Iron Maiden June 14

[Nighthawk]

As many of you know, I went to see Iron Maiden and Dream Theater last night. That's right- the 2 best bass players, John Myung and Steve Harris, in the same place, at the same time. When tickets went on sale for this show 2.5 months ago, I thought I was going to pass out! So now, post concert, I can give a review to those here who told me they also wanted to go. So to start...

Dream Theater: DT did what they do best- played for an hour and managed to squeeze 5, or maybe 6, songs into the set. They played all of their newer stuff, with the exception of Pull Me Under. They played As I Am off of Train Of Thought, The Root Of All Evil off of Octivarium, The Ministry Of Lost Souls off of Systematic Chaos, (I think...) Forsaken off of Black Clouds And Silver Linings, and of course, Pull Me Under. For those of you who don't know Dream Theater, the setlist is short, but there's easily an hour or more of music packed into that set! I can't think of a Dream Theater song that clocks in at under 9 minutes long. James LaBrie, their singer, is in my opinion their weakest link in the live arena, but he was in great form last night! He sounded great!

Iron Maiden: Maiden played almost all new material. They played a lot of stuff off of Brave New World, Dance Of Death and A Matter Of Life And Death. They played a teaser song, El Dorado, from the album coming out in August. As to older songs, they played, Wrathchild, Fear Of The Dark, Running Free, Number of the Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Running Free. Otherwise, it was all new stuff! They played 17 songs, including Ghost Of The Navigator, Blood Brothers, The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg, These Colors Don't Run (made me really happy with that one!) Dance Of Death, No More Lies... and I can't remember which others. Maiden just keep getting better and better!

So on a personal note, I took two people to see their first-ever Iron Maiden show- my son and my old high school friend Brian:



For me, this was like Maiden show #15, but for my wife and I, it was #5:



My boy, Brian, and I:



The family:



For those wondering, that is the Colorado State tartan I'm wearing.

Dream Theater:









Dream Theater always pose for pictures at the end of their set (and encourage fans to bootleg their shows, so hopefully I'll be able to get a bootleg of this one!)



From left to right, John Myung (bass) James Labrei (vocals) Mike Portnoy (drums) Jordan Rudess (keyboards) John Petrucci (guitar).