CriedWhenBrucieLeft
Meme Only Account
Is that a wee ponytail?
GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Correct.
Oh God, he's gone too far.
GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Bruce's speech. In an Acient Mariner beanie.
Kinda funny that he needs to read Chemical Wedding lyrics.
Funny random quote from twitter:
https://twitter.com/jemimah_knight/s...67607380099072
Jamillah Knowles on Twitter said:
GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Another video talking about war planes:
*makes notes*
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Hehe
GhostofCain
Ancient Mariner
Excellent piece on Scream for me Sarajevo published at Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereks...-band-played-an-active-war-zone/#625018ca199a
Screaming In The Siege: When Bruce Dickinson's Band Played An Active War Zone
Derek Scancarelli
On December 14, 1994, the Bosnian War was raging in full force. The capital city of Sarajevo was a complete and utter war zone — buildings were burning, bombs were falling, and women and children were being shot dead in the streets. Amidst the madness, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson (who was then touring as a solo musician), took his band, Skunkworks, through the frontlines to perform. While a small handful of other artists would also make the trek, most famously U2 at the end of the siege in 1997, none other would literally risk life and limb to do so.
Twenty-four years later, the story of the band and crew’s journey is finally being told in detail. The documentary, Scream For Me Sarajevo, available worldwide now, shows an intimate perspective of a concert assigned to metalhead mythology.
“I thought that Bruce Dickinson playing in Sarajevo was just a myth,” says 34-year-old Jasenko Pašić, who co-wrote the film. “When I started to hunt for people who were at the gig, I understood that it really happened. That concert changed lives. It was an escape from years of madness to two hours of normality.”
Pašić, who hosts and navigates the film, discovered the details of the band’s conquest through a blog written by Dickinson's former bass player, Chris Dale.
“It was on my mind for years,” says 45-year-old Chris Dale. “The thing with Sarajevo that I always found frustrating, even from when we first came back, is you try to tell family members or friends about it — and they just — you couldn't get your story across.”
Bruce Dickinson and Chris Dale perform in Sarajevo.ALEX ELENA
The story isn’t simple bar-talk. It isn’t about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It’s an experience that profoundly changed those involved — and one they were ill-prepared for.
“A lot of people say we were being brave or heroes,” Dale says. “We weren't. We were being really stupid.”
The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest military occupation of a city in the history of modern warfare. It lasted for 1,425 days, far eclipsing World War II’s famed Battle of Stalingrad. As referenced in Dale’s blogs, war courts would later say life in Bosnia was reduced to a level of “medieval deprivation.”
The idea for a concert in the besieged city went through multiple lifecycles before coming to fruition. Originally, United Nations negotiator Trevor Gibson, who was stationed in the city, attempted to secure The Rolling Stones to perform. With no luck getting the Stones, Major Martin Morris tried booking Motörhead for the gig, who eventually cancelled. In the end, heavy metal thrillseeker Bruce Dickinson ended up being the perfect — and craziest — rockstar for the job.
After some convincing from Dickinson, the rest of the gang agreed to play, but they lacked understanding of the non-stop violence occurring in Sarajevo. And they were headed for the center of it all.
“They knew that there was a siege going on, but they literally did not know what that meant,” Pašić says of the band. “But what really puts another perspective on it is that the people of Sarajevo, when the siege began, they had no idea what would happen. Back then they knew Rambo and Schwarzenegger films about war. Awesome, right? But no. It's really not and you don't want to be in those circumstances.”
A lone man walks in the street of Sarajevo, next to an armored bus meant for transporting civilians.ALEX ELENA
A demolished tank sits casually on the roadside.ALEX ELENA
Throughout Scream For Me Sarajevo, the legend of the concert is told not only through the lens of Dickinson and his bandmates but through the perspective of the young Bosnians who attended the show. These were normal, unsuspecting youth who were blindsided by the terror of war. Some lived just footsteps from the frontline. They survived without electricity, food or a sense of security.
While the civilians were caught by surprise, so were the UN peacekeepers. Take, for example, Trevor Gibson, who also helped protect the band and navigate them to the theater. In the film, he recounts the UN’s futile attempts at controlling the situation. He breaks down as he describes the murder of a young boy before his very eyes. In retrospect, he describes the UN as “powerless” and “a fiction.” As Gibson says, the UN wasn't a singular coherent organization, more so an umbrella for many organizations which rarely worked in unison.
