I know, I know, it’s been months since my last post….but it’s been nothing but work work and more work for months for me, and…well, that cycle has finally been broken this weekend.
Friday night, the 22nd, Iron Maiden brought their show to Monterrey, for the first time in over 10 years (tho…the previous two times they were in town was in the Bruce-less era, which in my book doesn’t count :) and it was everything I expected it to be and much more.
I last saw Maiden live 20 years ago, when I was living in the US, and all 4 concerts were great, but…I finally understand why Edgar keeps telling me that there’s no concerts in the world as fun as a concert in Monterrey…damn, it was the best concert I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to many.
For starters, Maiden decided to go right ahead and start without an opening act. A piece of a couple of their studio recordings over the sound system while the whole place was dark was all the introduction they needed to get the best musical night of this town in the last 30+ years started (Queen was in town in ‘84), and the crowd was ready….damn if it wasn’t…there wasn’t a single moment of crowd silence from the moment the studio version of Aces High started playing on the speakers until they turned on the lights of the Arena at the end of the night.
The set was made up of 16 songs, 15 of them classics from ages past, with “Fear of the Dark” being the only song not from the first 5 albums, lasted around 2hr, and the crowd sang *each and every song* with Bruce, non-stop, interacting with the best frontman of metal the whole time…I’ve never heard a crowd as loud as this one, and I’ve been in concerts with 3 or 4 times as many people in the US (the official count was 11,500 people at the Arena). Jumping, screaming, singing, the crowd was *on*, through the entire thing, and Bruce and the rest of the band was eating it and loving it. There were a couple of moments during which the band was just standing on stage, looking at the crowd as the “Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!” chants rang loud and hard, with Bruce shaking his head slowly and looking at his bandmates, with a face that said “damn, this is what the whole deal is about!”.
One thing that I noticed (and that Edgar, with a much better ear than me, agreed with me about) was that the musicianship of the band has improved with age…yes, it’s been 20 years since last I saw them live, but…even vs. their live albums, Adrian Smith, Dave Murray and Janick Gers were fast and crisp, Nicko McBrain was powerful and clean, Bruce Dickinson was The Showman as always, able to draw the crowd into his world with even more “it” than back when I last saw them, and Steve Harris….well, Steve is just Steve, the best concert bassist there’s ever been, IMNSHO.
The one small (very small) black spot in the whole thing was that they didn’t play one of my favourite songs, “Flight of Icarus”….but, outside of that, the night was Perfect, with a capital P.
Iron Maiden proves, once again, that they are the undisputed kings of metal concerts, nobody comes even close.
I hope Maiden follows on Bruce’s promise, that they’ll come back again, to an even larger place…even if it means I’ll have to take 3 days off work to stand in line.
Long live the king!
