After BARELY missing their performance in NAMM this past January, I recently attended several of The Iron Maidens’ headlining shows around Southern California to preview their upcoming live national TV concert broadcast on AXS TV’s The World’s Greatest Tribute Band series. 

Not only are they the first all female band to be featured on the show and are recognized worldwide as the world’s only all female tribute to Iron Maiden, they are clearly the best in the business when it comes to rocking the Iron Maiden classics.   Having formed nearly 12 years ago, the band has repeatedly toured the world over, recorded DVDs, CD and has earned the respect and admiration of some of the top names in the business.

The Iron Maidens sat down backstage at The Roxy Theatre to discuss all sorts of Iron Maiden questions, some of their favorite gigs, other heavy metal tributes and World’s Greatest Tribute Bands (they’ve done concerts with WGTB alums The Atomic Punks, Damage Inc., Space Oddity: David Brighton as David Bowie and the upcoming featured act of Led Zepagain, who will close out Season 2 of the highly successful show on Mark Cuban’s network), and gave a preview of their upcoming show that will be shown to millions of viewers across the nation.

 

Lorn from You Tell Concerts interviewing The Iron Maidens outside the Roxy for their upcoming national television appearance/ debut and getting their thoughts about The World’s Greatest Tribute Bands.

 

FREE TICKETS TO THE SHOW (WHILE THEY LAST!)

https://www.facebook.com/events/161892933997532/

For a chance to win prizes via Twitter and to have your tweets show up during the live broadcast during the show, use the hash tag #AXSTRIBUTE

The Iron Maidens can be found on TWITTER and FACEBOOK.

Mondays at 11et/8pt on AXS TV

The concert is broadcast 100% live on AXS TV from The Roxy Theatre

The Iron Maidens Episode will air Sept 9 ( Depeche Mode tribute will air Monday Sept 16…Led Zeppelin tribute will air Monday Sept 23)

The show is produced and hosted by Katie Daryl

To be part of the LIVE TV audience for FREE, get tickets here:

https://greatesttributebands.eventbrite.com

AXS TV can be seen nationwide on:

DirecTV ch 340

Dish ch 167

AT&T UVerse ch 1106

More details on AXS TV and The World’s Greatest Tribute Bands

Blaze of Glory is the seventh band of Season 2 to perform their live set from the Roxy.  

The band hails from Dallas, Texas and is recognized as the top Bon Jovi tribute band.  

Following the introduction by Katie Daryl (who just presented a tribute band award in Las Vegas at the Vegas Rocks Magazine award show the night before), the band put crowd in a great mood as they played Bon Jovi songs from various albums throughout the expansive Bon Jovi catalog. 

They started with “You Give Love A Bad Name” off the Slippery When Wet” album.   That was the album that thrust them into mega-stardom. 

I was just starting high school when that album came out and just thinking about it brings back some really great memories.   There were quite a few people in the crowd that took a trip down memory lane.    

The musicians in the band were excellent.   Everyone played their part very well.

They covered some of the more recent material and of course they played their namesake tune “Blaze of Glory”, which is actually a Jon Bon Jovi solo tune from 1990.   It was featured in the movie Young Guns II.  

Check out the authentic Bon Jovi tattoo:

 

They closed out the main set with “Runaway”, which was the oldest song of the set. 

For their encore, Blaze of Glory came out and played 4 more huge hits (“Livin’ On A Prayer”, “I’ll Be There For You”, “Wanted Dead Or Alive”  and “Bad Medicine”)  before going off air with “Keep The Faith”.  It was a great way to close out the show and everyone there had a smile on their faces.

      

There were people in the crowd from Texas and New Jersey for the show.   There was even a group of people from Sweden that attended the show.   They all loved it, as did everyone in attendance.

    

Set List

You Give Love A Bad Name

Raise Your Hands               

It’s My Life                       

Born To Be My Baby

Blaze Of Glory           

Runaway   

BREAK

Encore

Livin’ On A Prayer       

I’ll Be There For You       

Wanted Dead Or Alive 

Bad Medicine

Keep The Faith (end of show)

BLAZE OF GLORY:  FB and TWITTER

 

 

TUNE IN SEPTEMBER 9 at 8:00PM (with replay to follow) TO SEE THE IRON MAIDENS PAY TRIBUTE TO IRON MAIDEN ON THE WORLD’S GREATEST TRIBUTE BANDS!   This show is going to be incredible. 

Free tickets to attend the live show

 

Here’s Katie pointing to the Iron Maidens, who were up front rocking out and singing along during the show (as seen on TV, of course).

Steely Dan has put on an incredible show every time I’ve seen them.  They’re in my Top 10 of best concerts I’ve ever seen.  They make some of the best music out there.

The first stop of the afternoon was to the Nokia Theater to get will call tickets. 

Unless you enjoy standing in long lines, always get your will call tickets as soon as you can.  

Ticket pick up was followed by a quick trip to the Grammy Museum.  The new Ringo Starr exhibit is really cool!  You can see it for free on Wednesday afternoons next month:

 

And then to a quick meal before the show.

Doors were at 7:00.  

 

It was pretty packed.   I’d guess there were almost 5,000 people there. 

The DEEP BLUE ORGAN TRIO opened the show at 7:30 with a great set of jazz music.   They are a fantastic band.   I’d love to see them again in concert.

Bobby Broom – guitar  

Chris Foreman – Hammond B3 organ

Greg Rockingham – guitar

The Steely Dan band (Donald Fagen calls them the Bi-Polar Allstars) came out at 8:30 and did a tune before Donald Fagen and Water Becker arrived for “Your Gold Teeth”.    The back-up singers sounded good.  I got a good view of Keith Carlock playing drums from the 100 section.  He’s an incredible drummer.

As expected, the assembly of musicians played great, but something was wrong with the sound at the venue.   I kept hearing the drums echo off the back wall. I fixed that by using an ear plug.  I’m thinking it may have sounded better if the entire place was packed out.   And it sounded kind of distorted up front (I roamed up there to check it out).

Becker said some really funny stuff during “Hey Nineteen”.    As promised, the great(est) hits just kept coming.  The band intros were pretty entertaining since everyone in the band is so talented.  Having them “stretch out” on their instrument for a second was a lot of fun to watch.

Fagen’s voice seemed to give out a little during some of the songs later in the set, but he finished strong.   It was a solid set with just a few little things that made it less than perfect.

After Kid Charlemagne, I knew it was time to bail.   I did a quick stroll through the venue and the sound quality didn’t really seem to improve much anywhere in the orchestra section.  I kept thinking all night that they should be playing in a slightly smaller venue (like the Gibson Amphitheatre).

The concert ended at a decent hour and was nice way to spend a Sunday evening.  Getting home before midnight was a huge bonus.    It wasn’t the best time I’ve ever seen Steely Dan (among others, I have seen Steely Dan with Larry Carlton guesting and a fan request show before and those concerts blew this one away), but this was still one of the best shows I’ve seen this year.  They’re that much better than most other bands.   

Steely Dan MOOD SWINGS 2013

TOURING BAND:

Jim Beard KEYBOARDS

Keith Carlock DRUMS

Jon Herington GUITAR

Michael Leonhart TRUMPET

Jim Pugh TROMBONE

Roger Rosenberg BARITONE SAX

Freddie Washington BASS

Walt Weiskopf SAX

La Tanya Hall VOCALS

Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery VOCALS

Catherine Russell VOCALS