Iron Maiden Returns to Austin (2013)

Look closely, because (for better or worse) you’ll never see these following names together ever again.
Welcome to another weird/fun month.

Iron Maiden/Megadeth – September 10th –  Austin 360 Amphitheater – Austin, TX

This will take a bit of explaining so let’s unpack things a bit: My oldest and dearest friend Chris was turning 40 in a few weeks and his wife reached out to me as naturally she wanted to do something special for the occasion. With budget in mind and geography in tow, she came up with the idea of making a fun road trip to Austin for a special performance of Iron Maiden.
The three of us have had a few trips to Austin together the last couple of years with wild success and already some of my fave memories of all of us together so I was def up for it – The show being in the middle of the week and they both have day jobs, so if they could get it together and make it, I was certainly gonna be a part of it.

The show was set to be historical for all involved – for Iron Maiden, for the fans, for the city of Austin and most defintely for the three of us.
Let me explain:
This is no ordinary tour for Iron Maiden – They are recreating a very ambitious tour from 1988 in support of that year’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son LP complete with clairvoyant motiff and all the bells and whistles. It was also on that tour that they were in Austin last – so what a fitting return 25 years later.
That LP and tour is also very special to Chris and I – I moved to Texas in the summer of 1987 and he was the first person I met and we’ve been best friends ever since. He was heavily into Iron Maiden and really the one that got me into them – We would go to my house pracitcally everyday after school and eat junk food and watch their live concert Live After Death until the VHS copy I had wore out. The first LP they came out after we met that we waited for with great anticpation was the Seventh Son of Seventh Son LP – Also what band has the kind of following that would allow such indulgency to recreate not their first or recent but their SEVENTH LP 25 years later?
The biggest miracle of all is that inspire of our desire, I going on to work in the music industry and attending literally close to 2k concerts and somehow we both have NEVER SEEN Iron Maiden before – this was going to be our first time!

So now you know the gravity of the situation let’s head to Austin:
We arrive at a really great boutique hotel just south of downtown that somehow became Iron Maiden central, as every person we passed in the halls were also clearly going to the show. We get up to our room that we were sharing to discover that though this place is anything but sleazy, and I’m sure this was more of a foray into post-moderism, as compared to exhibitionism but we discover that our bathroom wall is made entirely out of transparent glass with pull down blinds a la Peep Show – just another one of those oddities you experience while traveling that when is travelling with the right people becomes hysterial and often the highlight of the trip. We had so much with this one, my face hurt from laughing before we even got to the concert.

Getting to the concert was no laughing matter however, as I have nothing but good positive to say about the venue itself, the way the process of entering said venue is a ridiculous waste of time, not to mention the venue is literally out in the middle of nowhere.
Via GPS it said that the Austin 360 Amphitheater, a new venue located directly next to the Speedway was only 8 miles away – but from door-to-door it took us over 90 minutes to get in and get situated.
You have to walk literally two miles after parking and then the process of getting into the place is like being at JFK airport on Christmas Eve.
This little hiccup cost us the first few songs of the opening act, Megadeth who were also a crucial part of this trip down memory lane.

Around the same time we met, the Thrash movement was really picking up steam and Megadeth’s membership into the Big Four of Thrash along with Slayer, Anthrax and Metallica was literally our lives. His wife really went the extra mile and sought me out to ask what old t-shirt Chris used to own and together we found it online and she purchased it for him to wear at the show. How cool right? – Additionally in the 1980’s – Chris looked just like Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine!
A funny subtext to the story involving that shirt (the new copy he just got) – is that independantly he tried to “cut it up” in today’s fashion like you see young dudes who hang/perform at the Warped Tour wear, thinking that his 40 year old self coud pull the look off, only to have a rude awakening of honest self vs, projected self when he saw how ridiculous he looked. I am screaming laughing at this but also because I had to confess that I just recently attempted the same thing with my Motorhead shirt with the same disatrous results. Good times –

Stature as headliner or support act be damned, Megadeth delivered the goods with a 50-minute set that spanned a bulk of their career.
Setting the stage for headliners Iron Maiden, Megadeth’s presence signaled a tour that had come full circle since the original Maiden England ’88 trek 25 years earlier when Megadeth filled in for original openers Guns N’ Roses on select dates. It also officially signaled that Austin was one of only seven U.S. cities fortunate enough to see this pairing on such a short-lived jaunt.

Dave Mustaine informed the crowd he was in the process of moving to Austin toward show’s end. As the roars of approval took flight, Mustaine’s follow-up sentence — “the house-hunting didn’t go so well today” — was mostly drowned out by the crowd before he added, “but we’ll be back!”

Naturally, Megadeth’s stage show and duration of performance were scaled down but not by much. They still had giant screens showcasing the band among a backdrop of colorful images, including partial lyrics to the only new song performed Kingmaker from their new LP Super Collider that I admit I haven’t heard and probably won’t ever.

Setlist:

Hangar 18
Wake Up Dead
In My Darkest Hour
Sweating Bullets
Kingmaker
Tornado of Souls
Symphony of Destruction
Peace Sells . . . But Who’s Buying?
Holy Wars . . . The Punishment Due

Many bands celebrate an anniversary of a landmark album by playing it in its entirety live. Maiden, never one to rest on its laurels, reprises entire tours that serve as a break, in part, from touring in support of new music they continue to make.Most members, particularly bassist and co-founder Steve Harris, appear to have discovered the fountain of youth, not only playing as strongly as they did 25 years ago but also looking as if they stepped out of 1988.
When Maiden tours the world, they include many cities many of us have never heard of — something for which fans the world over can be thankful.
If Maiden misses a particular city on one leg of a tour, they make sure to hit it on subsequent parts.
One of only seven American cities fortunate to witness this pairing.

Some bands have signature things they do in their live settings – When you go see Metallica and as your jamming out to the songs on the PA while the lights are still up waiting for the show to start, informed parties know that when you hear AC/DC’s It’s a Long Way to the Top that the show will begin next.
In this case I learned that Iron Maiden’s version of that is UFO’s Doctor Doctor
All normal bets of what the band will start with were off given the theme of the tour –