Fear Of The dark
My fear of the dark came alive after more than thirty years since the band ‘Iron Miaden’ was formed. 17th March 2007 would be always special in my heart as I became a part of the 20000 strong crowd which thronged the palace ground to watch the Iron Maiden concert. Hard core maiden fans kept pouring from all over India since morning and they camped the whole day in palace ground. I was intimidated by true maiden fans who roamed around wearing maiden T-shirts and sporting long hair, which, I am sure, did not see a barber since the inception of the band. These guys with their long beautiful hair could give inferiority complex to any girl on such a beautiful day. Most of the people around were busy getting a high before the concert as alcohol and cigarettes were strictly prohibited inside the ground. Few of them were seen hiding cigarette packs inside their underwear. Let’s not discuss how the girls managed to take the packets inside.
‘Paraikrama was already on the stage when we entered the ground at 5.30 pm. Parikrama had always been my favorite but I was in no mood to listen to them that day. And so was the rest of the crowd. All we could hear was ‘Maiden….Maiden” as the crowd screamed in unison. Parikrama gave their best shot and so was FTN, but they could not satiate the maiden frenzy crowd. The ‘Maiden ...Maiden’ scream grew louder as time passed by. The cigarettes and joints that sneaked into the ground came out from their respective unmentionable hideouts and began to light up. It was a big bad rock concert in true sense.
By that time the crowd with lower ticket prices tried to break free from the barrier and had couple of attempts to come to the front. Police were merely silent by-standers as people kept jumping over the temporary fence. Who says Indian girls are dignified ? Most of them were girls who gave a tough time to the security personnel. Another dignified girl was found puking on the ground and her equally embarrassed boy friend trying to console her. It was around 8.30pm when we heard a scream ’Welcome Bangalore’ in a true ‘Bruce Dickinson’ voice which put the crowd into a frenzy followed by an avalanche of crowd running toward the stage.
Iron maiden started in typical maiden fashion pitching in numbers from their latest album ‘A matter of life and death’. Thousands of lights with different colors brightened up the stage as they played "These Colors Don't Run” and "Brighter than a Thousand Suns”. The first classic that came out was “Wrath child", which the band touchingly dedicated to the memory of Leon Ireland, the vocalist of Indian band Moksha who passed away earlier this year. This gesture was met by a huge appreciation as they tried to recognize the achievements of India’s greatest Rock vocalist in spite of they themselves being the Gods of Rock. At 49, Bruce showed awesome stage energy as he ran around the stage while performing one of their biggest hits, the ‘Trooper’. They also performed the critically acclaimed "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg", and "For The Greater Good Of God" from their latest album “A matter of life and death”.
Then came the most memorable moment when the band played the ‘Fear of the Dark’. Twenty thousand strong crowd joined the band on the chorus and sang along till the last bit of it. It was the moment when every single soul became a part of the ‘Fear of the Dark’ as it left the crowd with spine chilling experience with all their hair raised straight up. It was followed by numbers such as "Number Of The Beast", "Run To The Hills", "Two Minutes To Midnight" and "Hallowed Be thy Name" which left the crowd in a head banging frenzy raising the dust to an ominously greater heights.
The backdrops of the stage were quite spectacular with the band's mascot Eddie featuring prominently. Eddie also made a breath taking appearance in the middle of the concert on the top of a battle tank that was raised on to the stage. Drummer Nicko McBrain showed his raw power as if he played with six hands and bassist Steve Harris was at his best through out the concert. It was a spectacular experience not only for the crowd but also for the band which admitted that it was a special night for them and it wanted to come back to India pretty soon. As Bruce mentioned during the concert that life wouldn’t be the same after that night, I strongly believed that.
That day I slept with my eyes wide open!!!!
‘Paraikrama was already on the stage when we entered the ground at 5.30 pm. Parikrama had always been my favorite but I was in no mood to listen to them that day. And so was the rest of the crowd. All we could hear was ‘Maiden….Maiden” as the crowd screamed in unison. Parikrama gave their best shot and so was FTN, but they could not satiate the maiden frenzy crowd. The ‘Maiden ...Maiden’ scream grew louder as time passed by. The cigarettes and joints that sneaked into the ground came out from their respective unmentionable hideouts and began to light up. It was a big bad rock concert in true sense.
By that time the crowd with lower ticket prices tried to break free from the barrier and had couple of attempts to come to the front. Police were merely silent by-standers as people kept jumping over the temporary fence. Who says Indian girls are dignified ? Most of them were girls who gave a tough time to the security personnel. Another dignified girl was found puking on the ground and her equally embarrassed boy friend trying to console her. It was around 8.30pm when we heard a scream ’Welcome Bangalore’ in a true ‘Bruce Dickinson’ voice which put the crowd into a frenzy followed by an avalanche of crowd running toward the stage.
Iron maiden started in typical maiden fashion pitching in numbers from their latest album ‘A matter of life and death’. Thousands of lights with different colors brightened up the stage as they played "These Colors Don't Run” and "Brighter than a Thousand Suns”. The first classic that came out was “Wrath child", which the band touchingly dedicated to the memory of Leon Ireland, the vocalist of Indian band Moksha who passed away earlier this year. This gesture was met by a huge appreciation as they tried to recognize the achievements of India’s greatest Rock vocalist in spite of they themselves being the Gods of Rock. At 49, Bruce showed awesome stage energy as he ran around the stage while performing one of their biggest hits, the ‘Trooper’. They also performed the critically acclaimed "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg", and "For The Greater Good Of God" from their latest album “A matter of life and death”.
Then came the most memorable moment when the band played the ‘Fear of the Dark’. Twenty thousand strong crowd joined the band on the chorus and sang along till the last bit of it. It was the moment when every single soul became a part of the ‘Fear of the Dark’ as it left the crowd with spine chilling experience with all their hair raised straight up. It was followed by numbers such as "Number Of The Beast", "Run To The Hills", "Two Minutes To Midnight" and "Hallowed Be thy Name" which left the crowd in a head banging frenzy raising the dust to an ominously greater heights.
The backdrops of the stage were quite spectacular with the band's mascot Eddie featuring prominently. Eddie also made a breath taking appearance in the middle of the concert on the top of a battle tank that was raised on to the stage. Drummer Nicko McBrain showed his raw power as if he played with six hands and bassist Steve Harris was at his best through out the concert. It was a spectacular experience not only for the crowd but also for the band which admitted that it was a special night for them and it wanted to come back to India pretty soon. As Bruce mentioned during the concert that life wouldn’t be the same after that night, I strongly believed that.
That day I slept with my eyes wide open!!!!
posted by intelligent_bacteria at 5:21 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home