Great show!!! All the hits you’d expect from a tour w/o a new album, and a few deep cuts. The staging is incredibly good - it’s not Kiss-level w/the pyro and such, but the actual stage sets and the changes are really well done. The sound was outstanding but very loud. Not ‘never been to a concert before’ loud, more ‘wow, this is louder than normal’ loud. I took the earplugs out for “The Trooper”, “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, and “Run To The Hills” (and part of “Number Of The Beast”), and it was kind of stunning, even to me. Bruce’s voice sounds great, and the band is tight as all get out. I did laugh a lot early on at Jannick Gers, because I saw a quote from him recently where he was asked why he runs around and preens a lot, and he said something to the effect of, “Well, Dave and Adrian were all worried about notes and chords and solos and music, and nobody was worrying about doing the goofy stuff.” Almost picked up a Trooper flag after the show, but showed rare restraint.
Raven Age opened the show. Decent, and the start was promising, but ultimately it just didn’t go anywhere.
One downside to the evening. We were in the third and fourth seats in our row. One row in front of us, next section over, was one of those guys who thought he was the show - dancing out in the aisle (and blocking it). Annoying, but it happens. But at the end of the row two in front of us was a young woman who was there by herself, and about halfway through the show, he took a shine to her and started trying to chat her up. She made it pretty clear that she didn’t really want to be bothered, but was very polite and non-confrontational about it. But he kept coming back and getting creepy about it. The people in the row in front of us even told him to leave her alone. Before the encores, the people in the first two seats in our row left, and sure enough, he went down to bother her again at the beginning of “Hallowed”, so I went up and told the usher. She came down (by this time he was back in his seat), so she said something to him, then stood between the railing the rest of the night and wouldn’t let him out of his seat. P!ssed me off that I had to go up during one of my favorite intros ever, but even more so that the dude had to be such a ********. Just go and enjoy the damn concert and leave the people around you alone. It’s not that frigging hard!
Between the track lighting in another post and three shows in four nights again, I’m beat. I don’t think I’d ever done three in four before this year, and this was the third time in seven weeks. I overheard my wife telling her mother she thought about staging an intervention, but she likes the time alone.
...well, I mean...ya know...that's what I heard...one time...alledgedly
