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There was buzz in the air on opening night for the Queen + Adam Lambert North American leg of The Rhapsody Tour. Why?

With no new music and a set list that has remained pretty stable since the band first headed out on the road — first with Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers and then American Idol season eight runner-up Lambert replacing the irreplaceable late Freddie Mercury — Queen has literally kept the music alive. It all comes down to the spectacular brand placement and re-placement that remaining active members guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor have accomplished with the We Will Rock You jukebox musical, a documentary, a zillion greatest hits and catalogue reissues and — of course — the enormously successful biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

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The film not only put the signature band back on the top of the charts, it cemented the band with a whole new generation of fans.

They were there buying merchandise like it was going out of style and truly hyped about getting the Q & A experience. Lambert stressed how he’s there to “carry the torch for Freddie Mercury and let Brian and Roger continue to play these amazing songs.”

They were the first audience getting it on the present tour and when the lights went down and the drum rolls began, the crowd went crazy at what could be called the Fanfare for the Common Fan. Nobody will ever accuse Queen of subtlety. The extended cosmic guitar solo was unlike anything seen in a stadium since the sonic excesses of the seventies.