A Cardiff Adventure, featuring Iron Maiden (and a location used in Torchwood)
It's finally happened... I've seen my gods live. Oh yes. Monday morning mark and me got our asses on the coach to Cardiff, checked into a hostel (NOT like the Slovakian one in that horror film of the same name) and made our way to the Cardiff International Arena - about 2 or 3 hours before the doors opened. Getting cold and wet is a small price to pay when one wants to hit the front of the mosh pit. Which we were, hehe.
SO... As soon as the door opened, we headed inside and I bought a T shirt (These colours don't run) and we headed it up to the front of the arena, just feet away from the stage. First up for support was Steve Harris's daughter Lauren and her band, followed by the mighty Trivium, and the whole pit was pushing hard this way, that and the other, almost reminded me of fighting in a pike block!
Have a picture of Matt Heafy doing the whole Trivium thing.
When Maiden came on though.. fucking hell... The crowd went mental! There was such a push I actually couldn't breathe at one point, and the security team was going overboard supplying water to the front people!
I didn't get to take many pictures, and the crowd was so active i could hardly hold the camera still, so this one of Janick and Steve is a bit blurry, unfortunately:(
However this one of Janick isn't so bad.. :P
Nor is this one of Steve...
Unfortunately I found myself crowdsurfing not that far into the set... though it did mean that when the crowd control people got me at the front, I ended up about a foot away from Steve Harris and Janick Gers, who happened to be on that side of the stage at the time!
I only got one more picture after that but I did get a couple of videos on my phone too, but have a butchers at the gig from the back of the hall:
The set itself was amazing: Most of the concert was basically the new album, A Matter of Life and Death, played back to back. This lead to the quote of a century.. upon announcing the intention to play the new material back to back, Bruce had to follow up with: "Right, who booed? Come up here, and I'll fucking bat you one!" which was followed with a massive roar of approval from the entire arena!
As for the encore: it was some classics.. They started with Fear of the Dark, and ended with Hallowed be thy name. In between those they also did 2 Minutes to Midnight, The Evil that Men Do and Iron Maiden, and hinted that they will be back next summer.. I'm there already! Next tour will be so many more classics to mix with the new album, and I'll be in heaven when I see them play Run to the Hills, the Wicker Man, Blood brothers and Number of the Beast live.. and I'll actually die of happiness when I hear the Trooper :P
Unfortunately I don't have any pics from the encore, which involved Eddie himself appearing in a big tank and parading around the stage as Steve 'shot' at him with his bass!
Anyway, the next day was also good.. mark and me both being in Cardiff, where they film Torchwood and Doctor who.. and us being big fans of both.. And rather conveniently, the building in the first episode that Jack's standing on top of happens to be next to the CIA...
Anyway, more from me soon.. tatty bye!