Location: Postojna, Epicenter
Concert date: 06.05.2007
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: free admission
Who would have thought that somewhere in the world there’s a guy who’d publicly dare to announce a show where he’d confidently belt out the immortal songs of Queen, songs some of us are tenderly, emotionally attached to, and so critical of every imitator who mangles even the tiniest bit of a tune and plays it their own way.
Well, that guy exists. Lee Garcia, a native of Spain, showed us what he’s got in Postojna, an hour after the announced start. Accompanied by his parents, he got ready slowly and carefully in the tiny backstage area, and after an hour of waiting he ducked off to the side for five minutes, then came back through the small crowd transformed into the eternal Freddie Mercury. His father announced his entrance with a moment of silence and a look at the local DJ, a signal to cut the music. On a small portable playback rig he hit the play button and, well I’ll be damned, to the punchy, hard-rock-ified opening beats of “We will rock you”, Lee Garcia came flying onto the stage. With his meticulously rehearsed choreography and look (white tailcoat, white trousers with a red stripe down the side, white sneakers, a white band on his wrist and, of course, a sleeveless Bugs Bunny shirt) he took our breath away in the very first seconds. The twisting, the strutting, the arm movements, the facial expressions, the total immersion – on stage he was Freddie. He took us through a string of hits, singing one after another spot-on in pitch, though every now and then he of course had to help himself out by dropping the harmonies a third down, because we all know that even the real Freddie Mercury couldn’t sing his studio work live exactly the way it sounds on the records. After the opener came “Tie your mother down”, which he sang and danced literally the same as Freddie did at Wembley in 1986. After those two songs I realized that, despite the faithful delivery, the timbre of the voice didn’t quite belong to Freddie, and then I remembered the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert (1992), where George Michael sang “Somebody to love”, and that voice was our Freddie’s too. “Somebody to love” came next, with the final “Somebody to” effortlessly sung in falsetto before he slid down the word “love” as if riding an escalator. “Play the game” and “Killer Queen” followed, both delivered with real feeling and conviction. Of course he couldn’t skip the legendary mid-show bit from Wembley where Freddie tested the crowd all on his own. So, in a shortened form, he started off the syllables Ye-ee and we ran up and down the scale, building a dialogue with him. Then came “Save me”, “Seven seas of Rhye” and “Bicycle race”. He confidently showed off his singing and moves on the highest point of the stage, which is slightly raised above the audience. Some very interesting scenes followed during May’s solos, when our Freddie had to somehow improvise and simply expressed his time on stage through movement. Cue Freddie’s arm swings, semicircular spins and so on. Then came “Fat bottomed girls”, in the middle of which our “parched-throated” singer orders himself a drink. After that song came the line “How are you doing guys?”, which had us guys barely able to force the corners of our mouths upward. “Good old fashioned lover boy”, “Don’t stop me now” and “Another one bites the dust” followed, sung with confidence and just a bit of lowering of the higher notes. The last two songs of the first half were “Under pressure”, which was performed well but marked by an unconvincing middle section where Bowie’s vocal is supposed to rule, and “Now I’m here”, where the singer’s voice wavered for the first time in 13 songs. A 30-minute break followed, after which Freddie came out in a yellow vest, draped in the English flag, and at the piercing start of “Flash” moved into “One vision”, backed up by his mom, who followed his performance in front of the stage, waving an English flag. Next up: “A kind of magic”, sung from start to finish with the crowd in a rowdy mood, “Who wants to live forever”, “I want to breakfree” (no vacuum cleaner!), “Living on my own”, “Hammer to fall”, where you could already feel the fatigue in his voice and he sang the higher parts lower than usual, “I want it all”, “Breakthrough”, with Freddie Mercury’s delicate original intro, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, where even May’s solo could have been missing, since Lee accompanied the whole thing with his falsetto, and “Crazy little thing called love”, during which Lee came down off the stage and sang among the audience. The last two songs of the regular set were “Radio ga ga”, where the singer was already leaning hard on his throat, admitting how demanding the song is, and “We will rock you”, which turned out to be a replay cue for the end of the show. Then came three minutes of the audience and the performer singing the syllables Yee-ee and Ti-deo we’d heard earlier, where our Freddie overdid it a bit and went too high, cracked, and admitted defeat with the words “Fuck that I’m going down.”.
To thunderous ovations he returned to the stage and sang “We are the Champions” and “Show must go on”, and told us he’d never experienced a crowd like this and that he’d be coming back to Slovenia.
I admit I’ve never seen such a good performance from any other Freddie Mercury imitator, and I hope Lee Garcia will be seen here again or somewhere closer abroad, because a show as confident as Lee’s, one that takes a lot of knowledge, skill and above all a whole lot of love for the original band Queen, is worth driving a few more kilometers than usual. Lee Garcia, welcome!
Text: Peter Strnad
Photos: Daniel Pavlica
Setlist
1.We will rock you 2.Tie your mother down 3.Somebody to love 4.Play the game 5.Killer Queen 6.Save me 7.Seven seas of Rhye 8.Bicycle race 9.Fat bottom girls 10.Good old fashioned lover boy 11.Don’t stop me now 12.Another one bites the dust 13.Under pressure 14.Now I’m here 15. One vision 16. A kind of Magic 17. Who want’s to live forever 18. I want to breakfree 19. Living on my own 20. Hammer to fall 21. I want it all 22. Breakthrough 23. Bohemian Rhapsody 24. Crazy little thing called love 25. Radio Gaga 26. We will rock you (replay) 27. We are the champions 28. (BONUS) Show must go on
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