Album Review: Iron Maiden, "A Real Live One"

The concept of releasing two separate albums documenting MAIDEN's live progress is baffling to me ,but this is how the Irons prefer it, so who am I to argue with thee logistics?

This, the first of the pair, features tracks written since 1986, and compounds the theory that Maiden are indeed fine value for the ticket price. This is also the penultimate album of new product that vocalist Bruce Dickinson will release with the band. What you get for your money is 11 tracks including the British number one "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter," "Can I Play With Madness," and the roadie choir ensemble that is "Heaven Can Wait."

Excellently produced and mixed by bassist and West Ham supporter Steve Harris, a real live one is a fitting finale to Bruce's career. Expect part two, the pre-86 material later in the year.

Grade B

Joe Mackett
Riff Raff
June 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!