Maid-en Heaven!?

EDDFEST happened in Bangalore last Saturday (March 17), and yours truly was there! At the very outset, I gotta admit this - from all the concerts I have ever attended, this one's gotta rank right up there for sheer energy! The adrenaline in the crowd was amazing! If you went in with fairly simple expectations of seeing a really great band in the flesh, and getting to see them perform some of their most popular numbers, you were in for an amazing time! Check it out in the video above.


Ok. Now that the hoo-haa is over. Here's the low-down from a more dispassionate point of view. It was a good show. I'll even say it was a really good show. Bruce Dickinson really kept at the crowds, and, man, did they respond. And the concert stage artwork and setup is perhaps by far one of the most elaborate we have seen in Bangalore. But...


...and here are the kickers.


The sound just didn't do it for me, beyond a point. I was literally at the mixing console, supposedly one of the best places to catch audio in a concert stadium, and there were points at which I got this very 'general' feeling with the sound. The lead guitars and vocals barely had a good definition. (I wonder if it was because of the very vocal crowd overshadowing the band's sound, but I somehow doubt it)


I'd also really wished that the band 'took off' on a few songs. You know, those once-in-a-lifetime occasions when a band just goes stratospheric on a single song, with seemingly never-ending and imaginative solos that stretch it to even fifteen minutes and more. Or maybe arrange a well-known song very differently, just to pull a fast one over the crowd, for fun. Just didn't see anything approaching that. Where is the magic? I somehow thought IM was happy to play to the crowds and 'true to track', and leave it at that. (Again, see video. There was one lead singer with a mic on stage, and some 25000 in the audience, without)


A majority of the audience didn't seem to agree with my thinking, I guess. The very fact that someone as legendary as Iron Maiden is playing in India was something that made it a memorable experience for many (and while we're on this topic, let's also understand something else - I am no longer pleasantly surprised at the fact that bands like Iron Maiden and artistes like Sting, Bryan Adams and Mark Knopfler now look to perform in India. Here's where the market, the money and the action is gonna be, honey!), but I feel that this was barely a memorable concert by itself. Honestly, I've seen videos where they've really cranked it up!


I'm sort of left with the feeling we all get when Sachin steps out to bat - and we expect him to deliver a legendary innings because that's what he is, a legend - and he makes a 'competent' 40 runs. Yes, he does it in some style. Yes, he's just played his trademark compact straight drive that looks so classy how many ever times you watch it. But, say, it's nothing close to the mastery he is capable of, the complete classic domination of the opposition. It's a 40, and not a hundred. Good. But not great. Something like that...