Queen!

Last night Rocky and I decided we'd go see Queen. You know.....the rock band? I like most of their music but had NO idea what to expect from the live show. This picture shows how I sort of remember them from the 70's?


The show was held at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and anyone who's ever driven there from El Paso dreads the l-o-n-g line that can start on the freeway, sometimes 2 miles before you ever get to the University exit. It's so dangerous and it takes forever to finally get off the freeway and into the parking lot. So we left a little early, and when we got to the off ramp, there were only 2 cars in front of us and they weren't going to the Pan American Center! In seconds we were in our parking space, along with the other 10 cars in the lot. Seriously!

When we got to our seats, I think there may have been about 100 people at the most there. They slowly hobbled in until there were maybe 2000 total, in an arena that seats around 15,000! It was SAD! Most of the people were either our age or older and real out of shape. And there we were....front and center! Best seats in the house!

I've never seen Queen, didn't know their lead singer was Freddy Mercury, didn't know he was gay, and had only recently found out he was dead! But they have an equally talented (and gay) replacement for Freddy! He could sing and he did, while he skipped all around the stage, kicking himself in his own rear-end, and all while wearing a bright yellow marching band costume! Rocky said the real show was on my face! I had no idea what to expect. I turned to him and said "Maybe that's why they call it Queen?!" I'm sure Rocky was thinking, "Ya think??"

"Freddy #2" kept trying to get us all up on our feet and clapping our hands overhead, etc., but most of us were die hards! It wasn't gonna happen. Besides, I can hardly lift my left arm over my head anyway! A German family sat next to me and when "Freddy #2" said to grab the hair of the person next to you, slap them in the face and make them stand up, Mr. German man looked at me and I just said "No!" It was hard to tell if he was disappointed or not.

The music was really pretty good, but Flaming Freddie was so distracting! At one point he came out with an American flag drapped around his sweaty body. That was a little disturbing. Then at the end of the show he carried out a red velvet crown and cape. Wow. I guess he didn't see the need to model it for such a small crowd.

So as you can imagine, we had absolutely NO problems getting out of the parking lot, and we were back on the freeway, headed home in about 2 minutes!

God save the Queen!