From Queenpedia.com
Kicking off Queen + Paul Rodgers' 2008 "Rock the Cosmos" tour in Kharkov was indeed a unique starting point for a tour, especially considering the band hadn't yet appeared there. (It would remain their only appearance, too.) They had been asked to headline the free concert Don't Let AIDS Ruin Your Life, mere weeks before their tour was set to start; the concert was a way of promoting safe sex practices and raising awareness of AIDS, a rising concern in the Ukraine, and was supported by the Mercury Phoenix Trust. The concert was taped and filmed professionally by David Mallet, with whom Queen had previously worked on various promotional videos since Under Pressure in 1981, and was not only broadcast live on television (with a reported 10 million viewers tuning in), but was also released theatrically around the world as Let The Cosmos Rock on 1 December 2008, World AIDS Day. With all this hoopla surrounding the events, and the relative absence of any material to be downloaded from the official Queenonline store, it was correctly ascertained that the concert would be released as a live album and DVD, though the biggest surprise was that it finally appeared nine months after the event, well after the news had broken that the association between Brian and Roger and Paul had come to an end. The relative lack of interest in the product was obvious in that it wasn't the full concert -- A Kind Of Magic, Radio Ga Ga, and Wishing Well were all omitted, though available through various websites as bonus downloads -- and that it was released only on DVD and CD, and not on Blu-Ray, a relatively new medium that ensured the highest quality in picture and sound (far superior to DVD), leaving many audio- and videophiles angry. Additionally, no bonus material on either CD or DVD came as a shock to devoted fans; even the DVD release of Return Of The Champions had a bonus performance of Imagine from the 2005 Hyde Park concert. At the very least, what's presented here is performed excellently (though it was later overdubbed for theatrical release), and the concert is beautifully shot, but the sameness of the set list to Return Of The Champions is very disappointing. For whatever reason, the band hadn't yet incorporated a lot of the new material from The Cosmos Rocks into the set list (though they wouldn't really play all that much from the album anyway), meaning that only Cosmos Rockin' and C-lebrity get an airing, though Say It's Not True was performed like the new, harder rocking version on the album than on the 46664 acoustic concerts. Some other adventurous material was performed, too: One Vision was brought out of mothballs for the first time since 1986, and Shooting Star was played live for the first time. Perhaps the biggest and most welcome surprise came after Brian's guitar solo, when he and Freddie (by way of the video screen and the original audio recording) duetted on Bijou; second to this was Roger's unique drum solo, where he and Danny Miranda fooled around on an upright electric bass for a few minutes (slipping in references to Another One Bites The Dust and Under Pressure) before Roger sat down at a basic drum set of bass and snare drums and hi-hat. As he started his solo, roadies would assemble a much larger kit around him as Roger showed that he hadn't lost any of his chops. It's hard to criticize this release, because the band were still gaining their footing. (Also, it was done for AIDS awareness.) Unfortunately, it wouldn't be until later in the tour when more songs from The Cosmos Rocks were explored (it's up to debate, of course, but the most effective and interesting opener was Surf's Up . . . School's Out !), meaning that a lot of the Kharkov album and DVD feels very samey to previous releases. The general lack of interest from the Queen camp, too, meant that the Queen + Paul Rodgers partnership came to an end not with a triumphant roar, but instead a pathetic whimper. TracklistsCredits
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