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Deleted member 7164
Guest
Ok, so the day came. Living in the close vicinity of the stadium, i was just browsing the area, the place was packed with foreigners, parks were full, atmosphere was great! Around 18:00 i entered the venue, to secure some nice position inside headbanger's pit. At 19:30 Lauren Harris started. Well, her music was rather dull, but she was well accepted. After her, Rising Dream went on. Local power-metal band, pretty dull too. Not much of a difference between them and other 158293 stereotype power metal bands out there. The crowd was chanting "Maiden Maiden" all the time.
Then, the crew went on stage, removed all the support act's gear, and started tinkering with the secondary backdrop. The ligths started messing around and we were all getting nerveous. It was like 21:15 and the boys are scheduled to go on at 21:30. So we waited and chanted, and around 21:50, the female voice said that something has happened and we need to wait like 30 more minutes. Big "boooo" she got. So the people started moving around inside packed headbanger's pit, and they really made a mess. We were all nerveous, i was on my feet for 4 hours in a row and some others even more, like 5-6 hours. Suddenly, i heard this guy yelling - "it's Doctor Doctor!!!". Whole pit started jumping and singing, and there was this 16year old kid next to me that had confused face, like why are all this people jumping around on this particular song.
And then it was Maiden, no different than any other Euro leg concert of this tour. I'd like to note a few moments, like when flames started on
at each flame ejection you could sense the wave of heat travelling through you. Insane. Of course, the highlights were
...hell, that was surreal! And yeah, the reason why they were late, was Bruce. His flight from Rome was stalled. However, something strange was about Adrian tonight. He delivered a standard H-precision performance, but looked quite moody. On the first song, Bruce litteraly jumped on him and started making "smile" on his face. Adrian pulled steps back and looked irritated. On several occasions Janick was pointing to camera man "shoot the Adrian, shoot the Adrian" and laughed his guts out in the process, while Adrian nodded his head in disapproval to the camera man. When Bruce introduced the band, standard from his right to left, Gers, Harris, then he shouted "MR. ADRIAN SMITH ON THE GUITARS!!!" and laughed his ass off. Weird, but funny
Between songs, Bruce mentioned the next year's album recording, and how this is the biggest show in Croatia ever, and when they come again they want to pack the whole place to the top (because of stage positioning, capacity was drastically cut. Poljud stadium can take 60,000 on concerts without a problem). There were around 30,000 people, and it was astonishing. Only one sitting side was open, but it can take 15.000 people since stadium is asymetric. Friends who were up there said that it was great, looking on all those people down there on the loan, and then looking around and seeing 15.000 people around them sitting and enjoying.
And yeah, one nice detail, yesterday (well in fact two days ago, on Saturday night) we played a football game for something called the Iron Cup. It's joint effort between Croatian Maiden Fan Club and main IMFC, to organize matches between people from various countries before Maiden concerts in future. This was a prototype of the sort. Nothing much, pitch with artificial grass, five on five. One game, us vs some guys, we won 4-1 (and yeah, i scored. Twice). But...national TV was there and we were aired this afternoon, and, because we won, we get to go somewhere on the next Maiden tour. All expenses paid by our FC 
Afterwards, we chilled a bit and rest near the stadium, watching all those people around going wherever they're going. It took us 15 minutes just to get off the parking lot, and it took us 25 minutes to get food at 2:30AM in the nearest service. However, a great sight happened, we needed to transport some friends to the remote neighborhood near the city's exit, and we passed over the big entrance highways. Lanes that exit the city were packed, hundreds of hundreds of cars, vans, busses, while the entrance lanes were empty. That made us realize just how many people were there. I know that this is common sight from some people here, but 30.000 maidenfans in concert in a 400.000 city in a 5 million country is really something special to us all
All in all, it has been great couple of days, and the real experience hasn't yet been assimilated. I'll get some sleep and i'll think about it tommorow We were discussing how Sundays are generally dull, shallow and boring, and how great was this day, today. In conclusion - Maiden killed Sunday.
Up The Irons!
