For my birthday, my lovely awesome wife got me tickets to Iron Maiden at Bluesfest this year. And with the added kicker, Alice Cooper was opening for them. Well, I say opening, it’s just that they were at the same stage an hour earlier. Not sure how that works at festivals.

In short, both bands were amazing!

Alice was on at 7, and this being the summer, the sun was still high in the sky. This kind of dampened some special effects that he tried to use(these little spark makers) that probably looked cooler in the dark. Otherwise, the whole group gave it all and just belted out song after song with only one break(for a guitar solo). They had a lot of fun effects though, like a beheading, a stabbing and a giant Frankenstein Alice Cooper(ala Eddie). For the finale they did this nice mix of Schools Out and Another Brick in the Wall (pt2). I really would love to get a proper copy of that song

An hour later(on time and all that) Iron Maiden started, and it was all fire and flashy lights. Always a good show from the boys. This was basically a re-hash of the “7th Son” tour, so they stuck to all older stuff. Nothing past Fear of the Dark, which really isn’t a bad thing and the crowd certainly didn’t complain. One nice bonus was a live Phantom of the Opera, something I hadn’t heard(at least in person).

Of course they had an Eddie and more fireballs than I could count. This also included some dude in the audience lighting off a roman candle. This was noticed by Bruce and commented on later in the show

This is another band that just plays flat out. There’s no pulling punches and at no time did I think someone was ‘phoning it in’.

I was overall disappointed in the lack of merch available at the show. For Maiden, it consisted of a few shirts (and this is mine) and flags, nothing else really(mind you, not sure what I was expecting). For Cooper, there was a nice Alice Cooper teddy bear.

It was a great day with good company and if they come back next year, it’s possible I might stop by to see them again

This leads me to a side thread:

The day after, I thought it would be a fun idea to setup a playlist based on the set list, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember all the songs(I mean, they played from 9 albums). But, I found this; Setlist.FM. They had the setlist from the show, and with a little digging, the set lists for all the Iron Maiden shows that I’ve seen. And for extra fun, here they are(in order):

Iron Maiden – June 14, 1992 – Ottawa

Iron Maiden – August 3, 2003 – Toronto

Iron Maiden – January 20, 2004 – Montreal

Iron Maiden – July 7, 2012 – Ottawa

Alice Cooper – July 7, 2012 – Ottawa

And looking at this, Ottawa hasn’t had a lot of Iron Maiden, but that’s not overly surprising, up until recently, we didn’t get a lot of big metal acts.

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ July 10, 2012 4:39 pm