So we’ve seen a few shows since we moved. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my camera into the bigger venues, so I’ve got no photos to post. In my opinion, a post about a show that doesn’t include pictures is kind of a bust, but I guess you can’t go see Iron Maiden and Bjork and not tell someone.

On August 11th, Bjork played the Hollywood Bowl and it was amazing. We were far enough away that she resembled a very cute dot, but the show itself was so huge distance didn’t much matter. Two huge screens showed original content for most of the set, and fireworks were launched from behind the Bowl during three different songs. There was also a huge ensemble on stage including an orchestra, harpist, and a guy dancing in gravel. It was a pretty impressive affair, all in all. Lots of thanks to our friend Linus who gave us the free tickets.
Oh yeah. Some guy with an acoustic guitar opened up.

We stayed at home for a couple weeks after that. We decided if we were going to go out after Bjork, it had better damn well be able to live up. When some free tickets to Iron Maiden, Dio, and Motorhead at the Long Beach Arena fell into our laps, we decided it fit the bill.
Ever seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot? Apparently not much has changed. I’m such a shitty blogger because I didn’t walk around and document the scene, but I was a bit afraid for my life. There were skinny, mustached men air-guitaring, girls dancing in pick-up truck beds… It was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and this was just the parking lot an hour before the show.

Motorhead hit the stage first and played with the energy and intensity of three 20 year-olds and the volume of thirty. Unfortunately, the mix was not wonderful and the arena was half empty, making for a distorted, bellowing overall sound. Nice long set, killer drum solo. I honestly spent most of the set watching the rather animated crowd around us. No one there had full mental capacity. No shit. These people were not just weird or mulletty… they were honestly all missing a chromosome. You know, that one that causes you to know better.

Dio played second and was… Dio. Boy were they Dio. I just want to stress that there’s only one Dio and they were… them.

Iron Maiden finally took the stage around 11:30. We’d already been there for 4 hours and my tolerance for the whole affair was running rather thin. We’d seen people stealing one another clothes and drugs, watched a fat meat-head repeatedly call to the drink vendor and then look around innocently when the vendor turned, and spent five minutes of my like that I’ll never get back trying to figure out if the guy passed out in the row in front of us was breathing.
Thankfully, Iron Maiden brought props. Not shout-outs or accolades or whatever, but actual props. Flags and demons and banners. The entire stage, floor and three walls were murals of Eddie and the other Iron Maiden death characters. There was a platform with a cat walk surrounding the entire stage. Every song had a new 60 foot banner in the background. The amps were not on stage and the guitars were all wireless. The players looked like frolicking little girls. It was everything I could have hoped for… Then Eddie appeared. Sort of. He was tall and walked like a geriatric. His arms only moved back and forth and were permanently bent at the elbows. He wandered the stage, almost fell over, waved to the crowd, and then left. And then so did we.

Here are some funny things I came across while typing this blog:
- Blogger’s spellchecker has no entry for the word “Blogger”.
- Motorhead’s web site is located at imotorhead.com.
- Motorhead has a web site.
- Doing an image search on Google for the words “Heavy Metal” is amazing. Doing so returns a lot of things like this: