I have no argument with you on this. If AtG is, then more power to them and it should be in the set, no question. The AtG line was a throwaway; the real point was, based on too many comments to reference, Maiden is about crowd involvement, and this notion that TNOTB is going to be retired because it's "overplayed" is likely not going to happen for any sustained amount of time.
Some further thoughts on Stadler's point (warning, this is a very Stadler-425-esque post, so feel free to skip):
It's clear that, at least in the U.S., a substantial number of people at a Maiden concert either don't know or don't care much about 90% of their catalog. These attendees want to hear the big songs: Run to the Hills, The Number of the Beast, The Trooper, Aces High, 2 Minutes to Midnight, Fear of the Dark. They're probably a numerical majority, or at least a substantial enough minority to have a noticeable effect on crowd reaction to each song.
There's also quite likely a substantial number of people who know and like the deeper cuts from the catalog (at least from the 80s), but are just as happy to hear the big hits as they are to hear these. They're just as happy with The Trooper as they are with Caught Somewhere in Time.
Then there are those of us who would really prefer to hear deep cuts over hits—either because we've seen the band enough to be tired of the hits, or because we just prefer the deep cuts (having seen Maiden only twice, but having the preferences that most of you know I have, I put myself in this second category).
I think by all evidence the third category is a substantial minority of concertgoers. It's probably the smallest of the three categories.
So there's a question:
Should the third category matter more when it comes to designing a setlist? If so, why?A couple of plausible reasons why the answer might be yes: (1) People in that category tend to spend more money on the band than others. They're the people who will see every tour, buy every album and Blu-Ray, collect merchandise. The happier you keep them, the more money they're likely to spend. (2) The preferences of people in that category might align most with the preferences of the band. There's a good chance that they are getting tired of Number of the Beast, and would find it more fun to play Stranger in a Strange Land for a change. The presence of those fans rewards the band for their less-acknowledged work that they might feel gets too little attention.
A couple of plausible reasons why the answer might be no: (1) Even if each person in the third category spends more money than the people in the first two categories, the people in the first two categories in aggregate likely spend more than the third does in aggregate. Iron Maiden plays stadiums because of the first two categories. (2) If you play hits, everyone in the venue can follow along. If you play deep cuts, you lose the interest of a substantial portion of the audience, which depresses the live experience. (3) Every Iron Maiden concert is someone's first concert, and something like The Trooper is an experience they will want to have.
I'd say this dynamic is common to all artists that reach a certain scale of popularity. (I don't know exactly where that is, but Dream Theater clearly does not feel the need to play Pull Me Under or Panic Attack every time, so it's probably somewhere between them and Iron Maiden.) And a great many of them take the route of saying: No, while we appreciate the third category, we know who the majority is, and we're going to stick with the hits that get that audience going. And while that's disappointing to me, I understand why they make that choice.
That's why even though Iron Maiden will never make the setlist I would make (unless against all odds Bruce's "small tour playing all of
Senjutsu" idea came to pass), I'm happy with what they've been doing for the last decade or so, and especially the last few tours. They're doing a lot more for us third-category fans than they need to or arguably even should if their goal was to make the greatest portion of the audience as happy as possible. They're not treating us like we're the only ones that matter, but they probably shouldn't do that, and I'd argue they are treating us like we matter more than the first category fans, even though we're probably smaller in number. They could probably make more fans happier with the setlist if they pulled Alexander the Great for Number of the Beast and Run to the Hills, but they are choosing the happiness of the smaller number of fans who really care about Alexander the Great (plus probably their own interest in bringing out this song that they have never played before). I think that's a cool thing to do.
It is interesting though how much they've changed up their end-of-show. In the reunion era, haven't they almost always done Iron Maiden and a combo of at least two of: NOTB, RTTH, Hallowed, Running Free, and Sanctuary to end their shows?
This is a striking feature of the last few tours, but it's not totally unprecedented. On Ed Huntour, BNW Tour, Early Days Tour, AMOLAD Tour, SBiT Tour, TFF Tour and ME2012 Tour, the encores have been all 80s material, largely stuff from NotB and earlier—although there's been some interesting variation in there, such as Moonchild on SBiT.
DoD Tour stands out as an anomaly, with the encore beginning with Journeyman (a very cool choice IMO).
And then on TBoS tour you get Blood Brothers in the encore—unexpected but cool. For LotB '19, it was back to an expected encore: TETMD, HBTN, RttH. But in 2022, suddenly Clansman is in the encore? And now, of course, HoE.
Topic: The Iron Maiden Thread v. The Merge of Souls (Read 573406 times)
