Freddie Hologram Fail

[Jeremey]

Remember when we talked about Queen resurrecting Freddie via "optical illusion" last week for the 10th anniversary performance of "We Will Rock You?" Anyway I totally forgot all about it, and realized that with NO buzz about the event on the internet whatsoever in the past week, I wondered if it really even took place.

So for those of you dying to find out if Freddie did indeed make an appearance, here's some final closure for you. Those purist who demand a living breathing rockstar onstage should take heart, as it appears the technology isn't quite ready for prime time just yet.

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/music/1389 ... ficulties/

As a freshly minted connoisseur of dead-guy holograms, I was thrilled when Brian May announced that deceased legend FREDDIE MERCURY would make a special appearance at the 10th anniversary show of Queen's musical, We Will Rock You. "It's a little unfortunate they did that thing with Tupac," May told the BBC," as we've been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while." However, he claimed that Mercury's appearance wouldn't quite be a hologram, but rather "an optical illusion of sorts. . . . People will come out saying, 'Did we actually see Freddie?'"
And that's precisely what happened at the May 14 performance — although the question was closer to, "Were we supposed to have seen Freddie?"

I was a little worried that, despite the "optical illusion" story being picked up everywhere, I could find no accounts of the actual event, save for some muttering on Queen's online fan forum. The general opinion was that technical problems had prevented Freddie from appearing; a YouTube clip shows a nervous Brian May playing the closing solo of "Bohemian Rhapsody" while staring offstage and waiting for something to emerge; we hear Mercury's voice sing the final "any way the wind blows," but no optical illusion is visible. "I saw a tiny glimpse of something resembling Freddie," said one commenter, "and then it was gone, but I was on the far right, maybe that angle wasn't really good."

I predicted in my recent piece on the Tupac affair that cheapo holograms would inevitably result in glitches, but it's heartwarming to know that even the old classics of rock tech can still go terribly wrong: a planned Roger Taylor drum cameo during — ahem — "The Show Must Go On" was similarly Spinal Tapped; all accounts tell of an expectant band glancing around in low-level panic while Taylor's drum riser failed to emerge from the stage for most of the song. Luckily, Taylor showed up at the last minute, like Derek Smalls finally busting out of the alien pod.



Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/music/1389 ... z1vifFwsOp