Urban's Ultimate Gigs
 

I'm bored of reviewing albums so I thought instead I would select various bands and make up my ideal set-list and maybe explain some of my choices.
I decided to start this up with a very popular band on the forum and one of the first bands I ever got into.Ladies & Gentlemen I give you....


I was only going to go up to the Powerslave album but I really really liked the two singles that were on the Somewhere In Time album so I included them also, so I guess you could date this gig circa 1986.

I would have put Aces High as the opening song but Where Eagles Dare is one of my favourite album openers and when they opened with it on the Piece Of Mind tour it really worked well so i've started with it here. Plus as far as I am aware that was the only tour they ever played it on.
Maybe i've been listening to Powerslave & Live After Death far too many times but there's just no other song apart from Two Minutes To Midnight that could go second, it just belongs there and I don't think it would work anywhere else.
Killers is up third because I always think at that point in the gig you play an early favourite to get the hardcore fans going. Back In The Village is a song i've never ever heard Iron Maiden play live in this era which i think is a shame because it's one of the highlights on the Powerslave album for me.
Then i've gone with Remember Tomorrow so people can get a bit of a breather after the frantic pace of the first 4 songs. I'm not really a fan of Bruce Dickinson singing this, I much prefer Dianno's version. Dianno even said himself when he heard Dickinson sing it he sounded more like an opera singer rather than a rock singer, maybe i'll get him to do a guest appearance for this one song only.
Total Eclipse was the B side of the Run to The Hills single and they played it on the Beast tour and I would bring it back as I think it's a much more interesting song than a lot of the stuff on the Number Of The Beast album.
Then there's another early favourite in Murders In The Rue Morgue, although this time around I think Dickinson does a pretty good version of this song so i'd let him sing that.
After that Flight Of Icarus which is basically a short & sweet burst of much needed mid gig energy.
Powerslave would be the epic right in the middle of the gig and I have placed Wasted Years right after it to counteract with it so you go from prog like epic straight to a singalong commercial song.
Revelations is next for another breather and then straight into a hard rockin version 22 Acacia Avenue.
At this point i'm undecided between Phantom Of The Opera & Hallowed Be Thy Name. I really can't decide between the two but I think they're too similar in style to play them both and I think at any other point in the gig would sound all wrong. I think the easiest way around this is to have them play one song on one night and the other the next night and just see them twice...... works for me.
After that a couple of energetic songs in the Prisoner & Purgatory before going straight to the crowd pleasing Number Of The Beast after making people wait most of the gig for it.
Stranger In A Strange Land would go last before the encores because that's what they did on the Somewhere In Time tour and the extended outro makes this a natural placing.
For the encores I would leave it pretty much alone to what they were playing at the time as I can't think of any better songs to go there. I would add Aces High to the beginning of it because I do think it only works as an opening song and I think having it open the encores would get a good reaction from the crowd.

So that in rather a large nutshell is basically my ultimate Iron Maiden gig.
I shall be following this up with another post with some near misses and glaring omissions (You're all going to scream at me about The Trooper, right? ;) )

Shame on you for dividing the two best Maiden songs!

Geeky i know but i love making up perfect set-lists! If you do any for some acts i like enough then i'll be sure to post my own as well.

Actually I just noticed the lack of Wrathchild, why's that?

I'm not much of a fan of Maiden but this a great idea for a thread. I'm looking forward to future lists.

Nice thread, I hope you do The Cult one of these days.

I have a feeling I will. They're playing their entire Love album on the tour they're doing at the moment. I managed to get a bootleg of one of the gigs they played last month and they're sounding really good.
I do wish Ian Asbury would drop his faux American accent though.

Good! Are you going to go see them again? If you do, I will be jealous out of my mind. Oh Urban, you can't blame Ian for wanting to be more like us sexy Americans. ;)

I won't be seeing them sadly. They're only playing a handful of UK gigs and only one in London in a couple of weeks time. I've only been back to work a week or so, I don't think my boss would be too happy about me wandering off again so soon.

