Archetype wrote:"It's really important if you're going to remain a valid band that you play your new stuff. Otherwise you become a parody of what you started out doing. But it's impossible. Back in the early 80s you could probably do it, but now with YouTube and downloading, the songs would all be out before the album was out. We did Somewhere Back in Time and that dealt with the 80s, and the time before that we did A Matter of Life and Death, just the one album. You can't go out and play the greatest hits every time – it's important to play the newer songs because we really believe in them." - Janick Gers of Iron Maiden
Full articleI watched Iron Maiden play to an extremely enthusiastic crowd of 20,000 people last night at the First Niagara Pavilion. Their set list consisted of sixteen songs; ten new songs and six greatest hit/classic songs. The issue isn't necessarily that the fans want to hear old music; they simply want to hear good music. Enough of the Damn Yankees B-side kind of songs like "Difference In The World" Write some good hard rock/progressive songs as a full band. "One With Everything" was a step in the right direction. What happened to that writing mode?
While this is good in theory for Styx, it unfortunately does not apply. Iron Maiden is a metal band and they have never had a hit. There following is die hard and built on people buying their records and listening to them non-stop. It is really just a different world. Once you cross into the mainstream with Hot 100 hits you draw from the casual fan who only know the hits and only want to hear the hits and there are almost no exceptions to this.
To this day, outside of Headbanger’s Ball there is no place to listen to metal. Prog Rock is the same way, but the luxury is that they can play whatever they want and the fans will dig it. There are bands out there that tour successfully, some on a small scale, some on a larger scale that play different sets every night.
Over the course of a year Styx will play to a far larger audience than Maiden, but it require them to play the hits and be on the road 10 of 12 months.
To me I would prefer them to play random sets with the key hits songs every night and they need to play longer sets when they are by themselves. 90 minutes just doesn’t cut it. An evening with Styx should mean a 2-hour set. This would give them more time to delve deeper into their catalog.
Additionally, the newer tracks are similar to Shaw/Blades, not Damn Yankees. Damn Yankees were a rock band. Although I would prefer Styx not play High Enough at all, it was much better with Glen singing the second part. This is not a slam on Gowan, but his voice does not fit the song. Neither would Dennis’.
