We made it on time!
Dream Theater was the opener, which I had completely forgotten until the night of the show. A really pleasant surprise. They sounded great. They only played a few songs, but they were 10+ minutes each song so…
Drummer was just plain AWESOME. Not only are their rhythms incredibly complex, but he mixed in lots of drumstick play.
Iron Maiden took a long while to come on stage after that. Granted, there was a lot of maneuvering needed to get Dream Theater’s massive drum kit out and Iron Maiden’s on. The set reminded me of a Star Wars outpost kind of feeling.
They took stage with the house lights up, which was also kinda weird, but the singer came out charging and leaping all around stage with incredible energy. I was getting tired just watching him – it was also probably 90 degrees inside MSG.
Anyhow, he would run around the upper level of the set, then drop down by the drummer, hurdle over speakers to the front, then jump the gaps going end to end across the front of the stage.
As you can see, we did not have a great view of the drummer. Unfortunate, because he’s a peculiar guy in their movie and I was interested to see his style. He was barefoot though – could see it when he was tossing drum sticks to the crowd at the end. Also, he frisbeed a drum head and it literally went to the other end of the arena.
The crowd was INSANELY into Iron Maiden. People would go up and down the aisles getting everyone to stand up, fist pump along, etc. One very drunk guy came up to me, punched me in the shoulder 3 times to get my attention and did an air guitar solo “in time” to the music. It was hilarious. We left during the last song and we literally did not see anyone else leaving. NOT ONE PERSON.
Iron Maiden – Iron Maiden with Giant Eddy on stage:
Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast
Setlist:
All pictures from the show here.