Hanging Out with Paul Di’Anno & Lady’s First, for Everyone Who Couldn’t Scrape Together the Cash for an Iron Maiden Ticket

Location: Baredi (Izola) / Slovenia
Concert date: 03.08.2007
Attendance: 2000
Ticket price: 5.00€

It’s 7 PM. I’m at the venue on day two of the seventh anniversary MK Red Eye Biker’s festival, out in the rolling hills of Refošk country, or more precisely the hamlet of Baredi above Izola. The view looks a lot more promising than my memories of the previous black day for rock and roll. The iron horses have turned up in force, and I immediately feasted my eyes on some outstanding one-offs, shamelessly showing off their notorious looks.

Excellent. The guys from Lady’s First are already in full swing! Yoldi and Buco, who the whole musical spectacle depends on, are scurrying back and forth while I sink into a chat with singer Domen – Guzy and drummer Simon – Čare. The minutes fly by, and I decide on a short lap around the place for some careful eyeball “scanning”, especially of the bar.

BLEEDING FIST:
While I’m admiring the sunset, a hail of rattling bursts hits behind my back like lightning out of a clear sky. I turn around and there are just three guys on stage. They caught me off guard. For someone raised on the old-school melodic side of classic rock, myself included, what was thrashing away could probably be filed something like this: riffs sharp as the blade of doomsday and twisted by half-steps, very few notes, alternating poisonously fast single-string picking, salvos of palm-muted riffing and screeching, aggressive vocals. Not death, not core, not black vocals. Picture Slayer, Sepultura… somewhere around there. Madness! I hadn’t even finished recovering from how Fosgen knocked my socks off, and here’s another thrash band. But a completely different animal. If the great Negligence from Jesenice are retro Bay Area and the Karst locals Fosgen are retro Metallica, Bleeding Fist are aimed much more squarely at the nineties. Minimalist melodies! Seasoned with salvos and avalanches of massive half-step riffing, practically no solos, everything subordinated to the manifestation of a primordial earthly eruption from which pours the rage of the darkest mind, born on the doomsday of the incarnation of humanity’s burned-out age. Suffering, unbearable pain, inescapable doom and deluge! Bleeding Fist bled for the first time in my ears! I was fascinated by the determination and self-confidence of the guitarist/vocalist. The guy thought of absolutely everything! On stage he came across like a raging soldier. Down to the look, too, which is something Slovenian bands badly lack. Clothes make the man, and this guy totally gets it! Bleeding Fist played their own material in full. They jumped onto the stage at the last minute, recommended by Lady’s First – an excellent gesture, showing that Slovenian bands can actually help each other out, which boosts the chances of metal reaching the Slovenian masses more effectively and finally getting out of its rigid rut.

The commitment to playing their own material showed that Bleeding Fist didn’t come to pay tribute to the general rock’n’roll atmosphere that biker’s festivals usually soak up, and so they didn’t slip a single “party cover” into their set. Five people were watching them, six counting me. And those five looked like relatives who’d come to cheer on their brave boys. Simply put, I felt pride and respect for the music these guys played so hungrily, with huge momentum, woven through with honest heart and balls that will only keep growing with this kind of approach! Bleeding Fist – an outstanding thrash addition not only for the coastal part of our little chicken-shaped country, but for the whole Slovenian metal movement! The thrash storm died down after half an hour, but the mark it left on my receivers I could no longer erase.

LOST 4 FOUND:
The Italians took the stage at 9:30 PM. The quintet served up a mix of modern groove approaches leaning on the preservation of the grunge legacy. There was a lot of vocals ground through effects and guitar down-tuning, which let the band fill out the sound and build a smeared groove (in pursuit of what’s trendy). The guys played their own material, seasoned with two Metallica covers. Master Of Puppets came early on, and they closed the set with One. They didn’t change their sound, and instead burned both classics through the sound of their own ID card. Vocals dull and muffled, oriented toward the lower, male registers, lyrics entirely in English. They haven’t released a debut yet, but you can let their material surprise you on their website, in the mp3 section. I reckon they can’t climb any further than Italy. They offer something that’s been invented and outlived, and of course they try to wrap it in the decorative cellophane of special effects (computer samples) and the already mentioned merging of “day and night”, or in plain talk, a croaky, deliberately out-of-tune tuning.

The crowd kept showing extraordinary disinterest in what the band was doing on stage, but Lost 4 Found surprised them when they decided to play One (Metallica). Suddenly they drew out cries of delight and pulled a few longhairs up to the stage, who didn’t hesitate to go dizzy on the mic-stand air guitar. A set that quickly sank into oblivion.

