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Iron Maiden, Dio, Motorhead, and
Destructor
Blossom Music Center
08-05-03
I tried to make it to Blossom as early as I could, but
unfortunately I still missed most of Destructor’s set. I caught the tail
end of “Bondage” and the group’s signature tune which both sounded great.
The band had a fairly good sized crowd of onlookers including at least one
guy with a home made Destructor banner.
Over on the main stage Motorhead kicked things off with
“We Are Motorhead”. They had just over a half an hour to play, but still
managed to cover a good cross section of their career in that time. Older
tracks like “Shoot You in the Back” and “No Class” shared space in the set
list with more recent numbers like “Sacrifice” and “Ramones”. Of course the
band played “Ace of Spades” and ended their short but satisfying opening
slot with “Overkill”.
Unlike a certain other ex-Black Sabbath vocalist,
Ronnie James Dio still has his voice. Dio and the band that bears his name
were on tour supporting the newly released ‘Evil or Divine’ best-of
collection. With the exception of one older Rainbow song that I recognized
but can't recall the name of (sorry) the set was pretty much what
you’d expect: “The Last in Line”, “Stand up and Shout”, “Holy Diver”,
“Rainbow in the Dark” and the Black Sabbath songs “Mob Rules” and “Heaven
and Hell”. As with his opening set for The Scorpions at Tower City last
year Dio again wasted valuable time on a drum solo and a guitar/keyboard
jam. Dude, when you have less than an hour to play and 4 decades worth of
material to draw from just play your songs. Still, it was a pretty
entertaining set that I’m sure left most fans happy.
Maiden hit the stage and quickly dispensed with several
of their most popular numbers. “Number of the Beast”, “The Trooper”, “Die
With Your Boots On”, “Hallowed by Thy Name”, and “Revelations” made for one
hell of an opening volley. Prior to playing a new song from their
forthcoming ‘Dance of the Damned’ album Bruce went into a bit of a tirade
about the state of the music business and encouraged fans to tape the song
and post it on the internet. He more or less said that the reason records
aren’t selling these days isn’t because of the internet, but because so many
of them suck. I couldn’t agree more. Anyway, the new song pretty much
began the “hardcore” fan portion of the show and was followed by more recent
material like “The Clansman”, “The Clairvoyant” (which saw the first
appearance of band mascot Eddie) and "Fear of the Dark". The band closed
out the set with “Iron Maiden” and the second appearance of Eddie, this time
a giant size head and shoulders behind the drum kit. He had his head
cracked open and the brain that was removed back on the ‘Piece of Mind’ tour
was put back in. All you “serious” rockers can make your cracks about how
cheesy this all is, but as for me I don’t mind having a little fun. The
band was only gone from the stage for a minute or two before coming back.
Bruce joked about how silly the whole encore thing is when everybody knows
the band is coming back, and then Maiden launched into “Two Minutes to
Midnight” and finally “Run to the Hills”. There were a few bumpy spots in
the show (mainly when Bruce stopped singing at one point because security
was, in his opinion, unjustly harassing a fan) but overall it was another
fine performance from these guys. While I’m sure some of the fair-weather
fans wish the band had stuck to nothing but the “hits”, personally I like
the fact that every time I’ve seen Iron Maiden their set has been different
and included a fair number of songs for the true fans only.
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