Iron Maiden - White River Amphitheatre - Seattle, WA 6/2/08

Iron Maiden continued their second leg of their "Somewhere Back In Time - World Tour 2008" in Seattle (Auburn) Washington. It was a good show with good song choices. I like that they did the "Songs from an Era" type thing, as they touched on 1980-1989 as was included in their new Best Of album from that era. This gives them freedom from the new stuff, and the older stuff without Bruce (although they did play their theme song "Iron Maiden" from their first album).

The group's setlist was as follows (after an introductory movie):

• Aces High
• 2 Minutes to Midnight
• Revelations
• The Trooper
• Wasted Years
• The Number of the Beast
• Can I Play With Madness?
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Powerslave
• Heaven Can Wait
• Run to the Hills
• Fear of the Dark
• Iron Maiden

Encore:

• Moonchild
• The Clairvoyant
• Hallowed Be Thy Name

It should be noted that they played the exact same set list in San Antonio, TX, so they don't appear to be straying from this list, nor are they playing anything that came out after the
"Fear Of The Dark" album. No new stuff. Which is fine with most people, but some people would like to hear a newbie or two. Also nothing off of Killers.

The introductory movie featured one of their early songs off of one of their first two albums (of course, I forgot which song that is now). It was a cool movie, but it was short. This seems to be a new trend to put on before the show. The movie before Godsmack came out a few months back was excellent, and they used "For Those About To Rock" and had it cranked way up, which really got the crowd up for the show.

Bruce Dickinson was in amazing form all night. The vocals are cranked up really loud for the show, so they are very clear, and very prominent in the mix. He really takes control of the crowd from time to time, and hits more than his share of high notes (for an "older" rock singing performer).

The sound guys use cool vocal effects on the screams to beef the sounds up, (and it really gets the crowd cheering).

The crowd of approximately 13,000 (according to Bruce himself) was a great turnout, and he mentioned that this tour was the best North American tour as far as attendance in 30 years.

There were a few "Eddie" sightings, including a World Slavery Tour type of bandaged up Eddie coming out from behind the stage, and a "Somewhere In Time" Eddie that came out on stilts, and was about 18 feet tall, hovering over the band, it looked really cool.

As far as the rest of the band, it was a usual rock solid performance. The opening band was Steve Harris' daughter, Lauren Harris. Her band and singing ability was unfortunately not very memorable. I saw 3 songs, then hit the local burrito stand. When I got back, my neighbor at the show gave me a hard time for missing her, but then said that "all her songs sounded the same". I didn't feel bad for missing them in the least at that point.

The big news is that Maiden is coming out with another new album soon, and will be touring again, and coming back through Seattle again. Hopefully, the next venue will be easier to access, as the White River Amphitheatre is miles away from most civilization, and hard to get to by car. The parking is a nightmare, and getting home takes forever.

I am in the process of uploading a video for each song (that I took with my handy Sony Cybershot digital camera) of the show to YouTube, so check all of the songs out at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/giannicanuck

You should also be able to click the links on the "Youtube" bar to the right hand side at the top of my page to get to the movies from the show.