Iron Maiden - Philadelphia 2003 aud (DVD)
Iron Maiden - Belez Stadium, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2004 pro (DVD)
I’ve seen enough live Iron Maiden footage (starting with the Rock in Rio and their collection of older clips) to realize that with this band, at least during those years where Bruce Dickinson was and now is at the helm, you’re not going to get much deviation from what you’ve already seen, so I guess in some ways it’s pretty amazing they’re still doing what they do in the modern era. On both of these video clips, one a rather good audience recording, the other a somewhat unfairly muddy pro-shot, Dickinson sounds as good as he ever did, if not better, cementing him in my little world as one of metal’s premiere frontmen, despite the occasional angry pre-song rant. For whatever reason, both of these clips are rather light on new material, definitely lighter than what I had read on tour lists, but they still belt out the old tracks, the only difference being that one guitarist often steps out and mugs for a little while. But really, no surprises here, Iron Maiden are hard workers and it shows.
Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Korakuen Stadium, Tokyo 7/22/72 (DVD)
I won’t spend my time boring everyone to death with the usual faux-hipster, anti-prog rock ”criticism” that still seems to be rock music’s favorite punching bag and has becoming increasingly stale even if I might agree with some of it. But I will mention that as a fan of a nice chunk of that style’s offerings, I’m not and never really was quite as into the “big 5″ groups as most fans of the genre are. I like the classic Yes canon quite a bit, find early Genesis a little too dramatic for current moods (although I used to be more fond of them), was a lot more selective with ELP and have never figured out who the other two are.
So the ELP I like is most of the first, side one of Tarkus and small bits of Trilogy and BSS, which would likely make a very nice comp disc. In a way, this 1972 Japanese performance hits most of these spots, especially with the energetic version of Tarkus here, but like several other groups from the era, they spend an inordinate amount of time dawdling on solo spots and their soporific classical rock takes. Overall I’m finally glad to actually see what it may have been like, especially as this represents their better fraction. But I think I lasted about 20-30 minutes before starting to be distracted elsewhere.