Re: Maiden show review

[Lt. Tyler]

Maiden rocked big time! This was a totally awesome show, from start to finish. Here’s the quick rundown:

I head home from work early, to make sure I’m there when my brother from CT arrives. He gets there right around 5 PM, we have a quick dinner and head off to the Comcast center (formerly Tweeter Center formerly GreatWoods), an outdoor venue which used to have a big gen ad lawn, but is less lawn and more seats with a giant roof on it (~20K capacity). Now we live just about 10 miles from this place, and we get there driving on easy backroads in about 25 minutes. Then, the tickets my brother got on StubHub were VIP, so we had our own parking lot and entry. Very easy, and after buying a T shirt (picked up one with the Trooper on the front, and the Piece of Mind cover on the back, yes I wore it that night, and yes I’m wearing it today, and if you don’t approve, well, I don’t care), we head into the VIP lounge section.

Since we’re there about 6 PM, and the opening act isn’t until 7:30, we sit at the bar and have a few beers, complain about the whiny Red Sox fans and Curt Schilling. It was good to hang out with the brother without the parents or the kids around.

7:30 finally rolls around, we go to the seats to check out the opening act, which is Steve Harris’s daughter. Eh, utterly forgettable run of the mill hard rock band. She looked ok running around in tight spandex, but really, none of the songs grabbed you.

Our seats were awesome. They were obviously some sort of coporate box seats, and we were prolly 20 rows back, immediately behind and above a walkway. There was nobody in the box with us, or on either side (what, nobody from Fidelity wanted to come rawk?).

Right at 8:40 the lights dim, and Churchill’s speech starts until they launch into “Aces High.” What a great lead off! The rest of the set went as follows:
01. Intro – Churchill’s Speech
02. Aces High
03. 2 Minutes to Midnight
04. Revelations
05. The Trooper
06. Wasted Years
07. The Number of the Beast (There was fire. A lot of fire!)
08. Run to the Hills
09. Rime of the Ancient Mariner (HOW GREAT IS THAT?)
10. Powerslave (this was prolly the best IMO of the night)
11. Heaven Can Wait
12. Can I Play With Madness?
13. Fear of the Dark
14. Iron Maiden

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15. Moonchild
16. The Clairvoyant
17. Hallowed Be Thy Name (I always get chills at the beginning of this)

So for two hours they went full tilt, Dickinson running around like a madman, wearing crazy feathered masks, crouching on top of the front light boxes, generally whipping up the crowd. Steve Harris was singing along as he drove that characteristic bass line gallop, Dave Murray would just sorta stand there as he played the solos. Overall the musci was super tight, not a note out of place. s

The sets were great, all Powerslave era. Eddie as mummy robot and android (a guy on stilts) made his appearance. There was fire, shooting sparks, smoke.

When it was done, the ears were ringing (damn that was loud), but it was a great show. Can’t wait for them to come around again.