Return to Sender: Getting Acquainted with Eddie

Dear Iron Maiden:

I'll admit that when I first arrived at your show in Camden last week, I had no idea why I was there. (Other than the fact that Ross had an extra ticket and I was being a dutiful girlfriend.) I was wearing black, yes, but that was a coincidence. I don't own any shirts with your logo on them. I know three of your songs. I think I may have been sporting Aerosoles moccasins. I did not belong.

And when the audience, including my darling boyfriend, became positively frantic because your backgrounds had changed, I was downright confused.

But when I settled in and began to see you for what you really were—a hybrid of participatory musical theatre and pseudo-satanic* revival, complete with set and costume changes—I found that, my god, I was actually enjoying myself!

Now, mind you, I wasn't enjoying myself the way your most avid fans were. I wasn't singing along with Bruce. I actually couldn't understand most of what Bruce was saying. I didn't scream a single time that he said "Scream for me, Philadelphia!" (was he even aware that he was in New Jersey?). But I laughed my ass off. I laughed at your large and probably very expensive backdrop hangings. I laughed at costumes. I laughed when Bruce couldn't find a place to plant the Union Jack he'd been manically waving around during "The Trooper." I laughed at the goat-like robotic devil that came onstage for "The Number of the Beast." I laughed at the twelve-foot-tall mummy that shot fireworks out of its eyes and the giant Eddie robot that "battled" your guitarists. I even laughed during the quiet part of your oh-so-faithful adaptation of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" when the lights dropped down from the fly space and began to sway as if to simulate the ship rolling along on the waves.

This was like watching This is Spinal Tap, but even better because the drummer didn't spontaneously combust. (I kept whispering to Ross about Druids and Stonehenge between songs. It would have seemed... appropriate... if suddenly dancing midgets had appeared onstage.) It was cheesy and wonderful and I left with tears in my eyes. Not because the show moved me—just because there comes a point when you've laughed so much, the tears just come.

I don't think I'll ever need to see you again, Iron Maiden. But damn if I'm not glad I got the opportunity once.

*You'll note that I said "pseudo." I am well aware that there is nothing at all satanic about Iron Maiden. Are you, Tipper Gore?

Photo of Bruce Dickinson's manic flag waving during Iron Maiden's A Matter of Life and Death tour by Flickr user Frenkieb.