Gun Tavern

GUN TAVERN

SAT, DEC 08, 2007

These blogs are for reviews of proper bands that people have heard of.
They are not for the likes of Cassettes, Ten Foot Nun, or jizz MALFUNCTION, and they are not for tribute bands,
not for Plastic Letters, not for Dinosaur Jr. Jr., not even for Abba-toir! Proper bands only please.

But rules are there to be broken.
Last night I was supposed to be traipsing all the way to Kingston to see Anchorhead
(death metal band that play the music from the Star Wars movies), but the people I was supposed to be going
with ended up not going, and a chance encounter with Vicky Gash resulted in my learning about an Iron Maiden tribute
band playing at The Gun Tavern.
"Hi on Maiden?" enquired I. No, this was Ironon Maiden, and Ms. Gash had seen them before, when funnily enough they
played at a gig Hi On Maiden had pulled out of. She told of how they had performed Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
and possibly Infinite Dreams (my two faves). I was so there.

It were a strange do, it was actually a wedding function, complete with buffet and folk of all ages, though it was
still a gig open to all for the price of a fiver. I weren't expecting much, but as the band launched into opening
track Aces High, I had to rush to the front of the pub to make sure it wasn't the real thing.
It certainly looked like Bruce Dickinson (though freakishly, a lot shorter),
and he sounded pretty much exactly like him.
The rest of the band didn't look anything like Adrian, Nicko, Dave and Steve, though all had that awkward
ugliness required of the concentration needed for such wonderful solos.
The attention to detail was spot on; Harris's imposter had a West Ham scarf wrapped about his bass strap, some overly
patriotic fool threw a union jack flag over a speaker, and the counterfeit Bruce announced each song exactly as Bruce
would have done, as well as mirroring his movements. It was quite a spectacle!
They were sticking mainly to the early stuff, but were poking at the seventh and eighth albums
(Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is my fave, BECAUSE of the synthesizers) and I was getting impatient for my Infinite Dreams.
After they had played a marvelous The Clairvoyant, I finally called out "Infinite Dreams"."What?" replied the singer.

"You can't deny them!" I answered quick as a flash. And oh how we all laughed.
But the set list had been written by the happy couple, and neither Infinite or Mariner were on there.
But as they launched into Phantom of the Opera,
it didn't really seem to matter.

Marky Malfunction is bang on the money when he says that The Gun Tavern is the new Cartoon. Anyway, congratulations
to Dawn and Jeff (Geoff?), and here's that set list in full, with thanks to Ten Foot Jon for filling in the blanks.