I just came back from the live Iron Maiden show at the Ottawa Bluefest. I’m generally not much of a showgoer, but when I learned Iron Maiden were coming to Ottawa, I just had to go. And they have Dream Theater playnig just before them for this tour, which is pretty cool.

It was my first time seeing them live, so here’s a brief recounting of my experience seeing the awesomest band in the world live!

Read on! (Note: there will be spoilers, so if you’d rather have the setlist be a surprise for when you see the show yourself, don’t read the first 3 paragraphs of the Iron Maiden segment)

Getting to the show/The Line
Getting to the show is quite a hassle. The outside stage was next to the Canadian War Museum, as usual for the Ottawa Bluesfest. Which is right next to downtown Ottawa. That means hard to find parking unless you’re lucky. We managed (after only half an hour) to find a parkometre which we could put enough time in to be able to leave the car there all evening (we could stop paying the parkometre at 5:30pm). That was around 2:30pm. We walk 20 minutes to the main gate for the festival, to find a long line, which took almost 3 hours to finally let us go in front of the stage. Oh, did I mention the temperature reached 42 degrees celsius, and the sun was intense, there was barely any wind and no shadows to hide in? It was crazy out there. The temperature did start cooling down during the Iron Maiden show, but the huge amount of people in the same place just made it hotter.

Dream Theater
I’m not a huge Dream Theater fan. Not that I don’t like them, but I don’t know them much and barely listen to them. I see them as a band with really good musicians, but a subpar vocalist. They started their performance at 6:45pm. I don’t know too many Dream Theater songs, and as such I can only name 2 of the songs that were performed: Constant Motion, which I love, and Panic Attack, which I heard once because of Rock Band 2. Their setlist included 6 songs in total, and the show lasted, including the random intro, 52 minutes. Not a bad length for 6 songs, but I expected a bit longer, especially considering that this made us wait almost an hour and a half for Iron Maiden… A song or 2 more in the Dream Theater show would have been perfect.

Seeing them live confirmed what I thought of the band. The musicians were all great. Sometimes even pure badass. The definitely made the show for me. The singer, on the other hand, was rather boring. He did nothing on the stage to hype up the crowd, he pretty much just stood there and sang (in a subpar manner, he really has no intensity or power in his voice). And I was surprised to learn that Dream Theater aren’t just one of those “studio bands” that only perform well on CD, they were really awesome (other than the singer).

Iron Maiden
They started at around 9pm. And the area just instantly filled up. Over 20000 people were there to see them, which is just about the maximum amount of people that could be there considering the space.

The setlist was good. Starting with The Wicker Man, The Ghost Of The Navigator, Wrathchild (which is an awesome old-school song) and El Dorado (new song, which you can download on Iron Maiden’s website) was pretty nice. Before El Dorado Bruce Dickinson (the vocalist), went on a big speech explaining why Canada is awesome, and told us to buy the new album coming August 16th (which will apparently feature very different songs from El Dorado, that we’d be “fucking” surprised). After El Dorado, we saw Dance of Death, The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg and These Colours Don’t Run. Then Bruce took some time to mention Dio, who died recently, and whom he highly respected as one of the top voices of metal (which is incredibly high praise considering how awesome Bruce is), and he sang Blood Brothers in honor of Dio. I’m not a big fan of Blood Brothers personally… You know what would have been REALLY awesome? Iron Maiden performing Holy Diver in honor of Dio… but that might have caused the universe to collapse under the awesomeness. Anyways, the show ended on Wildest Dreams, No More Lies, Brave New World, Fear Of The Dark and Iron Maiden (where Eddy came in and “scared” the band members).

But wait! There was an encore (sort of, it was obviously planned). And it remedied my only big problem with the show up until that point: barely any of the songs performed were pre-Brave New World, it mostly concentrated on “newer”, year 2000+ stuff (not a bad thing per say, but I prefer their older albums). For the “encore”, they did The Number Of the Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Running Free (where Bruce takes time during the song to present the band members). 3 badass old songs to finish the show, genius! The show lasted about 2 hours which is a pretty good length I feel.

What I loved about this show is how full of energy it was. All the band members had an active role, running around and generally being awesome, but the star of the show is Bruce Dickinson. He was singing, while running around non-stop, while jumping over obstacles on the set and while climbing the speakers and stuff, and constantly getting the crowd to participate in the songs… He’s not just one of the greatest metal vocalists, he’s an awesome entertainer too. Oh, and the set was really nice. Tons of spots for Bruce to disappear into and re-appear from, quite nice looking, and, most importantly, a changing backdrop for every single song featuring awesome artwork. Nice.

The show’s only blemish would be the fact that they didn’t perform The Trooper… wtf? That’s like a mainstay of Iron Maiden live performances(from what I’ve seen at least)… Oh, and Bruce’s microphone sometimes fucked up a bit, but it was rarely noticeable.

Iron Maiden made it clear that they’re not just a studio band, performing just as well (though the overall sound does feel a bit different from the albums) live, and delivered an energetic and badass performance with a very solid setlist.

The Crowd
That was where the show took a small dive for me… On the positive side, I met some people who were really nice, and it was cool to see that a variety of people were there for the show… From kids to parents to old people, men and women… it was very nice to see Iron Maiden has such mass appeal.

But negatively… well, I know it’s a metal show, so I expected a little bit of pushing, people jumping around and doing devil hands and such blocking my view, having people taller than me standing in front of me blocking half the stage, and people smoking weed everywhere around me… and I have no problem with that, none of this annoyed me whatsoever during the show.
But there was something that did annoy me to no end: Having people running into other people to get closer to the stage (especially me for some reason), pushing them around and just generally being morons… What’s the problem with politely asking you to move so they can walk in front of you, or putting their hand on your shoulder to indicate that they want to move in front of you? Is common courtesy gone from the average metal fan? There has to be better ways to get in front of people that doesn’t involve ramming into them. People just have no respect for other people, and that really annoyed me (especially since I almost spent as much time, in the first half of the Maiden performance, getting pushed around than actually watching/listening to the concert). Heck, why didn’t those morons just get to the show earlier? It would have let them get close to the stage without “having” to act like fucking dicks. And no, they weren’t trying to start mosh pits. Good thing the pushing died down in the second half of the show.

Verdict
My legs are completely destroyed, my neck hurts from the headbanging, I’m out of energy for the next 3 years, I got a few sunburns, I can’t believe I managed to survive the intense heat, people annoyed the fuck out of me by pushing me around… and it was all worth it.

Dream Theater were fun to watch because of the great musicians, even if the vocalist wasn’t too good.
Iron Maiden is just a MUST see, no questions asked. If they ever come close to where you live, go see them. Even if you don’t like metal. Seriously, you won’t regret it. They put up a great show.

My first time seeing Iron Maiden was great, and I hope it won’t be the last. Come back to Bluesfest next year Iron Maiden, and get Powerglove to start up the show!

jobocan Music, impressions, metal