Behold the Maiden

Sometimes it's good to admit you were wrong.....

Bit of back story: A few years ago I made one of the best decisions of my life when I eschewed my morning fix of the Today program in favour of Alice Cooper and Planet Rock. (A decision which both made life more fun but also, paradoxically, improved my awareness of current affairs as I stopped drowning in day to day drivia and was able to get a better appreciation of the big picture..anyway I digress). (PS. (Digressing again) Just mistyped trivia, actually think resultant "drivia isn't a bad word...)

I now have Planet Rock on in the background most of the time. As with all background, something sometimes grabs your attention and comes to centre stage. This happened with a song called (bizarrely) "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg". Surprised when I heard it was by Iron Maiden as thought I didn't like them. Then I heard another song "For the Greater Good of God". It was knockout and again by Iron Maiden...

A quick search showed both songs came from the "A Matter of Life and Death Album" so I decided to have a punt and bought it. Turned out most every song on the album was a winner and its quickly gained a place in my "top 5 cds of 200x" (Along with, Crave, Generation Sap, The Black Parade and The Rising).

So right now I am slowly but surely working my way through the IM back catalogue and very much regretting what I missed.

Goes to show predjudice can be a bad thing. I am old enough to be close in at the birth of metal, not only in time but place in my teenage years was a fan of bands like Deep Purple (first live concert) and Black Sabbath (our "local band", the one time those of us in Coventry acknowledged the existance of nearby Brum).

When "new" bands came along (like Judas Priest) I gave them a listen but never thought they were as good as the "originals". And some bands I never even gave a chance, Iron Maiden falling into this category. Since then I had to re-adjust at least a part of these views as I found out more about the sometime lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson (singer, airline pilot, fencer, DJ, screen writer and another example of cool people called Bruce). But now I have to admit I was entirely wrong. Iron Maiden are a truly great band and it's with much regret I missed 30 years opportunity to listen to & see them. Still good news, they are still going strong so may see them before too long...



(But I thought this was meant to be a cycling blog? Well yes and this post is not entirely unrelated. Apart from being great music to listen to at any time, Iron Maiden are really good for intense indoor work, especially above threshold..)