I'm pleased you included Stranger In A Strange Land. It's a little commercial for them but remains one of my favourite maiden songs. Fantastic guitar sound on it. Can't stand Wasted Years though :(. I do like bits from 7th Son of a 7th son and would have put in Infinite Dreams instead of Wasted Years.

That would be a pretty epic gig. Personally I'd scrap Wasted Years and have Flash of the Blade or Infinite Dreams in its place. I'm happy to see Purgatory and Back in the Village up there. Phantom of the Opera and Hallowed Be Thy Name form a perfect coupling - they are my fav Maiden songs. And I am surprised about the Trooper's omission but I'm sure I can live with (or without) it. :D

Here are the near misses & omissions from my Ultimate Iron Maiden gig........

Prowler - I wanted to put it in and it was going to go third. But then I remembered the abomination that was Prowler 88 and stuck Killers in instead.

Charlotte The Harlot / Strange World - I would have loved to have had these two in because i love both these songs but there's only so many you can have from one album. With a Dianno era gig these two would be dead certs.

Women In Uniform - Would love to have dropped this in just to seriously annoy people. I quite like this song actually.

I've Got The Fire - I wish i'd finished the gig with this now. Maybe I could slip it in right at the end after Sanctuary.

Ides Of March / Wrathchild - Good , but they would have be my 4th choice opener.

Innocent Exile / Drifter - Good songs but nothing special , better suited to a Dianno era gig.

Twilight Zone - Decent little single but just not decent enough.

Prodigal Son - I would have loved to have dropped this song in just to see the reaction. I actually think this is one of their most underrated songs.

Children of the Damned - This is really the only serious contender of Number Of The Beast I left out. I've just never really liked this song much. I find it a bit of a dirge to be honest. Dropping it wasn't really that difficult.

The Trooper - This is probably the biggest omission of the lot. I don't hate this song but I was never really a big fan of it either. Because it's played so often that indifference has turned to boredom & quite honestly if I listen to an album with this on now I tend to skip it. So that's why I left it out of this gig.

Die With Your Boots On - Totally forgot about this song. May have stood a chance if I remembered but in the end I think I would have dropped it.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Probably the only serious omission from the Powerslave album. I do like this song to be honest and it got dropped pretty late in the day but the length of it was always going to work against it with this type of gig. I just don't like it THAT much to justify using up 15 minutes of a gig. Simple as.

Caught Somewhere In Time - The only other real contender from the Somewhere In Time album that would be included. In fact it would be my 3rd choice gig opener.

And I'd just like to finish by saying if I had dated the gig up to the 7th Son era Infinite Dreams wouldn't make it. Sorry, just was never a fan of it.

It's funny -- for me 7th Son was important because it came out when I was a kid still into metal and I went out to buy the tape, like, day of release. I will always have a bit of a soft spot for it but I consider everything that came afterwards...unessential. I know some older fans who feel the same way about Somewhere in Time and that Powerslave was the last good album.

Anyway, what are your picks for 7th Son?

I actually got into Iron Maiden the day Somewhere In Time came out, but I ended up buying Number Of The Beast instead because I knew a couple of songs on it already.
I went back & bought Somewhere In Time the following week.

I never really warmed to the stuff after that album. I got the feeling they lost their edge a little bit. I don't know what my picks for 7th son would be, I don't think I've listened to it since the early 90s.

They certainly lost their edge and it can be argued that a lot on Somewhere In Time is below par too and I rarely listen to the album and 7th Son as a whole is piss poor but Infinite Dreams and The Evil That Men Do are redeeming features.

Personally my favourite Maiden record is Seventh Son. I would put Infinite Dreams, The Clairvoyant and The Evil That Men Do in mine, along with Flash of the Blade and Prowler.

Back when 7th Son came out I guess my tastes weren't developed enough for me to differentiate it too much from other Maiden (even though older was clearly better even at the time). I'm also a sucker for cover art and I love the glaciers and the blue on that cover. I've gone back and listened to it again in recent years and yea it's got that late-80s stench all over it. If it weren't for nostalgia I would hate it. However, since nostalgia always counts, I pretty much agree with mojopunk on its best songs. I can even still get a bit of a thrill off that ultra-cheesy beginning part of 'Can I Play With Madness'

Charlotte the Harlot is such a fun song and I agree about Prodigal Son being underrated... it's quite unconvential by Maiden standards.