“It got progressively scarier, the further we went in,” Dale says, recounting the severity of the situation. “When we woke up in the morning in the truck, we were at one of the Bosnian army checkpoints. There were all these soldiers — not soldiers on parade — these guys had been up all night fighting. They were drained. The buildings were shot up around us. We had actually entered a proper active combat zone. It was way too late to change our minds at that point.”
That truck is no sort of military vehicle. As the story goes, the UN actually intended to cancel the concert. Because the group's arranged helicopter had recently taken fire, the group would no longer have access into Sarajevo by means of UN aircraft. Dickinson, hellbent on making the gig, arranged transport in the back of an enthusiastically decorated flatbed truck, complete with a Roadrunner mural.
ALEX ELENA
They drove through the dark of night, amidst the sound of gunfire, up Mount Igman, the main passageway into Sarajevo.
The back of the truck that brought Dickinson and Skunkworks into Sarajevo.ALEX ELENA
Bosnia gets very cold in December.ALEX ELENA
Eventually, they were able to transfer into armored UN vehicles which delivered them to the community center where the concert was held. Next, they unloaded their gear in scope of Serbian sniper rifles. This was a revelatory moment for the band.
“I thought they would surely have Iron Maiden fans in their army,” Dale says. “Killing the singer of Iron Maiden, it would be a complete no-no! You don't go killing celebrities.”
Dale then learned that women, children and journalists were being killed without hesitation.
“We were in real danger,” Dale says. “They really couldn't give a s**t.”
He shuffled inside with the rest of the band. They drank some beer and played to a sea of Bosnians. Most of the crowd didn’t know a word to any of Dickinson’s solo songs. That didn’t affect the energy in the room.
Bruce Dickinson performs to an electric crowd.ALEX ELENA
“The whole time there was an ongoing process of emotion,” Dale says. “I know the others have said different to me, but the gig, that was fairly familiar.”
Those who speak of the evening, which featured Bruce Dickinson and local bands Sikter and Allmanah, describe it as an out-of-body experience. Many saw it as an escape from a life of pain and uncertainty into a dream-state of sweat, beer, and passion. For Dale, it was a great show, but the least impressionable moment of the journey.
“It's changed me, drastically, the way I look at the world,” Dale says. “All the stuff we see about refugees, Syria, the Mexican border problems, it's just … I know that those people are not running away just to try and steal our jobs. I know what they're running away from, I've seen what they're running away from. You would run. You'd take your family and you'd f**king run.”
The trip wasn't over after the concert ended. The following day, the band visited an orphanage to sing for children who'd lost their parents to the war.
Performing at the orphanage.ALEX ELENA
“The orphanage was hideous,” Dale remembers. “A lot of the kids, their parents were murdered. There was nothing I could do to help anyone. I felt that strongly at the time. We'd gone in there so naively. Bandages would have been a big advantage. We didn't think to take anything for them.”
Dale says he still suffers from PTSD from the experience, that he’s randomly reduced to tears while remembering the sights and sounds. But being a participant in this film has made him feel better about the experience as a whole.
“That's one of the great things about this film," Dale says. "It's made me realize that we did actually help. I thought that we'd just been tourists to them, gawking at their suffering. It's good to know now that the concert was a highlight for them. We helped the only way we could. We're a heavy metal band, we played a heavy metal gig. Now I can look back with pride over it. But I felt guilt for years.”
Drummer Alex Elena and Chris Dale load back into a helicopter to head home.ALEX ELENA
The most startling takeaway from Scream For Me Sarajevo is the lack of notoriety the conflict has had in American history books. While those who are interested in global conflict may be educated on the Siege of Sarajevo, the topic is not a generally recognizable reference. Pašić says he’s unsurprised by this notion. All he and his director, Tarik Hodzic, could do was make the best film they could to share this slice of the story.
While the documentary features damning imagery — actual dead bodies in the streets — it’s primarily a story of hope, living for the moment and the will to survive. Its access point is through Dickinson’s band, but the story is about the spirit of the Bosnian people.
“It's a rollercoaster that never bogs you down,” Pašić says. “We didn't want to kill people with suffering. We didn't want to go into the politics of the conflict and make the film dirty. And we can't tell you the whole thing. This is this story about 16 people — a personal, small film with a universal point.”
That’s not lost on the band or the audience.
