Queen
Maple Leaf Gardens
Toronto, ON, Canada
November 21st, 1977


Previously uncirculated, this is a second audience source from Queen's second gig in Toronto. The sound quality is excellent - one of the best from this tour, topped only by the Houston video soundtrack and Mike Millard's recording from Long Beach.

This project was crowdfunded by dozens of generous people in the Queen community. I had acquainted with the taper a few years back, and one day earlier this year he told me he had terminal cancer. In exchange for circulating the tapes, he asked for a bit of cash to help make his final arrangements that much easier. Although he taped Queen twice, he wasn't too big a fan - he was more into progressive rock, blues, and experimental jazz like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Sun Ra Arkestra. Still, listen to these recordings with the knowledge that he wanted the Queen community to enjoy them. He sadly passed away in September 2022.

Upon receiving the tapes I handed them off to Ed and Kieran who took care of the clean-up (largely speed correction and EQing). Both the flat transfer and EQ'd versions are here for the taking (the latter being a merge with the inferior-sounding but more complete source 1).

On a personal note - being from the Toronto area, these are shows I've heard about for decades from countless people who attended them, some of whom remain friends to this day, and it's thrilling for both me and them to finally get to hear them in great sound quality.

Performance-wise, this is vintage Queen at its best, with solid vocals and playing throughout. Before '39, May refers to Taylor and Deacon as "the sonic volcano rhythm section" - a nickname that has been referenced in retrospect, but never actually confirmed with a spoken quote from the time.

The taper is not far from the stage, as the tambourine tossed by Mercury into the audience during Liar is heard being played by its new owner during My Melancholy Blues, after which the singer declares: "every night I do this I try and put on my Ella Fitzgerald voice."

The rest of the show was likely taped, but the second cassette is presumed lost. But the 86 minutes we have are mighty glorious. Enjoy the feast.


Ed's notes:

The speed had to be extensively adjusted due to speedups caused by dying recorder batteries towards the end. Speed was overall adjusted -1.5 percent and then slowed down further in increments ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 percent for the parts affected by dying batteries. Some wow and flutter reduction was applied to the speed ups during White Man, which should hopefully make for a more pleasant listen.


AUD > Master Cassette > Nakamichi deck (azimuth adjusted; Dolby off) > Soundforge 10 > WAV 24/48 (Adobe Audition speed correction and tracking, Audacity speed correction (for dying batteries only), iZotope RX wow and flutter reduction, pyaudiorestoration mixdown to mono) > FLAC 24/48 level 8


More info:

http://queenlive.ca/queen/77-11-21.htm


Setlist:
01 We Will Rock You (slow) (cuts in) 2:04
02 We Will Rock You (fast) 3:28
03 Brighton Rock 3:50
04 Somebody To Love 6:25
05 It's Late 7:14
06 Death On Two Legs 3:07
07 Killer Queen 2:00
08 Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy 2:27
09 I'm In Love With My Car 2:18
10 Get Down, Make Love 4:15
11 The Millionaire Waltz 3:36
12 You're My Best Friend (tape flip after song) 2:43
13 Spread Your Wings 5:32
14 Liar 9:47
15 Love Of My Life 3:43
16 '39 3:45
17 My Melancholy Blues 4:13
18 White Man 4:49
19 vocal solo 4:13
20 guitar solo (cuts out) 6:27

Total Time: 1:26:04


Enjoy, and please keep it lossless (and don't bootleg this - particularly rockinconcerts.com; if you are the person who runs that website, you are pure scum).