The PAP DX Blog: Rockwave Festival 2018 - Day 3

Day 3 of Rockwave Festival 2018 came on the next day after Day 2 (and 14 days after Day 1 by the way). The problem was that it was also two days after my return from Rome where I had seen Little Steven And The Disciples Of Soul and Roger Waters. Would I be able to get through another festival, once again at Terra Vibe? It seemed that I could.

This time I wasn't planning on seeing any of the other bands so I left for Terra Vibe at a reasonable hour (not too late though since a lot more people were expected to see Iron Maiden than Judas Priest. (Indeed by the end of the night it was filled to capacity.) I arrived there on time and I went to my usual spot (the same one as the day before, which I know that it has good visibility since it has been used as a VIP area on other concerts) and lied down to relax with a beer.

When I was in my teen years, Iron Maiden, were, for me the third part of the Heavy Metal Trinity (the other two were AC/DC and Motorhead). I guess it's a matter of personal taste. I remember that back in 1983 I had bought "Flick Of The Switch", "Another Perfect Day" and "Piece Of Mind" on the same day. I had seen AC/DC twice, in 1988 in Lausanne and in 2009 in Athens. Iron Maiden I had also seen in Athens, again in 1988 in what is now considered a legendary concert. It was only Motorhead that I hadn't managed to see until 2014 in Milano, a bit more than a year before Lemmy left us. But I really wanted to see Maiden again, almost 30 years after my first time. In fact it was going to be 29 years, 10 months and 1 week, my biggest gap between seeing two concerts from the same band).

Back to the present and Terra Vibe, while comfortably relaxing at my spot, I also managed to see two other bands. Tremonti were first.

Then it was time for Volbeat, who I must admit that I liked quite a lot in fact. By that time I had already met again some of my friends that were with me on the previous day and quite a few more.

Then, a couple of hours (and almost 30 years later), Iron Maiden were on stage! Much more material to draw from plus a great stage show, with Eddie making several appearances.

I have to state that although Iron Maiden have a long history, their ideal singer, in my opinion is (and always was) Bruce Dickinson. Respect to Paul Di' Anno, they produced quite a few great tracks in his time but the best ones were from the Dickinson era. Not much to remember from Blaze Bailey. As far as a connection with the previous concert goes, it was great to hear "The Evil That Men Do" once again. Back then it was one of the new songs, now it was one of the golden oldies from one of their greatest albums "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son". And from the songs that were not yet written in 1988, the best one has to be "Fear Of The Dark" a track that always sounds better live. In fact, I remember buying the live version on CD single back in the 90's.

The night came to an end with Bruce Dickinson singing, acapella, a verse from "Alexander The Great", a song the crowd wanted to hear, but the band had not planned it in their setlist. And so, with Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" playing over the speakers the last of my summer concerts came to an end.

Thankfully, it looks like that was the end of Terra Vibe. The company that organizes Rockwave Festival has decided "to rest" and the new company that was formed by several of its former members has announced its first concert in the center of Athens. If this is indeed true, this is great news for Athens concert goers, since there has never been a more inconvenient place for concerts than Terra Vibe which is also a huge safety hazard. We will hopefully now spend our summers enjoying concerts instead of wasting time going to and coming back from Terra Vibe.
I now had 10 more days in July and the whole of August to rest. My next gig would be in September!