“It makes me appreciate small things in life,” Dale says. “We saw what happens when the real basics are taken away. Freedoms, to the extent where they can't leave the block because you might get shot at. It's not like war should be tourism, but maybe more people should see this stuff.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereks...-band-played-an-active-war-zone/#625018ca199a
Screaming In The Siege: When Bruce Dickinson's Band Played An Active War Zone
Derek Scancarelli
On December 14, 1994, the Bosnian War was raging in full force. The capital city of Sarajevo was a complete and utter war zone — buildings were burning, bombs were falling, and women and children were being shot dead in the streets. Amidst the madness, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson (who was then touring as a solo musician), took his band, Skunkworks, through the frontlines to perform. While a small handful of other artists would also make the trek, most famously U2 at the end of the siege in 1997, none other would literally risk life and limb to do so.
Twenty-four years later, the story of the band and crew’s journey is finally being told in detail. The documentary, Scream For Me Sarajevo, available worldwide now, shows an intimate perspective of a concert assigned to metalhead mythology.
“I thought that Bruce Dickinson playing in Sarajevo was just a myth,” says 34-year-old Jasenko Pašić, who co-wrote the film. “When I started to hunt for people who were at the gig, I understood that it really happened. That concert changed lives. It was an escape from years of madness to two hours of normality.”
Pašić, who hosts and navigates the film, discovered the details of the band’s conquest through a blog written by Dickinson's former bass player, Chris Dale.
“It was on my mind for years,” says 45-year-old Chris Dale. “The thing with Sarajevo that I always found frustrating, even from when we first came back, is you try to tell family members or friends about it — and they just — you couldn't get your story across.”
Bruce Dickinson and Chris Dale perform in Sarajevo.ALEX ELENA
The story isn’t simple bar-talk. It isn’t about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It’s an experience that profoundly changed those involved — and one they were ill-prepared for.
“A lot of people say we were being brave or heroes,” Dale says. “We weren't. We were being really stupid.”
The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest military occupation of a city in the history of modern warfare. It lasted for 1,425 days, far eclipsing World War II’s famed Battle of Stalingrad. As referenced in Dale’s blogs, war courts would later say life in Bosnia was reduced to a level of “medieval deprivation.”
The idea for a concert in the besieged city went through multiple lifecycles before coming to fruition. Originally, United Nations negotiator Trevor Gibson, who was stationed in the city, attempted to secure The Rolling Stones to perform. With no luck getting the Stones, Major Martin Morris tried booking Motörhead for the gig, who eventually cancelled. In the end, heavy metal thrillseeker Bruce Dickinson ended up being the perfect — and craziest — rockstar for the job.
After some convincing from Dickinson, the rest of the gang agreed to play, but they lacked understanding of the non-stop violence occurring in Sarajevo. And they were headed for the center of it all.
“They knew that there was a siege going on, but they literally did not know what that meant,” Pašić says of the band. “But what really puts another perspective on it is that the people of Sarajevo, when the siege began, they had no idea what would happen. Back then they knew Rambo and Schwarzenegger films about war. Awesome, right? But no. It's really not and you don't want to be in those circumstances.”
A lone man walks in the street of Sarajevo, next to an armored bus meant for transporting civilians.ALEX ELENA
A demolished tank sits casually on the roadside.ALEX ELENA
Throughout Scream For Me Sarajevo, the legend of the concert is told not only through the lens of Dickinson and his bandmates but through the perspective of the young Bosnians who attended the show. These were normal, unsuspecting youth who were blindsided by the terror of war. Some lived just footsteps from the frontline. They survived without electricity, food or a sense of security.
While the civilians were caught by surprise, so were the UN peacekeepers. Take, for example, Trevor Gibson, who also helped protect the band and navigate them to the theater. In the film, he recounts the UN’s futile attempts at controlling the situation. He breaks down as he describes the murder of a young boy before his very eyes. In retrospect, he describes the UN as “powerless” and “a fiction.” As Gibson says, the UN wasn't a singular coherent organization, more so an umbrella for many organizations which rarely worked in unison.
“It got progressively scarier, the further we went in,” Dale says, recounting the severity of the situation. “When we woke up in the morning in the truck, we were at one of the Bosnian army checkpoints. There were all these soldiers — not soldiers on parade — these guys had been up all night fighting. They were drained. The buildings were shot up around us. We had actually entered a proper active combat zone. It was way too late to change our minds at that point.”
That truck is no sort of military vehicle. As the story goes, the UN actually intended to cancel the concert. Because the group's arranged helicopter had recently taken fire, the group would no longer have access into Sarajevo by means of UN aircraft. Dickinson, hellbent on making the gig, arranged transport in the back of an enthusiastically decorated flatbed truck, complete with a Roadrunner mural.
ALEX ELENA
They drove through the dark of night, amidst the sound of gunfire, up Mount Igman, the main passageway into Sarajevo.
