Best time to catch a concert?

Obvious answer: Whenever you can

But... for those of y'all who've had the privilege & pleasure of catching multiple shows at different legs of a long, map-eating Iron Maiden tour, I was wondering: When does the band sound best?

Like, does Bruce's voice deteriorate a bit throughout, so he's noticeably stronger earlier in the tour & weaker later... or maybe musically, the shows tend to be tighter & sound better after a few of 'em, kinda like a prizefighter working through the ring-rust in the early rounds? Does it get better with repetition, or nah?

Was curious if anyone had noticed any trends, or if it was all pretty random. Thanks!
 
I'm not sure there's a definitive answer to that. You could probably poke holes in Maiden's performances over the course of a tour, like some of the examples you have given, but out of 27 shows I've yet to see a genuinely bad show from Maiden.

The band might be tighter the further they are into the tour, but alternatively, at some of the early shows you might see a song that subsequently gets dropped from the set. I've seen Bruce have an off night towards the end of a tour, but also seen the very last gigs of a dfiferent tour where he was fantastic.
 
Impossible to say. Last year they had a flying start, I saw the first two shows (Tallinn and Helsinki) and Bruce sounded absolutely immense in Helsinki. He was also very consistent the entire tour, if you watch videos from London last year he was still sounding very powerful and strong. This year he had a very rough start, but has been getting stronger and stronger.

The show gets better a bit later in the tour when everything flows perfectly.
 
I'm not sure there's a definitive answer to that. You could probably poke holes in Maiden's performances over the course of a tour, like some of the examples you have given, but out of 27 shows I've yet to see a genuinely bad show from Maiden.

The band might be tighter the further they are into the tour, but alternatively, at some of the early shows you might see a song that subsequently gets dropped from the set. I've seen Bruce have an off night towards the end of a tour, but also seen the very last gigs of a dfiferent tour where he was fantastic.

Exactly! I have seen some early shows where the band were not that tight (Gijon on the GMETID tour in 2003). When it comes to end of tour shows, I have seen some where they were clearly exhausted (final shows of TFF tour in 2011), but also seen some fantastic end of tour or end of leg shows too in London (AMOLAD in 2006, TBOS in 2017, LOTB in 2018).

Bottom line is that they are highly professional and always try hard to play the best possible show, regardless of where they are playing.
 
As others said - safe bet is the middle of the tour, however, this may also mean that some good songs may get wratchilded in the process.
 
When it comes to Maiden, I'd say mid-tour, Bruce tends to improve, the whole band will have 'ironed out' (crap sort of pun intended) small issues, and the band aren't worn out. Opening night has got to be exciting if it's an all new setlist, though.
 
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