Wednesday, September 28, 2005

I Bang My Head Because It Feels So Good When I Stop

Music Wonkery

The first thing I remember I was fourteen, and I was lying around my room doing homework and listening to the radio when this noise came on, this crazy sprinting noise, and I stopped what I was doing and listened transfixed from the first note to the last. I felt like I’d been socked in the head and the world had unfolded before me into something bigger, badder and louder than I had ever thought it could be.

That was the first time I heard Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” Ha… fooled you there, crossed you up, didn’t I? This review is about Maiden and here I am yammering away about some hard rock glam hair band from LA. Well, you can cram it if you have a problem, because it relates. And not only because I detect a not-so-subtle musical thread running between G&R and the Maiden, mainly having to do with the quality of their grooves and the fact that they’re a five-piece with a yowly lead singer. No, sir.

Maiden reminds me of Guns ‘n’ Roses because listening to the new Iron Maiden double-live gonzo extravaganza Death on the Road gives me chills all over like I was fourteen again. It takes me back to that age when metal was a thrilling new discovery to this Ohio teenager:  Zeppelin, Ministry, Metallica, Megadeth, Judas Priest, and Maiden. Listening to Death on the Road I feel like I did that time we were listening to Somewhere In Time and then went and got Shawn’s old Chevette with no passenger seats up to 85 MPH out on the back roads of Portage County. I feel like Columbus sighting land after ten weeks at sea. I feel like Neil Armstrong stepping onto Luna Firma. I feel like I just invented wet t-shirt night.


Posted by Johno on 09/28/05 at 11:28 AM
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