Vol. 23 — October 1982

This volume contains info and excitement about Queen's upcoming fifth Japanese tour, which would take place in October of 1982. Unlike the 1981 Japanese visit, which saw the band performing only at the Budoukan in Tokyo, the 1982 shows spanned much of the Japanese country once again, making it easier for fans to attend locally.

Tenpei Matsubayashi, manager of Queen on behalf of Warner Pioneer during their heyday and author of the 2025 book A Splendid Rock Show: A Memoir, has a message in the front of this volume. The rest of the magazine is largely devoted to old unpublished photos of the band from the 70s and a recap of their careers thus far, giving this issue an almost nostalgic feel even as the fans were looking forward to the upcoming tour. At a time when Hot Space had been released to a lukewarm reception, many fans were taking a look back through their prior work.

One section of note is a continuation of the "My Collection, My Queen" feature where fans shared their rare vinyl and memorabilia collections. An entity known as "Shadow Queen" shares their bootleg collection, broken up into two parts between this issue and the next. It's oddly laid out and confusing, with images in one issue and titles in another, but there are some interesting things here.

All of the bootlegs listed in vol. 23 are known and documented, except for one: Bicycle Race Tour '79. According to queenlive.ca, there is no mention of this bootleg anywhere else. Vol. 23 has a very grainy photo of this bootleg, which upon closer inspection appears to show the setlist of one of the Budoukan shows from 1979. The label on the bootleg also appears to say "Shadow Queen", the same name of the entity who shared this collection. My theory is that Shadow Queen may have been an unofficial fanclub rather than a single person (this is corroborated by the fact that I've found photos of a Queen fanzine published by a group known as "Shadow Queen" in the early 90s) and this group may have commissioned the pressing of this bootleg. If that's the case, there probably weren't many copies pressed and they were likely only available through this fanclub, leading to the LP's obscurity. This is all conjecture on my part at this point, though.

One other interesting bit is that the No News Is Good News bootleg is also listed, but is expressly notated as being a double LP rather than one as is documented. It's unclear what the alleged second LP would contain.

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