Metalblog

What do the Metalblog readers think of new T-shirts from heavy metal bands that are printed to look like they are vintage T-shirts?

I’m sure you’ve seen the type with album covers and tour dates from 20-odd years ago.

Personally, I usually stay away from these types of T-shirts. But this weekend I did buy a hooded sweatshirt (henceforth referred to as a “hoodie”) with a vintage design and tour dates from twenty-three years ago on a continent I don’t even live on.

The hoodie in question was an Iron Maiden “World Piece Tour ‘83″ like the one shown in the picture on the left.

Although the hoodie is being sold in the UK, it has Iron Maiden’s North American tour dates from 1983 on the back.

Like I said, this is the kind of thing I would usually avoid. The difference here is I was living in North America in 1983 and saw Iron Maiden in Poughkeepsie, NY on the World Piece Tour with Fastway and Coney Hatch opening. Poughkeepsie is listed on the back towards the bottom of the middle column of cities played.

I originally saw this hoodie a couple of months ago, but only bought it this weekend whenI saw it in Zavvi, who currently have 50% off all clothing plus 25% off all CDs and 50% off books. Yeah bargains!

I’m flying back to America today for a few days and should be back in the UK on Tuesday. The Metalblog will hopefully get back to normal next Wednesday.

While I’m away, I’m running a competition over on the Rockblog for all of the Entrecard droppers that stop by my blogs. There will be a post on this blog tomorrow letting you know where I went so you can get your entries in.

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Since this is a blog about heavy metal, I better give you some metal. The first metal that comes to mind when flying is Iron Maiden.

As we’ve mentioned before, Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson is a working commercial airline pilot. Unfortunately, Bruce doesn’t work for British Airways so there’s no chance he’ll be flying my plane today.

Here’s Iron Maiden’s video for “Flight of Icarus”. Let’s hope my pilot doesn’t do like Icarus and keep flying towards the sun until the plane’s wings melt.

The Metalblog would like to wish all of our American readers a happy Thanksgiving.

Every American knows the story of the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims had a good harvest and invited the Indians over and they all ate turkey and watched the Detroit Lions lose the early game on TV followed by the Dallas Cowboys, who the Indians of course hated due to the whole Cowboys and Indians rivalry.

The problem for the Metalblog is that eating turkey and watching football doesn’t make for good heavy metal songs. But we were able to find a live video for Iron Maiden’s “The Pilgrim” and the video for Anthrax’s “Indians”. So if you can imagine Iron Maiden and Anthrax getting together on the fourth Thursday in November, playing these songs, eating turkey, and watching football, you get a pretty good idea of what the first Thanksgiving was like.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody from the Metalblog!

Iron Maiden announced the fourth and final leg of their Somewhere Back in Time Tour.

As with the other legs of the tour, the band, crew, and 12 tons of stage set and equipment will be flown around the world in the band’s customised 757 “Ed Force One”. Emblazoned with the band’s mascot “Eddie”, the jumbo jet is flown by Iron Maiden vocalist and Astraeus Airlines Captain Bruce Dickinson.

The tour dates announced by ironmaiden.com are as follows:

February 2009:-
Fri 13th - UAE - Dubai Media City Amphitheatre
Sun 15th - India - Bangalore Royal Challenge Rock In India
Fri 20th - New Zealand - Auckland.  Mount Smart Stadium
Sat 21st - New Zealand - Christchurch. AMI Stadium
Wed 25th - Mexico - Monterrey Estadio Technologico.
Thurs 26th - Mexico - Guadalajara Arena VFG Jalisco.
Sat 28th - Mexico - Mexico City Fero Sol Stadium Complex

1st - 29th March 2009 - South and Central America.
Details to be advised soon.

 The Somewhere Back In Time tour revisits the band’s history by focusing almost entirely on the 80’s in both choice of songs played and the stage set, which is based around the legendary Egyptian Production of the 1984-85 ‘Powerslave Tour’ which was featured on the recent DVD “Live after Death”.

If you are lucky enough to live near any of these cities make sure you get a ticket. Maiden are not to be missed.

Up the Irons!