Sometime last Fall, it was announced that Iron Maiden's latest world tour would be coming through New Jersey. This was too good an opportunity to pass up, I knew I had to be there.

To further fuel my excitement, I read the set list would focus on the 80's era and the stage show would be patterned after the 85-86 Powerslave tour, which spawned the legendary Live After Death recording. Having never seen Iron Maiden live before, I was excited to no end. So, I logged onto Ticketmaster the moment tickets went on sale and secured myself a pair.

I should admit that I was very late to the music game growing up and even later to the Iron Maiden camp. For some unexplained reason, Iron Maiden was one of those bands that I never listened to. I really don't know why. Then the attitude changed, I picked up a few albums, including Piece of Mind, Powerslave, and Fear of the Dark and my introduction had begun. I still have many albums to get and many songs to hear, but I feel confident in saying that I am an Iron Maiden fan. It's hard to find metal as pure and great as this.

That brings us to the day of the show. Myself and a friend, a newbie to the metal and Iron Maiden world, were off to witness the magic that is an Iron Maiden concert.

We arrived at the IZOD Center with plenty of time to spare. We rolled up to the prepay parking lot, Iron Maiden tunes blasting out the speakers, found a spot one level up and made our way down to where the crowd was beginning to grow. The first order of business was souvenirs. There was a trailer set up selling tour shirts and other assorted items. We joined the mass; it could not really be called a line, and made our way to the front where we purchased the new tour shirt, although the others looked pretty good too. We put our new shirts safely in the car and joined the line to get inside, where we stood for an hour.

Once inside, we found our seats, and scoped out the stage, real nice view of the stage from our upper level seats. We were on the right side of the stage and could clearly see the entire stage, while not being all that far away. With that out of the way, we made certain to satisfy our growing appetite before the excitement began. With that out of the way, we sat there watching the crowd grow.

8:00 arrived and the opening act came to the stage. Led by Lauren Harris, daughter of Iron Maiden's bassist Steve Harris, the band launched into nearly thirty minutes of power-pop tunes that were not bad by any stretch, but are a far cry from the metal goodness that is Maiden. Lauren worked the crowd and showed off the decent voice that she possesses. Like I said, she was good, the band played well, but all it did was make me more anxious for the main event.

At 9:00, the lights went down and were replaced with a blue glow that only illuminated the stage. The two screens hanging on either side of the stage came to life, running footage of the band's gear being loaded on the custom painted jumbo-jet, Bruce prepping for lift off, and other pre-arrival footage. Those images were replaced with footage from WWII, accompanied by Winston Churchill's war speech, leading directly into the arrival of the band and the launch of "Aces High."

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