07-24-2004 – Chart Attack – Queen Musical

Finally. Finally, finally, finally the Queen rock musical is landing on North American shores and ABBA can go back to Sweden and get off every billboard I pass by. Playing to sold-out crowds throughout London since 2002, Queen’s We Will Rock You features some of the greatest rock in a musical since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. The show is scheduled to premiere on September 8 at the Paris Las Vegas hotel, while preview performances will run throughout August.

So picture this: it’s the future, and a place we once knew as the Earth in all it’s freedoms and diversity has been eradicated in favour of complete and total globalization. The world is happy, it’s safe, musical instruments are banned and computers generate boy and girl band music to keep the masses content. With hits scheduled years in advance, nothing is left to chance and the drones happily bop along to the calculated creations.

In the underground, resistance brews.

There are rebels, The Bohemians, who seem to think that there was once a time when kids got together and formed their own bands to create new music. They refer to this time as The Rhapsody. There are rumours that, somewhere, instruments still exist on the planet but a hero will be needed to bring them back to the masses. That hero is Galileo.

Will Galileo succeed, or will he be caught by the Ga Ga Cops, brought before the Killer Queen and sent into oblivion across the Seven Seas of Rye before he completes his noble mission?

Can Galileo bring rock back to the people?

Who cares? So long as I get to hear “Another One Bites The Dust” live, I’m happy. Wonderful in its complete absurdity, We Will Rock You features laser light effects and plasma screen accompaniment along with a cast carefully selected with the help of former Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor.

Though the show will remain grounded at the Paris for a 10-year contract, with options to extend that for 10 additional years, there are also plans for a North American touring production of the show. If their lead can sing even half as well as Freddie Mercury, I’ll be tickled pink.

A new edition of Queen’s Greatest Hits is set to be released on August 17 to coincide with the opening of the Las Vegas show.