SBIT, July 22., Lerkendal - a little review

Dr. Eddies Wingman

Brighter than thousand_suns
Went to the show with a couple of mates, we warmed up with food and listening to Maiden in my new (and therefore somewhat chaotic) apartment. The gates opened at 17:00 and we were at the stadium about 17:30. By then the area closest to the stage was already quite crowded. We stayed in the "above 18 years" zone at the back and had a couple of beers during Lauren's show, which in my opinion was quite ordinary. Got myself a tour t-shirt with the Powerslave album cover on the front and the European tour dates at the back, it wasn't as expensive as feared. We moved forward a bit during A7X's show which I thought was OK, but not great. They played lots of Maiden teasers between their songs, to which the crowd reacted with enthusiasm.

When A7X had finished, we started moving forwards a bit and when Maiden's intro tape started playing, I was just behind the second barrier and had a good view despite my height of 168 cm. Between me and that barrier was a girl who was slightly shorter than myself, seemingly a real lightweighter, so I tried my best to shield her from the pushing from behind, which was quite intense at times.

Rest goes in spoilers:

First we of course got Doctor Doctor over the PA and parts of the crowd were singing along to that as well, at least near where I was standing. Then Transylvania, now with the big screens showing pictures of the band and the plane ,before finally Churchill's "Never surrender"-speech started playing with the Aces High video playing on the screens. When the band came on, the pushing and jumping became worse and I had to work hard to keep my place.

During the first few songs, there were some sound problems (Steve's bass sometimes became very loud, and Dave's guitar was notably louder than the other two), but half-way through Revelations it was sorted out.

The performance was flawless from all six, so except for the sound problems in the beginning everything was great.

Before they played "Rime", Bruce told that H had gone to Norway immediately after the second Finnish gig, and had spent the last three days fishing. And he hadn't got a single f'in fish  :D Then he went on talking about albatrosses, seagulls and fish before he cited his own introduction from Long Beach in '85. The song itself was one of the highlights of the concert, of course. And the jumping and pushing around me was actually almost as intense during parts of "Rime" as during the "crowd-pleasers" RTTH and FOTD.

Overall, the entire concert was great, but some parts of it were even greater:

The 20 minutes of Rime of the Ancient Mariner + Powerslave
The encore section with Moonchild, The Clairvoyant and Hallowed

Of course, Bruce played up the rivalry between the "big" cities of Niorway, with the obvious kind words about tonight's city (cheering from the crowd) and then telling they were off to Oslo (booing, of course). He also repeated the promise to bring a new album for the next tour, so that seems to be decided.  Any more? Yes, when presenting the rest of the band, he said about Nicko "Each household should have one of these"  :D

No pictures from me, unfortunately, as the light conditions didn't cooperate well with my cell phone camera. But certainly a great night anyway. I need to go to more Maiden concerts.
 
Eddies Wingman said:
Before they played "Rime", Bruce ... cited his own introduction from Long Beach in '85.

He seems to be doing that at every show, though his method of bringing it up varies from show to show.
 
That's a reasonable price. It's maybe a bit more than the usual t-shirt price here in record shops and alike.
 
Yes, it seemed to me a very reasonable price considering that t-shirts seem to get more expensive as the band's fame rises (and there's no bigger metal band than Maiden).  Small bands sell cheaper shirts, big bands more expensive.  Shirts from bands I've seen in the past year:
Helloween: 20 €
Amon Amarth: 20 €
Dark Tranquillity: 20 €
Megadeth: 30 €
Maiden: 30 €
Judas Priest: 35 € (I didn't buy)

I've only bought one band shirt from a regular shop, and that was a generic Live After Death shirt for 25 €.  However, I can understand them being more expensive at gigs, since they're tour-specific, whereas the ones you see at stores are Number of the Beast/The Trooper/Live After Death/Killers/etc. shirts that you can sell anywhere any time.  I was surprised that even the Nordic Tour shirts were the same price (I was expecting 35 or 40), despite them being sold at only six gigs!  But then again, there were over 200,000 people coming to those gigs altogether. 

/hijack
 
Here the t-shirts were from 300 NOK to 500 NOK and I think the € equals about 7.50 NOK now. This means 40 € and upwards ... but consider the fact that everything is expensive in Norway, so we're used to it. During the Judas Priest show in June, T-shirts were sold at the same price.
 
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