LADY’S FIRST:
The tough guys from Bled are in their ninth year, and last year they released a really interesting debut, “911” (2006), which showed that the rejuvenated band had found the right working chemistry, with palpable enthusiasm and harmony between the creative drive of the individual members, and they’re already busily working on a new album. In this time the songs from “911” have caught on effectively and become real mini anthems among the band’s fans.

I caught Lady’s First in Postojna on 28.07.2007, slept in the car, and our metal expert Rok took care of them there, but this time? A completely different scene. A big stage, plenty of room to maneuver! The band without whom there would have been nothing at the festival, since it contributed most of the gear that made the concert part of the festival possible at all, deservedly hung up a huge banner with their full-erection logo, which sat behind the performers throughout Saturday. They also offered the best sound and lighting of the four acts. And they earned it by grafting. At the very least. That Lady’s First are no longer unknowns was confirmed by the crowd that came roaring up to the stage to cheer them on. It was one of those moments you’d wish for more of at festivals like this. The moment when people finally gathered in front of the stage in proper numbers and the bar on the other side of the venue lost its primacy. The guys fired people up from the first ball with an accelerated opening igniter, High Machine. With a well-thought-out dose of punch and melody (harmony thirds). The following Criminal only built on that togetherness on stage in the atmosphere they’d captured. Lady’s First of course sounded great on the big stage, and they raged with incredible pleasure. Their approach and stage act were excellent, energetic, committed, and had just the right amount of humor. I saw them at KUD in October last year, and this time the picture was completely different. Shows how important the stage and the crowd are. The guys grew into confidence! Add excellent sound and excellent tightness to this spontaneous playing, and the crowd’s right response is immediate. The energy came back and this fluctuation in both directions simply worked. The guys kept pushing the high concert vibe they’d established early on even higher and “ate” the crowd up with a cover of The Trooper (Iron Maiden), with beautifully sounding harmony thirds from Yoldi and Buco. Guzy felt great and held the vocals at the optimum the whole way through, which mostly satisfied the challenges of the chosen repertoire. The only thing I’d wish for the kid is to learn the lyrics of The Trooper and Fear Of The Dark as soon as possible, because fiddling with notes on scraps of paper that flutter around the stage in concert euphoria kills contact with the audience and the flow of energy. Then again, even bigger names screw this up. Anyone who remembers Rob Halford will get it right away, and Phil Mogg (UFO) isn’t entirely innocent either, carrying a “private songbook” onto the stage. Among the original material, the performance of the song LF stood out venomously, born for the stage – the chorus was killer!

Anyway, as I said. The five of them worked together extraordinarily well, energetically and convincingly, and compared to Bleeding Fist and Lost 4 Found, they were the first band that’s genre-wise totally at home at any Biker’s festival, and on that front too they drew more people to the stage than they otherwise would have. Yoldi handled most of the solos, which was especially fun to watch during Fear Of The Dark, which has two completely different solos. The guy had to play both. The first he rode very close to Gers’s original (stomping on the wah-wah), and then very successfully transformed into Murray (especially the first part of the solo and the effect sound, which he nailed close to the original), and in the second part of that solo he added some of his own ideas too. Fear Of The Dark, in a top-notch instrumental performance, confirmed the high level of coordination between the band members.

The guys saved the peak for the finish, when they tackled the classic Motori (Divlje Jagode), which Domen really delivered brilliantly on vocals! The crowd was drooling! The guys put the cherry on top when they found a bit more time and rewarded the audience’s excitement with Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns N’ Roses). A mini-concert that succeeded in every respect and quite seriously challenged every peak the venerable Mr. Di’Anno has to offer!

