The Metal Files

I found out last minute that former Iron Maiden singer, Blaze Bayley, was coming back to Austin again to play a couple of shows at the Anderson Mill Tavern.  I’m still confused as to why he plays that far away from downtown, but I believe this was the third year in a row that he’s played there.  I saw him last year at another strange place on the outskirts of town.  With even a little bit of minor promotion they could easily have had a crowd at a downtown bar.

My lifelong friend, Kelz, got to town that night for a week long MitchFest and he was down for going to see it.  We left straight from the airport to the bar.  When we got there, the lady at the door said, “You came late but it’s still $20.”  Ouch.  There were maybe 20 people there.  We walked in as he was talking to the audience and they went right in to Man On The Edge followed by The Trooper…and that was it.  Wait.  What?  After a few short minutes, they came back out and played an obviously unrehearsed version of Wasted Years and that was that.  It was similar to the version that they played last year, which was to say that it wasn’t good.  Sorry.  It was horrible.  I’ll give Blaze credit that he works the crowd pretty good, like he’s playing in front of a huge amount of people.

The only real bright spot to the show was that AJ Pero from Twisted Sister was playing drums for these few USA shows.  So of course I had The Book with me as well as the first 3 Twisted Sister CDs.  We got to speak with him after the show and was in good spirits.  We talked about the Sister 2004 show in Richmond, VA at an open air venue when a violent storm came up and they cleared the place.  Sister came back out to about 1/3 of the original crowd and just killed it.  He signed out stuff, took some pics with us and Kelz and I headed downtown for a beer at Jackalope before finally heading home.  We had a busy week ahead.

I doubt I’ll see Blaze again if he comes to town unless he brings someone else that’s in The Book with him.