Whoops...totally forgot one detail. A friend's father is a jazz-drummer. They had a gig, Saturday, in one local caffe-club thingie, and Mr. Nicko McBrain went there, listened to them, and then he gave VIP zone tickets to her father and her mom. And, since they have gig tommorow, they invited him, and he said if they stay in the city tommorow he will come. Naturally, that's my chance to meet and greet the "only man who makes a living out of beating things!"
Then, the crew went on stage, removed all the support act's gear, and started tinkering with the secondary backdrop. The ligths started messing around and we were all getting nerveous. It was like 21:15 and the boys are scheduled to go on at 21:30. So we waited and chanted, and around 21:50, the female voice said that something has happened and we need to wait like 30 more minutes. Big "boooo" she got. So the people started moving around inside packed headbanger's pit, and they really made a mess. We were all nerveous, i was on my feet for 4 hours in a row and some others even more, like 5-6 hours. Suddenly, i heard this guy yelling - "it's Doctor Doctor!!!". Whole pit started jumping and singing, and there was this 16year old kid next to me that had confused face, like why are all this people jumping around on this particular song.
And then it was Maiden, no different than any other Euro leg concert of this tour. I'd like to note a few moments, like when flames started on
The Number Of The Beast
at each flame ejection you could sense the wave of heat travelling through you. Insane. Of course, the highlights were
Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and Powerslave, mummie Eddie on Iron Maiden, and cyborg on The Clairvoyant.
...hell, that was surreal! And yeah, the reason why they were late, was Bruce. His flight from Rome was stalled. However, something strange was about Adrian tonight. He delivered a standard H-precision performance, but looked quite moody. On the first song, Bruce litteraly jumped on him and started making "smile" on his face. Adrian pulled steps back and looked irritated. On several occasions Janick was pointing to camera man "shoot the Adrian, shoot the Adrian" and laughed his guts out in the process, while Adrian nodded his head in disapproval to the camera man. When Bruce introduced the band, standard from his right to left, Gers, Harris, then he shouted "MR. ADRIAN SMITH ON THE GUITARS!!!" and laughed his ass off. Weird, but funny
Between songs, Bruce mentioned the next year's album recording, and how this is the biggest show in Croatia ever, and when they come again they want to pack the whole place to the top (because of stage positioning, capacity was drastically cut. Poljud stadium can take 60,000 on concerts without a problem). There were around 30,000 people, and it was astonishing. Only one sitting side was open, but it can take 15.000 people since stadium is asymetric. Friends who were up there said that it was great, looking on all those people down there on the loan, and then looking around and seeing 15.000 people around them sitting and enjoying.
And yeah, one nice detail, yesterday (well in fact two days ago, on Saturday night) we played a football game for something called the Iron Cup. It's joint effort between Croatian Maiden Fan Club and main IMFC, to organize matches between people from various countries before Maiden concerts in future. This was a prototype of the sort. Nothing much, pitch with artificial grass, five on five. One game, us vs some guys, we won 4-1 (and yeah, i scored. Twice
). But...national TV was there and we were aired this afternoon, and, because we won, we get to go somewhere on the next Maiden tour. All expenses paid by our FC Afterwards, we chilled a bit and rest near the stadium, watching all those people around going wherever they're going. It took us 15 minutes just to get off the parking lot, and it took us 25 minutes to get food at 2:30AM in the nearest service. However, a great sight happened, we needed to transport some friends to the remote neighborhood near the city's exit, and we passed over the big entrance highways. Lanes that exit the city were packed, hundreds of hundreds of cars, vans, busses, while the entrance lanes were empty. That made us realize just how many people were there. I know that this is common sight from some people here, but 30.000 maidenfans in concert in a 400.000 city in a 5 million country is really something special to us all
All in all, it has been great couple of days, and the real experience hasn't yet been assimilated. I'll get some sleep and i'll think about it tommorow
We were discussing how Sundays are generally dull, shallow and boring, and how great was this day, today. In conclusion - Maiden killed Sunday. Up The Irons!
Whoops...totally forgot one detail. A friend's father is a jazz-drummer. They had a gig, Saturday, in one local caffe-club thingie, and Mr. Nicko McBrain went there, listened to them, and then he gave VIP zone tickets to her father and her mom. And, since they have gig tommorow, they invited him, and he said if they stay in the city tommorow he will come. Naturally, that's my chance to meet and greet the "only man who makes a living out of beating things!"
