Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: [ on 01:30 PM 3/18/2007 ]
So, any eyewitness reports of the Maiden concert in Bangalore? I'm still cursing that I had to miss it ..
It was excellent, though far too short (and correspondingly, too many opening acts)
Opening act 1: FtN, a college band that won some contest to appear with Maiden. They tried gamely, but were a) out of their league; b) playing at 4 PM in bright sunlight; c) dealing with a hostile crowd that kept asking them to f*** off.
Opening act 2: Delhi rock band Parikrama, who put up a tight, well-rehearsed show and actually woke the crowd up.
Opening act 3: Lauren Harris (Iron Maiden bassist's daughter) who put on a dull, generic-sounding set that put the audience to sleep. Screw the nepotism - this was a terrible choice for opening act.
Maiden then came on and put on a fantastic set. Disckinson doing splits that wouldn't disgrace 1984-era David Lee Roth, all the while keeping the tempo going with classic Maiden tracks interpersed with stuff from their new album.
The highlight for me was the crowd. Some significant portion of them knew every word of every song (even the new ones) and sang along LOUDLY - a goose-pimple experience.
Bruce Dickinson seemed to feel it too, spending 5 minutes before the first encore (_Two minutes to Midnight_, if you're interested) talking about the band's plans of returning to India soon - this was in addition to the usual fluff about "You've been a FANTASTIC audience toght!" and so forth.
All in all, great show. -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
