The LA Beat

All we see is Hologram Freddie, Hologram Froodoo... Photo by simononly courtesy of flickr Creative Commons.

Inside a packed LA Forum, a familiar voice rang out with a familiar command, one uttered over forty years ago to an over forty-year old crowd on the other side of the country.

“If we all work together – maybe we can stop this rain!”

For a brief, shining moment, the fifteen thousand people inside the Forum came together and chanted “No rain! No rain!” as they were drenched by a torrential downpour from the arena’s overhead sprinkler system. Only those with the foresight to purchase $1500 VIP passes were afforded cover from the storm, while most of the crowd made do with souvenir ponchos available for sale in the lobby for $125 (management had prohibited patrons from bringing their own rain gear into the venue citing “security issues”). Those without the spare change simply hunkered down in their seats and took it.

At the day-long sensory overload that was Hologram Woodstock, the man made rainstorm was one of the few genuine, tactile experiences to be found.

Some of the acts on the bill performed with at least a couple of original members in the non-digitally- rendered flesh. Queen’s Roger Taylor and Brian May have been touring with Hologram Freddie (along with a statue of original bassist John Deacon) to raves for the last few years, performing all their biggest hits along with tracks from their surprising new album, A Kind Of Illusion. Released last year to great critical acclaim, the album is comprised of unreleased outtakes from the group’s earliest days, along with several new songs written in the studio by May and Taylor.

How’d they get Freddie to sing on the new material? By cutting up snippets of Mercury’s vocals  from classic tracks, then altering the pitch to fit the new melody. “It’s really incredible what they’re doing with computers today,” says Brian May. “If we have a lyric that says ‘The sky is a silhouette-o’, then you just take a bit of the line from ‘Radio Gaga’ and a bit of the line from ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, cut them together, and you can alter the timing and shift it to any note you like without altering the speed. So with a little editing, it’s like having Freddie back in the studio with us! People are wondering, ‘Was that really Freddie?’” Continue reading →