Archive for the ‘iron maiden’ Category
Iron Maiden – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son Concert Ticket
I was recently asked what my first Iron Maiden show was and it was this one, the Seventh Son tour. I actually had tickets to see them on the Somewhere in Time Tour and had to give them up because of my grades. That was a reality in my life growing up. Looking back, I understand why it happened, but as a kid, I was pretty pissed to miss my favorite band.
Killer Dwarfs opened up this show. They were terrible. All I cared about was Maiden and they delivered…they always do.
$14.50 for a ticket? Back then that seemed like a lot. For many of the shows I see these days, I’d love to pay that!
Setlist:
- Moonchild
- The Evil That Men Do
- The Prisoner
- Infinite Dreams
- The Trooper
- Can I Play With Madness
- Heaven Can Wait
- Wasted Years
- The Clairvoyant
- Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
- The Number of the Beast
- Hallowed Be Thy Name
- Iron Maiden
- Run to the Hills
- 22 Acacia Avenue
- 2 Minutes to Midnight
- Running Free
Iron Maiden – No Prayer For The Dying (post facto review)
I used to be a collector of all vinyl Iron Maiden. I had a ton of stuff. I didn’t have every pressing of every album or EP, but I had most of them. It was crazy. My OCD always had me looking for Iron Maiden records the minute I’d hit a record store. Then No Prayer For The Dying came out 
and it seemed that Maiden had gone on marketing steroids. Sure, they were the kings of releasing stuff since day 1, but it seemed to get crazy in 1990. It was just too much. I did buy a lot of the related EPs and such but decided to end it. One reason was that the album, as I saw it at the time, wasn’t that good.
I saw that tour as well and had a good time although seeing Gers prance around on stage was utterly annoying. Anthrax opened up on their Persistence of Time Tour. They got pissed at the crowd for sitting down during their set. It was a former friend from high school, Rogerson and myself at the patriot Center near Washington, DC.
Last night I decided to listen to this album again. In a previous review I dogged it out pretty badly. Listening to this again last night I really only cringed a few times. I think I detested it so much back then because Adrian wasn’t on it, even though he gets partial credit for writing the worst song on the album, Hooks in You. Musically it’s fine but the lyrics are silly. Most likely they were written by Bruce Bruce. I blame him. The song sounds like it could have been on Tattooed Millionaire.
Overall I found listening to No Prayer rather enjoyable. It was a nice trip down memory lane and there are a lot of songs on here that I actually like…a lot! But Holy Smoke, Hooks In You and Bring Your Daughter are just dumb songs. Absolutely horrible. My absolute favorites would be The Assassin, Public Enema Number One, Run Silent Run Deep and even Mother Russia. Tailgunner is just a mediocre track.
One thing that was blatantly apparent on here was the differences in the guitar solos. There are no doubts as to who is soloing in each song. To put is in simple terms, all of Jannick’s solos suck. Seriously. All of them. I still think he sucks and still wish that he’d just go away.
In my original review I gave this album 2/10. I am going to change it to a 6/10. It’s energetic and Steve Harris was still a prominent feature in their sound. Nowadays he’s just in the background. What a pity.
If you were like me and hated this album back then, give it a new chance, especially after hearing how much they have changed in the last decade.
My ticket stub and a sticker that Maiden dropped from the ceiling at the end of their opening song, Tailgunner. (click to enlarge)
Pat Travers – Putting It Straight
When I was still collecting vinyl, Iron Maiden was my #1 interest. As you probably know they released a ton of stuff and I had a good selection of it
thanks to Unicorn Records, Skinnies Records, Electric Smiles, Fantasy, eBay and trading through some pen pal type things from the backs of magazines. Oddly enough there were never any problems with the traders. I never got ripped off once. Honest lot those metalheads! As a subset to collecting Maiden stuff, I also was trying to collect everything that Nicko McBrain had played on. Not an easy task as there were some pretty obscure British things out there.
So my former supervisor and I were good friends and he told me about his record collection that had been sitting in his closet for 15 years. Knowing Mark like I did, I knew these were in near perfect condition. The guy was meticulous about everything. So I randomly stopped by Mark’s house one day (1993ish?) when I was in the neighborhood and we were just hanging out and catching up a bit as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. After a while I asked if he still had his records. He said he still had them and wanted to sell them. I wasn’t in the market to buy the collection but I surely wanted to peruse his crates. So he pulls out these 3 huge crates of records and I start flipping through one by one. Tons of 70s rock. You know, BOC, Zeppelin, Stones, Bob Seeger, Poco, America, etc etc. Nothing too obscure and surely nothing that a record collector would have paid more than 3-4 dollars each for.
