Iron Maiden Day – April 21, 2009

Last night I had the pleasure to participate in Iron Maiden Day and see the new behind the scenes Documentary Feature called “IRON MAIDEN: Flight 666”. The film supposedly aired on 450 screens in 42 countries all in the same day.

Flight 666 is a behind the scenes look at Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere Back In Time World Tour”, the largest tour in their nearly 30 year career. It covers an ambitious 23 concerts on five continents in 45 days. The band, crew and 12 tons of equipment traveled from show to show on a custom made Boeing 757 rightfully named “Ed Force One”. The flights were piloted by Iron Maiden’s vocalist Bruce Dickinson, a fully qualified and active Airline Captain.

After watching the film in a smelly & hot, sold out theater (Cineplex needs better theaters), I couldn’t get the Iron Maiden songs out of my head all night. The concert footage is visually great and the entire film sounded good. It was incredible to see the bands experiences as they traveled around the world and played in such a wide variety of countries. It made me realize that I am lucky to be a Canadian and have easy access to bands. I’ve seen Iron Maiden in concert at least three times in the last 6 years. Cities like Sydney had to wait 15 years for Maiden’s return. The big eye opener was their experience at Costa Rica, where the band was previously not allowed in the country for religious reasons and most of their fans were seeing the band and a Heavy Metal concert for the first time.

I don’t want to give too much away but overall I feel like it opened my eyes to the concert culture world wide & to how Maiden operates behind the scenes. Their music reminded how Maiden has been and continues to be such an influential metal band.

I recommend you see this movie when it’s released on DVD or Blu-Ray in June, 2009.

Here are some photos that my guy sent to me in the email notice for the movie viewing: