piece that uses all sorts of echo loops and effects which is very impressive since this was many years before digital effects made it very easy even for the basement guitarist to generate the types of sounds he was getting onstage way back then. A nice interesting bit is the inclusion of a bit of Jailhouse Rock at the end of Crazy Little Thing Called Love. I always felt that Freddy ws paying homage to Elvis with that song in the way that he sings it. Some versions of this DVD also contain the live footage from Queen's 1984 performance at Live Aid as well as rehearsal footage and an interview prior to them hitting the stage.

I was a huge Queen fan in high school with their run of albums up to and including News of The World. After that, I lost interest in them as their sound was changing dramatically and they were becoming more of a commercial pop band. One of my biggest regrets in life was never going to see them live and now with this DVD release, it's the next best thing to being there. For anyone who has never seen Freddy Mercury in action, this is all you need. Never has there been such a charismatic front man and his voice...WOW...once he gets warmed up, he nails every note and is never off-key for the duration of the performance. He handles playing piano and singing better than just about anybody and his stage persona is electric. Queen is a big influence on a lot of today's big bands in the metal genre largely due to their theatrics and the fact that they had their own sound. Nobody else could sound like Queen. With the passing of Freddy Mercury due to complications of AIDS back in the early 90's, there's a renewed interest in him and his days with Queen and on this particular November night in Montreal 26 years ago, well over 18,000 people got to see something that I'm sure many still talk about today. Queen was one of the premier live acts and were the biggest band in the world at that time. Now you can experience (or re-live if you were there) all of the glory of one of the best live performances ever filmed of Queen and as always, the genius of the late Freddy Mercury.