Flight 666

Iron Maiden's latest Live DVD/Documentary combo. Documents Iron Maiden packaging their entire tour onto one airplane, and going around the world, piloted intermittently by Bruce Dickinson.

The tour was called the "Somewhere Back In Time" World Tour, hearkening back to the title of their 6th studio album "Somewhere In Time". As such, they played only older songs (the newest song on the DVD is "Fear of The Dark", from the 1992 album of the same name. Their 9th. They released their 14th a few years back. Hopefully the 15th is in the works...

Nice to hear a bunch of their old songs. For example, I just listened to Revelations, which is probably one of my favoritest Maiden Songs.

In other news, Bruce is currently wearing a Sombrero... Just thought you should know...

And "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Powerslave" is still to come. Nice Set-list. I don't think we've seen either of those on a live CD or DVD since Live After Death, which chronicled the 1984-1985 World Slavery Tour... Back when they only had 2 guitar players... Nice to hear a bunch of the old songs played by the "3 Amigos", which is apparently a nickname for Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers... Also, I don't think we've seen "Heaven Can Wait" since Maiden England.

Also, in the documentary portion, someone's wearing this shirt. Which amuses me greatly. For anyone who knows Maiden, this is obviously a fake shirt. I bought one just because it amused me so greatly....

The reason's its so obviously fake are:
- The picture of the band has Blaze Bayley in the center. Yet the words at the bottom say "Dance of Death". Which was the second album Maiden released after Blaze left, and Dickinson came back...
- Also, that iteration of Eddie never had hair. The Eddie from the first few albums (up until Piece of Mind) had hair. Ever since then, he was bald, and had the scar from the lobotomy he endured during the Piece of Mind era, with the little metal bracket holding the top of his head on. This iteration of Eddie was probably from the Ed Hunter era. It has the same sort of computer graphics that they were using around that time (see The Angel and The Gambler video), with some really crappy hair added.
So, all in all, wrong title, and stupid hair... And thus endeth my Public Service Announcement.

Also, good to see that Adrian Smith is now moving around a bit more. On Rock In Rio, he spent alot of his time just standing in the same place playing the guitar. A stark contrast to Janick Gers, who's always flipping the guitar around, and doing weird things.

Another thing: The use of cell phones as lighter surrogates at concerts. Completely ridiculous. Just ends up looking really dumb. FYI.

Good concert. I really need to see them the next time they come back to the U.S.

Gonna go see Metallica in concert in October. I think that'll be the first concert that I've bought a ticket for that hasn't had Iron Maiden on the bill. You'll notice the use of "bought". I'm not including free concerts (the Presidents of the US homecoming concert at WM), or concerts that I didn't pay for (a certain evening that we've all managed to blank from our memory).

We'll see how that turns out.

Also, good use of "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" for the closing credits of the documentary. For those of you who don't know, that's the song that they always play over the PA after the end of the show, while everyone's leaving, and they're packing everything up.