PAUL DI’ANNO & CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED:
Plenty has already been said about Uncle Di’Anno. The Baredi show was his third and last on a week-long Slovenian tour (the concert in Žalec the day before was cancelled, and the unofficial word that they’d sold 16 tickets evidently scared the organizer stiff). Compared to the dismal Postojna vibe in terms of turnout on 28.07.2007, the picture this time was completely different! And Di’Anno again made no secret of feeling great, just like in Postojna. The man has a specific sense of humor, which involves showering people with affectionate quips like “sucker”, “puta madre”, “cojones”, while this time for the Baredi show he struck from the repertoire of his unpredictably juicy vocabulary the latest and freshest invention, “softich”, which he’d learned from his, as he likes to put it, brothers Lady’s First. Children of the Damned, the Italian version of an “Iron Maiden cover band”, were in the middle of Ides Of March, the intro to the Iron Maiden album Killers (1981), when the legendary singer hobbled onto the stage. There was a nice crowd packed in front of the stage, who greeted him loudly. With a shot-up leg he of course can’t bounce in like a spry bunny, so he shows up on stage that much earlier, otherwise he’d have had to start singing Wrathchild while still making his way from backstage, which wouldn’t have looked all that ordinary. A swig of Jack Daniel’s to greet the audience, a smile, and off we go into Wrathchild. Of course success can’t fail to follow if you play Iron Maiden. And add the original stamp of the first two albums. We won’t play purist, but “Iron Maiden” and “Killers” are simply Di’Anno albums. Including the songwriting contributions. They have the most rebelliousness and brazen arrogance. This is where Di’Anno is at home, which is why he bailed from Iron Maiden at the last minute, so they went on to breathe in a rather differently upgraded light without him. Di’Anno, who doesn’t exactly look tame, is nonetheless a really lovable and in every way interesting creature, whose presence you simply can’t get enough of with your eyes. This funny, charismatic joker made sure the front rows never ran out of Jack Daniel’s, which he generously shared with the driest throats below the stage. Here comes the cheeky Prowler and even more noisy revelry in front of the stage. The middle part of the set follows, mixed with original material. An emotional moment came with the announcement of the Maiden classic Remember Tomorrow, played in dedication to former Maiden drummer Clive Burr, who suffers from a severe form of relentlessly advancing multiple sclerosis. People cool off during the sequence of Impaler, Faith Healer, A Song For You, but Paul “Di’Anniels” (the whiskey flowed in streams) quickly realized it and egged the boys on to attack with Killers. The treat of the evening was of course the epic Phanthom Of The Opera, where Chidlren Of The Damned confirmed their great command of the Maiden figures! The most fitting choice for closing out a top show came with the most rock’n’roll song of all songs on the second day of the festival. Running Free. A real, bona fide Di’Anno song. I quietly hoped Di’Anno would surprise everyone with Women In Uniform. With that inclusion he would have definitely won
Di’Anno showed deep affection for punk with a cover of The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop, before which Children Of The Damned incinerated the instrumental Transylvania – the closest approximation to the studio original, probably precisely because of the missing Di’Anno vocals – and with Sanctuary, after visible grumbling from part of the audience over the sympathizing with The Ramones, when a full glass of beer came flying onto the stage, little Paul said goodbye to us in another spirit of reviving the Iron Maiden legacy.

Di’Anno looks very different today, if you compare him to photos of the guy from the early eighties. Today he recalls the final, fattened-up phase of Marlon Brando and would be perfect for the role of Don Corleone in The Godfather. A hedonist! All that was missing was a cigar in his mouth. Despite that, Di’Anno sings better today than ever. He screams like a dog! High? No problem. Growls? No problem. Sinister? No problem again. On top of that, the aforementioned charisma saves him. Homo simpaticus all the way! The harder he tries to look intimidating, the more endearing the effect. A tame little terrier. Anyone who demanded an identical copy of Iron Maiden was out of luck. Di’Anno delivers all the Maiden songs with a breath of punk. Here we also get the answer to how the whole thing would have looked if Di’Anno hadn’t been forced to bow to Harris’s dictatorship. We almost get the answer to how Maiden would have looked if, in 1981, Steve Harris had left them instead of Di’Anno. In short, the pleasure of the raw energy of the albums “Iron Maiden” and “Killers” was created and offered plenty of fun to everyone who hadn’t come to keep a watchful eye on how faithfully the vocals copied the studio original. I didn’t pass out from violent orgasms, far from it, but it was eighty highly entertaining minutes of hanging out with a unique musical essence that may not be all that musically creative, but is effective at delivering pleasure, and it was worth every bit of the trip.

Setlist

BLEEDING FIST:
1. Intro
2. Conquering Apocalypse
3. Death War Carnage
4. Funeral Smell
5. Evil Dead
6. Primordial Need

LOST 4 FOUND:
1. Psycho
2. Sorry
3. Master Of Puppets
4. Dance Like No One See You
5. Zero
6. Figure
7. Fire It Up
8. Six Feet Under
9. Simple Man
10. No One Can See
11. Trust
12. 24 Years Old
13. Hunger
14. One

LADY’S FIRST:
1. Intro
2. High Machine
3. Criminal
4. The Trooper
5. The Game
6. LF
7. Creeping Death
8. One Way
9. Lady
10. Fear Of The Dark
—encore 1—
11. 911
12. Motori
—encore 2—
13. Sweet Child O’Mine

PAUL DI’ANNO & CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED:
1.Ides of March
2.Wrathchild
3.Prowler
4.Marshall Lokjaw
5.Murders in the Rue Morgue
6.The Beast Arises
7.Children of Madness
8.Remember Tomorrow
9.Impaler
10.Faith Healer
11.A Song For You
12.Killers
13.Phantom of the Opera
14.Running Free
—encore—
15.Transylvania
16.Blitzkrieg Bop
17.Sanctuary

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