Description
This album says it was recorded in Tampa 1988 but thats wrong as we find a show from the Hammersmith Odeon on the 7th of December 1988. This was the second of three gigs the band did their during their Seventh Tour Of A Seventh Tour Uk leg. The Uk tour at the end of the year was a massive success after their famous appearance at Monsters Of Rock at Castle Donington a few months earlier. Half of the tracks on this album is from their wildly successful Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album. Its awesome to get a chance to hear live renditions of “Moonchild”, “Infinite Dreams”, “The Evil that Men Do” and “Can I Play With Madness”. There are also two tracks from the Somewhere In Time album, which is great but would be even better had they chosen some other song from that amazing album instead of the oft-heard “Heaven Can Wait”. (“The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” or “Alexander the Great” immediately come to mind.) Even so, “Heaven Can Wait” is a very good song in its own right and “Wasted Years” is one of those you can never quite get enough of. Other particular highlights include rare live versions of “Still Life” and “Killers”. A live recording of this classic Maiden track with Bruce Dickinson handling the vocals, and even though the Paul Di’Anno fan club might want to kill me for writing this, I’d have to say he does a very good job with it. He’s not trying to reinvent it in any way, delivering it with the kind of bilious aggression that used to be his predecessor’s calling card. In conclusion, while you can always question the need for yet another Maiden live album, it’s hard to find fault with such an album when the finished product is of such undeniable quality. The band is on fire, the track list on this album is outstanding and the recording quality is easily good enough considering those shows were performed roughly thirty years ago.
Track list:
1. Moonchild
2. The Evil That Men Do
3. The Prisoner
4. Still Life
5. Die With Your Boots On
6. Can I Play With Madness
7. Heaven Can Wait
8. Infinite Dreams
9. Killers
10. Wasted Years