Quite possibly my fave Di'Anno era track. It's almost funky! The guitar solo is stellar too!

I seem to remember Dianno saying it was his favourite track too.

I think I'll do Sabbath next.

Hell yeah. I look forward to that for sure. I have a feeling that a few tracks are not your bag but despite the vocalist, it is still a phenomenal track but I will wait to see the set list first before I say what that track is.

Fuck aye!

I bet if i tried to do a Sabbath one i couldn't. I would need the set to be about 7 hours long.

Well this one is going to be 70-75

I may do another one later with Ozzy, Dio & Gillan all doing separate sets.

Time for the second instalment of this.



1975 Obviously, getting the best of the first 6 Sabbath albums before the decline.

Supertzar seems to have been written as an gig intro so it seems a shame not to use it here. I decided to go with Paranoid as the shows opener for several reasons. Firstly nobody would be expecting it and I think when people hear the opening riff to it straight away it'll get a really good crowd reaction , secondly despite many people thinking it's overplayed I still enjoy hearing it. I find it far too short & fast to get sick of. And thirdly, it's Black Sabbath , they SHOULD play Paranoid.

After that I've gone for a rather mellow beginning with A National Acrobat, and underrated little gem from the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album, and keeping with the mellowness Behind The Wall Of Sleep comes next. I decided to go the same way as the debut album & have NIB come straight after that way Geezer Butler can do his little bass solo to link the two songs.

Sabbra Cadabra next to give the show a bit more pace and then straight into the crunching Into The Void. From slow & crunching to even more with Hand Of Doom and just as that song is slowly fading to it's end ... BOOM , straight into the main riff of Hole In the Sky.

Then we get a brief respite with the melodic Spiral Architect before being hit with the crunching Cornucopia. Then a couple of nice mid pace rockers in After Forever & Killing Yourself To Live.

After that The Volume 4 album becomes very promenent with the final two songs of that album, St Vitus Dance ending the group of mid paced songs before Under The Sun pulverises everybody in the building. Then almost right to the beginning of that album for Tomorrow's Dream being a good companion peice for that song.

Meglomania is next up, I really wanted this song to be the final of the gig and the big finale but something about having it there just didn't work so i decided to put Wheels Of Confusion last. I just think the outro of that song with the guitar solo would make a perfect end to a gig.

For the encores they'd obviously be so good they'd play two. Symptom Of The Universe is the obvious song to get this started seeing as though I ousted it out of the way at the beginning of the gig to make way for Paranoid. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is another of my favourite songs and consider this a replacement for Black Sabbath (The song), Iron Man & Children Of The Grave finish off as usual.

So the band come back on for the second encore , they've played Paranoid so what the hell is coming next. Imagine the shock of them suddenly bursting into Blue Suede Shoes. They used to play this quite a lot in their early days in Hamberg and there are a couple of recordings of it and it's a really really good cover and it would be great just to hear them do something a little different that still manages to be a nod to their past.

Just as soon as they've finished the previous song they burst into a blistering version of Supernaut that strips paint off the walls and makes everybody go home feeling as though someone just smacked them across the head with a sledgehammer. There's just something about leaving your favourite song till last and having it still ringing in your ears as Laguna Sunrise gently ushers everybody out of the building.

And that my friends is my perfect Black Sabbath gig.

I was wondering how anyone could possibly not include Supernaut in their Sabbath set...and then i scrolled down.

Good work.

Damn good call on A National Acrobat. One of my faves. No Faries Wear Boots? I would have replaced Killing Yourself To Live with that but love the flow. Lots of Vol4 I see?

So they HAVE to play Paranoid because they're Black Sabbath, but not War Pigs for the same reason? :(

No, they have to play Paranoid because I like it.

War Pigs just sends me to sleep.