Maiden Concert

Finally I gave in to the hype and loosened the necessary shekels to attend the great Iron Maiden Bangalore 2007 concert. Although I had my hot-off-the-press “Number of the beast” and “Powerslave” tapes as a teenager (no CD’s in those days), I grew bored with them after a couple of listens. Come to man’s estate, it was one of those groups from a misspent youth which I never felt the need to revisit.

Anyway – the hype: tons of equipment, first international standard rock concert, ‘Maiden’ fans going crazy on Orkut, first ‘real’ international heavy metal act in Bangalore (Hey! What about the Deep Purple concerts? What about the Uriah Heep concert?), people coming in from all parts of India and even Nepal and Sri Lanka to see it….as I said, I caved in.

Sea of Black ‘Maiden’ T-shirts at the venue. Efficient organization- huge 30K+ crowd handled without hiccups. Green tarp nailed over the entire ground. Nice touch, it was possible to sit anywhere without getting the bums dusty, and a lot of people were doing just that, waiting for the interminable opening acts to disappear.

Missed the first act: FTN, the campus rock idols 07 winners. But they sounded good while I was trundling T-bird into the parking lot. Parikrama from Delhi followed, with some own comps vaguely reminiscent of AC/DC. Then their violinist fired up, and they played some nice fusion own comps, that sounded really different. Very impressive.

Lauren Harris, daughter of the Iron Maiden bassist, came on next. Her backing band played some nice tight heavy metal. Nothing exceptional, but competent. But her vocals lacked bite, and the act was a damp squib. People got bored and talked about the weather.

Finally Iron Maiden came on. Crowd went crazy. They started with three numbers from their new album “A matter of life and death”, including out of the shadows. They had some nice artwork at the back of the stage, which kept changing with each song. But soon enough, they launched into all the old songs from my dusty ‘Maiden cassette tapes: Number of the beast, Fear of the dark, Run to the hills…. All played with a lot of verve and venom. It brought back nostalgic memories – listening to heavy metal secretly (turned way down to fool my dad) while preparing for the DC Machines paper in 1st year BE. It was funny to see all the young kids going crazy to the same songs that made me jump when I was a kid. A smaller kid, I mean. Now I am a big kid.

For the last act, they bought on a hilarious looking tank with a giant puppet of their mascot. Flashing search lights and read light glowing from the barrel. Very funny. So this was the international quality stage act they had all been going on about. I thought it meant an imposing sound and light system, but the sound system was the same old battered loaned-from-Reynolds-on-Residency-Road speakers that all rock shows use. The sound was truly disappointing – tinny at times, especially at the back in the Rs 900 seats, with buzzing from the lighting circuitry, and unclear bass. Lighting was also about average. If this was the first international quality rock concert in Bangalore, it was pitiable. I think people have forgotten the Rolling Stones concert from two years ago. They had brought along all of their equipment, including massive 50 ft high speaker banks, as well as lights, searchlight towers and everything, all attended to by an army of roadies. It was the most dazzling sound and light show I have ever witnessed. In comparison, this was pathetic.

The high point of the evening was when the barrier finally broke down and us 900 wallas broke into the 1500 section. The sound was a bit better over there. Also, a homorist scaled up the lighting tower and did some stunts until he was chased down by an officious security guard. That was fun.

Anyway, it was a nice evening of nostalgia. So.... paisa vasool.