"Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son"

Iron Maiden releases "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son," on this day, April 11, 1988. Iron Maiden releases three singles from the album, "Can I Play With Madness," "The Evil That Men Do," and "The Clairvoyant (Live)". This would be Maiden's seventh album, appropriately enough, and can be considered a concept album, largely inspired by Orson Scott Card's 1987 best selling fantasy novel "Seventh Son."

Heavy Metal Thursday sold his Hutch Pro Raider and went to this concert in Fort Worth, Texas on July 29, 1988. Ace Frehley's Comet opened. I had already seen Iron Maiden once before, during the "Somewhere In Time," tour, and I was determined to see them again. There were four of us. None of us had tickets to the show.

We made the hour plus drive down to Tarrant County Convention Center, hoping to have enough cash between us for tickets from a scalper. We park. There's no scalper in sight. Waves of Metal heads are streaming towards the building so we wade in and float along. We approach the building and I notice the ticket office is open, can see the ladies inside. No line. Feeling like a fool, I walk over and ask, "Are there any tickets left?" The lady behind the thick glass doesn't skip a beat, spins around a map of the arena for me to see and puts her fingernail along the image of the stage and says, "We've got seats all right in here." I'm stunned. "Right here, on the front row?" She nods, "How many?" Holy shit this isn't a joke. We score four front row tickets, the day of the show, from the box office. Our seats are directly in front of Adrian Smith. This was probably one of the loudest concerts of my entire life. Wall of amplifiers.

My chest is vibrating as soon as Ace Frehley hits the stage and by the time Iron Maiden begins their show I'm pretty sure I was levitating off the floor like one of those football pieces from an electric football game. 

"Can I Play With Madness" poster

I had this shirt. Mine is long gone, now. Wore it for years after the show and I think it got lost somewhere along the way while I was in the Marine Corps.

So amazing. Killer stage show, as always, with the icebergs and smoke from dry ice creeping across the stage. Eddie with the moving fetus. Iron Maiden never puts on a bad show and will always sound just like the record. 

"The Evil That Men Do"

Up the Irons.