There near the end of perusal, there it was. It was one of those heavenly “ahhhhhh” moments where it seemed like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this box of records. Pat Travers’ Putting It Straight with Nicko on drums! Mark still claims to this day that I was shaking when I was holding it. I don’t doubt that I was. I was pretty excited. I said, “How much?” He responded, “Not for sale.” What a douche! But he did tell me to take it with me until I found my own copy. It was in pristine shape. PERFECT even. Shortly thereafter I found another vinyl copy at Skinnies and a year or 2 later he had the original and rare Jap pressing of the CD which I also bought.
I adore this album. It’s got Nicko’s signature drum licks written all over it. My favorites are Life In London, Offbeat Ride, Gettin’ Betta and It Ain’t What It Seems. The album as a whole is good and I highly recommend it if you’re into 70s hard rock.
Around 1994-1995 Pat came to town to play Wicker’s in Portsmouth, VA. I did my usual “show-up-to-the-gig-super-early” routine to hopefully meet the band. I lucked out as they were all inside getting ready to eat. I walked up to Pat and asked him to sign a few things for me and he was really cool. He signed my vinyl copy of this album and my CD cover. I asked him to talk about how it was to play with Nicko and he didn’t have many nice things to say. “Good drummer but a complete asshole after that whole Iron Maiden thing.” Apparently after Nicko joined Maiden, he landed his helicopter in Pat’s yard and bragged about his success. Who knows? I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true. Not important to me either way. The guy that was sitting with us while we were talking about Nicko was Aynsley Dunbar. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. Had I known he was drumming for Pat, I would have brought my Jefferson Airplane and Journey stuff!
Nicko also played on Makin’ Magic which is also worth tracking down.
Iron Maiden – Flight 666
It’s no secret that Iron Maiden is my all-time favorite band and has been since 
Powerslave came out in 1984. They always possessed a certain kind of power in their music that stuck with me. I’m not a total fanboy and have been vocally critical of them, as I am with any band that graces my ears, positive criticism or negative. Maiden’s put out some stinkers: Fear of the Dark, Dance of Death, the 2 with Bayley on vox…But generally they always right themselves. They really did a great album with A Matter of Life and Death. To me that was their best album since Somewhere In Time.
Now here we are in 2009. They finished an ambitious leg of the Somewhere Back In Time Tour by having Bruce Bruce fly the band and all of its crew and equipment all over tarnation while being filmed. The result of this being the Flight 666 documentary.
I received my copy Friday and watched some of it before going out and finished it over the weekend. What a power presentation. I am always blown away by a band’s fans of this magnitude. worldwide I think that Iron Maiden may be more popular than Metallica. Since I don’t pay much attention to Metallica I really shouldn’t make such claims, but whatever. This is my party.
The behind the scenes footage of the band going from city to city, country to country is pretty amazing. It’s amazing that no one got hurt. There is one particular scene in the Colombian section where a guy apparently caught one of Nicko’s sticks and he’s standing there in tears after the show with a female friend. You can just see how much the show in general meant to him and even that much more to being home a piece of it from a supposed hero of his. I get it. I really do. I’ve been to a few shows over the years that were really emotional for me, religious experiences even. This last tour was one of those experiences.
One of my best friends came to town from Arkansas to attend the show with me and it made it that much more special. The band was amazing. Bruce sounded great. Nicko seems to have gotten better over the years. Dave and Adrian and Steve and the consistent rocks in the band. I’d never seen them play at such a high level?
…and there’s Jannick Gers.
Since day 1 I have not been a fan. I never will be. It pains me to see him playing some of Adrian’s solos with “H” standing right beside him. I should add how poorly he plays them. He’s completely sloppy, always. He was in 1991 when I saw him and he was last year when I saw him. This video is even more proof of it. Sure Dave and Adrian aren’t perfect, but their playing is fine. VH-1 has been running the concert footage from this regularly so I have been able to see it several times now.
But back to Iron Maiden and this great documentary. My friend Jeff made a great observation about Maiden and it’s best that I quote it instead of paraphrasing it:
And what is the essential element that makes them so successful? Without regard to anyone in the band’s personal politics, the band itself is VERY socially conservative. They don’t have lyrics about getting wasted, f****ng chicks, teenage rebellion, rebellion against society, songs promoting social change, none of that tot. And they’re very healthy, non-destructive, and constructive in their own individual lives.Up the Irons!
The Metal Files 
You must be logged in to post a comment.