Scream for meeeeeeeee

I went to heaven last night. It is pointless to write how good Maiden are live, suffice it to say my expectations were high and they went beyond that. It is almost machine like, their ability to play live. No mistakes, no mess ups, everything and everyone working perfectly together. Apart from their faces, it was impossible to tell this was a 50ish average aged band...

Dickinson was, as always, amusing. He has an ability to interact with the crowd which I've seen with very few other frontmen. My favourite part? "When we were in Europe, MTV came to us and said "We've just remembered something called heavy metal exists, and would like to do a show with you"; we told them to stick it up their ass! (Crowd cheers lustily) We do NOT need any favours, all right! Especially from people who don't understand our music!" (Crowd cheers more). Ha ha, sticking it to MTV.

And, this lovely dig at Metallica, who are struggling with their alcohol addictions (at least Hetfield is). Bruce Dickinson was talking about the celebrity culture that's grown up these days, and ends his little speech with "We don't need rehab! Beer and rock and roll, that's all we want!" I don't know how many got the joke, though.

Surprisingly, not a single word of profanity, (unless you consider ass profane) was uttered by anyone on stage throughout.

Maiden sometimes in their songs will get all their guitarists together in one tight circle playing, and it is such an amazing visual spectacle, apart from their music. I had to constantly remind myself that they were also playing, and there was this constant battle in my mind whether to hear or watch.

Favourite parts - surprisingly, 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. When they started that song, I was scratching my head thinking a 14 minute song has no place in a 2 1/2 hour live show. Boy was I wrong. It was unbelievable, how wonderful it sounded. There was electricity in the air when they played that...

Revelations was very powerful, and it was done very well I thought.

Of course Hallowed be thy name was an almost religious experience, and I will never forget it. Dickinson is something else when he sings that, and it was a very special 7 minutes.

They also got some fans to get up on stage and sing the chorus to Heaven Can Wait, which was a very warm fuzzy moment, for me anyway.

It is also nice to see how much the band enjoys playing live. They were smiling and running around like little kids on stage. This is one of the reasons they're so good live - they really love playing in front of people.

Things I didn't like -

Can I play with madness. Blech, I hate that song. Plus it didn't sound good at all live. Or maybe this is personal bias, I dunno.

How the sound kept cutting out of Adrian Smith's solos. Given that his solos are of such high quality, I was really looking forward to hearing it live. The constant cutting out was irritating.

Lauren Harris, Steve Harris' daughter. She wasn't in tune, and apart from one song, the other songs were all pretty pedestrian stuff. Made me wonder where the genes went.

That's it! I'm still in a daze, and am slowly coming to grips with the fact that I saw Iron Maiden live...

One last thing - all the white crowd, and it was mostly white apart from some Indians and fewer latino's, was of Southern (USA) origin. I mean, all. There was not one American who did not speak with a pronounced drawl. This was pretty interesting...and Maiden play only on the coasts of this country. Maybe they should think about going somewhere south, seems like that's where their fan base is.