About to go to a concert and we were talking about best encores. I remember this one from last year that was incredible, Atlantic City by The Boss with Marcus Mumford on drums and singing. They had two opeing bands who all came out on stage and jammed as well. When I was there, the place was small, intimate but everyone was going insane. It was cold outside by the river. Inly downside was finding my way out of Camden! Great jam after the song proper too.
Feel free to post what you think are the best encores, doesn’t matter if you were there or not. Just want to hear some more encores while I’m drudging through the Ks and Qs!
Sweet idea. Brings back some incredible memories. If you’ve been outside the USA for more than the token 2 week vacation you’ll know that no genre of music resonated with youth world over quite like rock and metal. You can find people in favelas of Brazil and Soweto in South Africa who listen to gangsta rap or whatever but the sheer reach of those 2 genres across people of all socio economic strata was unparalleled.
In 2007 Iron Maiden announced that they would tour India for the first time in history for their ‘A Matter of Life and Death Tour’. People checked all the concerts they had been to before and we knew the set list by heart. We knew they would play 12 songs and come back out for 3 songs during the encore ending with ‘Hallowed be thy name’.
So they came, the crowd went wild and when the encore was over you could tell Bruce Dickinson had been blown away. He waved, smiled and said he’d be back. The cops switched on the lights and opened the exit gates. It was over. Me and my friends were young, we were still in high school and we knew there would be many more so we were content to leave but there were older people in the crowd. People in their late 20’s and early 30’s who had waited for close to a decade for this. They refused to leave like this.
The chant went up MAIDEN! MAIDEN! interchangeable with EDDIE! EDDIE and went on for 15 minutes. The cops were getting aggressive and people were refusing to leave. I don’t know how they pulled it of but finally Bruce Dickinson and the band came out, crowd went silent. He walked over to the edge of the elevated stage so that he was almost on top of the crowd and uttered those epic lines from the song ‘wicker man’ _ “You’re time will come”. _
The original context of the song was different but for the 40,000 South Asians caked with mud and sweat packed into a deserted field in the outskirts of a burgeoning megalopolis there was no doubting what he meant and the crowd went absolutely apeshit crazy. The crowd absolutely drowned out Bruce and made the lyrics our own, _ ‘‘Our time will come’’ _. Goosebumps.
Many more came after, Maiden again and again, Metallica, Megadeth etc etc but Maiden were the first and the vibe that night was something else.
Whisper it quietly, even the gods of metal know it. Asia’s time is coming.