Friday, I see one of my favorite groups and (I would argue)
the greatest metal band ever, Iron Maiden. I am prepared for something
resembling a religious experience, as the Maiden live experience is renowned as
one of the most electric imaginable. I have watched and listened to enough live
performances secondhand to know their ability to engage an entire crowd and entertain
like few others can, so I am obviously quite ready to finally witness their
showmanship myself.
Something I like to do, especially in anticipation of one of
the few concerts I have seen in my life, is create “dream” setlists for my favorite
artists. Most are restricted to a Notepad file, with no reason to share them
with more than a couple of people, but as I have done with Rush (pre-blog), I
will now go through what songs would comprise my ideal Iron Maiden show.
The rules are simple: the set must be around their usual
length (in this case, 17 songs); and even if I wanted otherwise, the handful of
songs that are guaranteed for every performance must be part of the set. The
rest is up to me, although it should be said these aren’t necessarily my favorite
17 Iron Maiden songs. I can’t really begin to narrow down that list, and I want
to have some diversity. Some fantastic crowd songs, for example, were cut
because if you include all of them, it becomes redundant. And if I were to
include all my favorite B-sides just to have a unique experience, I wouldn’t
have room for the even slightly more popular songs.
I will now begin.
