Live at Wembley '86 (1992)
Disc One
1. One Vision
2. Tie Your Mother Down
3. In the Lap of the Gods
4. Seven Seas of Rhye
5. Tear it Up
6. A Kind of Magic
7. Under Pressure
8. Another One Bites the Dust
9. Who Wants to Live Forever
10.I Want to Break Free
11.Impromptu
12.Brighton Rock
13.Now I'm Here
Disc Two
1. Love of My Life
2. Is This the World We Created?
3. (You're So Square) Baby I Don't Care
4. Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart)
5. Tutti Frutti
6. Gimme Some Lovin'
7. Bohemian Rhapsody
8. Hammer to Fall
9. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
10.Big Spender
11.Radio Ga Ga
12.We Will Rock You
13.Friends Will Be Friends
14.We Are the Champions
15.God Save the Queen
 
Although no one knew it at the time, the 1986 tour of the band's A Kind of Magic tour would be their last.
In their home country of England, and various other parts of the globe,
they were the hottest ticket around at the time, so it's no surprise
that they could fill up the entire Wembley Stadium in England.
Fortunately, the whole show is featured here, and gives fans a chance to
relive this kind of magic over and over again. It's very easy for me to
make comparisons to this record and their other live album Live Killers from a show seven years
earlier. To be brutally honest, even though this album is one show, and
it's the whole show, this experience doesn't quite live up to the
prior album's delivery.
Listening to this album really makes you wish that you were actually
there, but the recording shows a bit too much flair and a bit too much
atmosphere that is great while you're at a show, but doesn't necessarily
translate as well on a recording. There are a lot of in between songs
banter, a lot of crowd interaction, a lot of song snippets and pieces
that you wish weren't there (a song like Impromptu isn't so bad,
but Big Spender? Come on guys! What were you
thinking?!). But again, it's supposed to be a representation of the
whole show.
Then, sadly, some of the band's newer material from the eighties just
doesn't quite translate that well to a live setting. A song like Who
Wants to Live Forever is beautiful in it's original recording, but
it seems to drop several notches when it's performed in front of 70,000
(or whatever) people. Even the classic Another One Bites the
Dust just doesn't sound as powerful nor as convincing.
All of these things are perhaps the specific reason why, until the
invention of DVDs, artists would never release entire shows as live
albums, and that always made me feel like I was being short changed in a
way, so I'm glad that they did put out the whole show. I just rarely
can listen to the whole thing from beginning to end.
NOTE: Another live album was released in England in 1986 highlighting
this tour (Live Magic), but wasn't released
in the U.S. until ten years later.
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