The back of the truck that brought Dickinson and Skunkworks into Sarajevo.ALEX ELENA
Bosnia gets very cold in December.ALEX ELENA
Eventually, they were able to transfer into armored UN vehicles which delivered them to the community center where the concert was held. Next, they unloaded their gear in scope of Serbian sniper rifles. This was a revelatory moment for the band.
“I thought they would surely have Iron Maiden fans in their army,” Dale says. “Killing the singer of Iron Maiden, it would be a complete no-no! You don't go killing celebrities.”
Dale then learned that women, children and journalists were being killed without hesitation.
“We were in real danger,” Dale says. “They really couldn't give a s**t.”
He shuffled inside with the rest of the band. They drank some beer and played to a sea of Bosnians. Most of the crowd didn’t know a word to any of Dickinson’s solo songs. That didn’t affect the energy in the room.
Bruce Dickinson performs to an electric crowd.ALEX ELENA
“The whole time there was an ongoing process of emotion,” Dale says. “I know the others have said different to me, but the gig, that was fairly familiar.”
Those who speak of the evening, which featured Bruce Dickinson and local bands Sikter and Allmanah, describe it as an out-of-body experience. Many saw it as an escape from a life of pain and uncertainty into a dream-state of sweat, beer, and passion. For Dale, it was a great show, but the least impressionable moment of the journey.
“It's changed me, drastically, the way I look at the world,” Dale says. “All the stuff we see about refugees, Syria, the Mexican border problems, it's just … I know that those people are not running away just to try and steal our jobs. I know what they're running away from, I've seen what they're running away from. You would run. You'd take your family and you'd f**king run.”
The trip wasn't over after the concert ended. The following day, the band visited an orphanage to sing for children who'd lost their parents to the war.
Performing at the orphanage.ALEX ELENA
“The orphanage was hideous,” Dale remembers. “A lot of the kids, their parents were murdered. There was nothing I could do to help anyone. I felt that strongly at the time. We'd gone in there so naively. Bandages would have been a big advantage. We didn't think to take anything for them.”
Dale says he still suffers from PTSD from the experience, that he’s randomly reduced to tears while remembering the sights and sounds. But being a participant in this film has made him feel better about the experience as a whole.
“That's one of the great things about this film," Dale says. "It's made me realize that we did actually help. I thought that we'd just been tourists to them, gawking at their suffering. It's good to know now that the concert was a highlight for them. We helped the only way we could. We're a heavy metal band, we played a heavy metal gig. Now I can look back with pride over it. But I felt guilt for years.”
Drummer Alex Elena and Chris Dale load back into a helicopter to head home.ALEX ELENA
The most startling takeaway from Scream For Me Sarajevo is the lack of notoriety the conflict has had in American history books. While those who are interested in global conflict may be educated on the Siege of Sarajevo, the topic is not a generally recognizable reference. Pašić says he’s unsurprised by this notion. All he and his director, Tarik Hodzic, could do was make the best film they could to share this slice of the story.
While the documentary features damning imagery — actual dead bodies in the streets — it’s primarily a story of hope, living for the moment and the will to survive. Its access point is through Dickinson’s band, but the story is about the spirit of the Bosnian people.
“It's a rollercoaster that never bogs you down,” Pašić says. “We didn't want to kill people with suffering. We didn't want to go into the politics of the conflict and make the film dirty. And we can't tell you the whole thing. This is this story about 16 people — a personal, small film with a universal point.”
That’s not lost on the band or the audience.
“It makes me appreciate small things in life,” Dale says. “We saw what happens when the real basics are taken away. Freedoms, to the extent where they can't leave the block because you might get shot at. It's not like war should be tourism, but maybe more people should see this stuff.”
Dangerina
Nomad
Great to hear it from a Canadian. It's always funny to read that Americans won the war that had already been won when they decided to step in, lol.
Dangerina
Nomad
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
The Americans won the war in the Pacific.
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
And it was finally won by two hell of a bangs. I think we have already mentioned that, the American pacific success, haven't we? In any case war was lost for Germany in 1941 when they decided to open up a second front. Also doesn't help if two strongest armies in a pact(Germans and Japanese) cannot merge until they cripple their archenemy (Russia and China). Somewhat redundant then.
Jer
'Til Tomorrow
Those are battles. The exception list would be rather long to amend the statement about Russia winning the war in Europe if you wanted to account for every major battle.
It's probably fair to say that there was more than one war going on.
CriedWhenBrucieLeft
Meme Only Account
What fucking thread is this?! 
What fucking thread is this?!
General Discussion.