Gah. It's not a live album...
 

...If you retouch your work ad nauseum.

The new Queen + Paul Rodgers record is engineered and mastered via protools, adding to Brian May's notoriety for re-engineering "live" music. I mean, I understand the need to do it--They have a frontman who can't remember the lyrics to one of the best known songs in Rock (We Will Rock You)--But this is ridiculous on so many levels. Frank Black can do a studio record live to 2-track, but Brian May can't get licks he's played for 30 years right on one try? Fucking lame.

KK's back :)

engineered how? what's been changed?

Details man details

The official word is that they used it only to edit things like hiss, crackle, and pops. However, they've been using Pro Tools since at least the reissue of the FMTC (Or parts of the concert), and complaints about Brian actually altering/editing parts of the various tunes have been lobbied since as far back as Live Killers' re-release in 1992 or so.

And it's not like he's alone: Most studio albums are editied for time and content to an extent, but Brian May has developed a rep for doing it to extremes in the past, and it's always Brian (Not Roger, John, or Freddie...Most of the complaints are about issues after Freddie passed). Not to mention, when they re-released Hendrix at Woodstock, they did this (The producer takes credit for it in the liners, saying that he removed stray notes and the like, even though this concert was a phenomenon, bad notes and all). David Bowie's live albums tend to have a lot of post production alteration and doctoring.

To be fair, I've never compared the old "Live Killers" to the new one, and Most people don't remember Milton Keynes 1982 that exactly. Some of the concertgoers for the Q+PR concert have made complaints and accusations of overdubs, and even folks downloading bootlegs (The ones that were available on Queen's official site) were complaining they weren't listening to the same concert.

Man, I loved that Woodstock guy's notes on the concert. You know, he was praising it, but then said he took out the stuff that sounded bad. Like it's an accomplishment.

"Yeah, I flawlessly remastered Michaelangelo's David, but covered the penis because it made me uncomfortable."