Friday night, I went to see Iron Maiden at Agganis Arena over at BU. My friends and I met up at T’s Pub before the show. It was filled wall to wall with folks sporting Maiden shirts from days past right up to the current tour. Some ruckus was made by some which had everyone pretty psyched up and ready for the show.
We skipped the opener and headed over about 20 mins before Maiden hit the stage. Grabbed a t-shirt and a beer (which took WAY too long, they really need to teach their employees how to pour a lot of beer so you can just hand it out instead of waiting for an ID and payment before even starting to pour). I was impressed that they actually did have beer though.
We got in to our seats, which were way in the back, but being Agganis is pretty small, there really aren’t any bad seats. Right around 8:40 or so, the band hit the stage with “Different World” and from there ran right through the whole new album front start to finish. I had heard that this might happen a few weeks ago (on the MTV2 making an album special) and knew they had done it the night before. I like the new album, so this was fine with me. After finishing the album, they kicked in to “Fear of the Dark” followed by “Iron Maiden” and then left the stage. After about 5 mins off the stage they came back with “2 Minutes to Midnight”, “The Evil That Men Do” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and that was it.
As I said, I like the new album and had no problem with them playing it. What I would have liked to have seen was them do that, take a 10 or 15 minute break and then play another hour of old stuff. I’ve been listening to Maiden since I was like 14 and this was the first time I got to see the real Iron Maiden (I saw Iron Maiden Lite a few years back at Avalon, but without Bruce, it wasn’t the same). So, 17 years of listening to a band, you want to hear some of the music you have loved for all that time, not just the new album and a couple of old songs (in the end, they only played 3 songs from their first 6 albums, which are by far their best). A 90 minute show where almost 75 of it is material that came out three weeks beforehand is sorta weak.
Other than the bad song selection, I did enjoy the show. Agganis is a bit echoy and you couldn’t hear the singer all that well much of the night (seems like they were having this problem on stage as well, from what their manager said). Overall, I had a good time with some good friends and at least got to see a few of the songs I have been banging my head to for many many years.