Support:
Lauren Harris
Trivium
Number 5 of 6 and Maiden’s first home town gig, only Earls Court tomorrow to go.
So timed this one very well, no trivium again. Even better was the surprise awaiting me inside. I have the limited edition Scandanvian t-shirt which features Eddie as a viking and there was a paris one too and that was meant to be it for this tour but oh no. I was hanging aroun in the venue when I realised there were a lot of tshirts I’d never seen featuring Eddie in The Trooper pose but dressed up as one of the guards from Buckingham Palace, too many to be a coincidence…. I strolled out to the merch stand and there was a special design for the two nights at Earls Court 😀 with a back print saying “I Spent Christmas With Eddie At Earls Court”. I had to get one but they seemed to be out of larges but just as Maiden started some extra cardboard boxes appeared but I went back to try my luck later.
So AMOLAD all over again 😀 This was great crowd on the floor was great and the seats were OK. Three songs in I popped out and grabbed a L of the T-shirt, no queue no hassle 🙂 I din’t miss too much.
The guys were powering through their set when after The Longest Day Bruce starts on about the venue being non-smoking. I’m a little confused at this stage but then he says “but one of our amps doesn’t care” he’d just been told one of their amps had gone up in smoke back stage and they needed 5mins to fix it but sound had to be cut….. So the sound gets cut and bruce keeps us entertained with some miming and stuff and then 5mins becomes 10mins and fair play to the giys they never left the stage. A football appeared and this was thrown between band and crowd, Bruce tried to get the crowd to sing Xmas Carols (even though no one could hear him) even when a loud hailer was brought out for him no one could hear him after ten rows but they kept it up. He was able to get the crowd to sing Happy Birthday somehow as it was Dave Murray’s birthday the next day.
It was all pretty entertaining to be honest but we were glad when after half an hour (despite my worst fears) sound was restored. Bruce then explained the situation, one of the power lines into the entire venue (not their kit) had melted and the needed to replace this entire piece of heavy duty wiring I think the crowd was sated(and impressed). Of course Earls Court has a curfew but Bruce explained “Fuck that, we’re playing our entire set” I assume the venue picked up the fine since it was their “fault”.
The rest of the set was uninterrupted and flawless and played to perfection with as usual the crowd really coming to life for the 5 classics. On the way back on got one the wrong tube and ended up in High Street Kensington which wasn’t too bad really as I was able to help two lost young fellas get to Embankment as they’d gotten on the same wrong tube and had to get back for the last train to Hastings, hope they made it in the end 😕
So one more night of the tour left what will tomorrow hold?
Setlist:
- Different World
- These Colours Don’t Run
- Brighter Than a Thousand Suns
- Pilgrim
- Longest Day
- Power Outage
- Out of the Shadows
- Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg
- For the Greater Good of God
- Lord of Light
- Legacy
- Fear of the Dark
- Iron Maiden
- 2 Minutes to Midnight
- The Evil that Men Do
- Hallowed Be Thy Name
Later days,
Halo.