MetalHead's Pligrimage to EDDFest.

Before i start anything, some terms need to be explained.

MetalHead: Metal head is a person, who listens to excessive Metal and considers Headbanging a religious practice. He goes to all gigs and rock concerts and headbangs and shows devil's horn, if he likes something or the middle finger otherwise.
Metal: Metal is a subgenre of rock music, which has very heavy guitaring and drumming and sounds like if some metal is being thrashed ruthlessly.
EDDFest: I can write and entire blog on Iron Maiden, but will explain briefly. Iron Maiden's Mascot is called Eddie or Ed Harris or Ed Hunter, so the rock festival in which Iron Maiden Performs is called EDDFest.

So here i begin. This was around 01:00 hrs at very-commonly-visited Pune Railway station , which needs no description, as there is nothing much about it. All three of us were dressed in black, as part of tradition of visiting a rock concert. We were have same bakarchodee and we were laughing(can call it roaring) like mad men on all kinds of weird jokes, till the train arrived. No, the bakarchodee didn't stopped in train for next one hour, and we were bothering people inside the bogie. As soon as, we settled down we noticed people around us were more wierder, dressed fatally and much more deadly, it took us less than a blink to understand that these are those metalheads and according to me all devotees, who were going to pay visit to thier deities. Somehow we managed to sleep. Next day, the day was boring, three biggest bakarchod of all times(this is no exaggeration) were silent and saying only things, which were barely necessary. Besides us were sitting two bengali guys and with thier getup it was mostly confirmed, that they are also devotees like us. By night 22:30 hrs we managed to reach Bangl00r00 cit. I called up deeban to ask him the address. The autowallah left us at some Mantri Elegance instead of Mantri Elite, so we have to walk, in the mean time Deeban has a chance to call Surender and do some bakarchodee(man, Deeban is again one of the biggest bakarchod of all time). By the time we reached Mantri elite, Deeban thought we have been robbed by autowallah and he posted the news on the network, which we knew.... we have to explain to everyone as to what really happened. So here we reached Elite, Man Deeban is a lucky bastard, he lives in the palatial comfort with all luxuries at his disposal. Gupta had a sore throat(okay, this is one of the reasons we had a quiet journey), so he went down to sleep. Deeban and Rajjo are old chums, so they were having bakarchodee for long, i joined them for quite some time, but after some time i also surrendered myself infront of the Mighty Sleep. Later Morning we had a grand Break fast, courtesy Deeban. Then we headed to Styx(pronouced as sticks), this is the best rock pub in the country, no competitions, hands down.
As we entered we saw many devotees, you won't believe me but 12:00 hrs in the afternoon and pub was full, and as then they played maiden, man the crowd went mad. Then they played "I disappear" by Metallica, "PainKille"r by Judas, "Symphony of Destruction" by Megadeath and "Master's of the puppet " by Metallica, Oh my gawd ! people were singing, headbanging and shouting, it appeared as if reahersal for the concert is going on. Then i noticed the Bengali dude of train with a real real hawt bong babe, all of us had our mouth open wide for a long time, until she realized that we all are staring her. We finished our drinks at styx and headed for domino's. Then we next went to YeswanthPur Railway station to put our bags at cloak room but to my greatest suprise they keep bags only upto 20:00 hrs, I said WTF man! We then headed to the sacred place, which was called Palace grounds. As we were about to enter the ground, the security asked us to take out our concert passes, Gupta shouted "Sir, I have lost my pass", Holy Christ Man! WTF! how can you fuckin lose the pass. I was mad, Rajjo was sad and Gupta, he started running back to locate the pass. God of Rock were favoring us, Gupta got the pass, I felt like tears in my eyes and wanted to slap him really hard. Then I and Rajjo had a great opportunity to fuck the Mighty Untamable Bakarchod Gupta, which we utilized to the fullest. We entered the Palace Grounds, it was ram packed with 20,000 strong crowd, full of people like us, it was scorching heat all over, sun was showing no mercy on the devotees, "but no one can deter us from doing what we believe", i suppose was the answers to every problem that stood infront of us.

After waiting for 1 and half hour in the heat, FTN appeared on the stage, crowd has some sigh of relief and every one started screaming and shouting. I saw 5 Delhi dudes, too young, full of energy, highly talented on the staged. The lead vocalist was very charismatic-on-stage and carries persona to control crowd. So he started with chants of "Maiden" and you can see the chants of "MAIDEN" everywhere. But this time FTN was sounding very bad, I think they didn't had sound check or something, but were sounding pathetic. In Pune they controlled, in fact owned the crowd, but they had little or in fact zero luck in Bangl00r00. There is a difference between an International Rock concert and Campus level rock competition, which was apparent here. The crowd in Pune at campus rock idol were college crowd, most of them were nu-metal listeners and loved "throats", very much and were there to do mosh pitting, without understanding much of music, but here in B'lore the crowd was much more mature and were listening to Maidens for long time and in short most of them were true rock devotees. Coming back to FTN, they made biggest mistake of starting with thier originals, as crowd had zero interest in listening nu-metal and gothic, so they were shown middle finger, FTN subsequently got raped liked anything. At last, they tried to sing Korn, but till that time crowd was killing them and were hardly listening. So FTN had to leave the stage like losers.
Next came Parikrama, they were sounding too good, clear and loud, which made me realized FTN were bad. Parikrama's Lead vocalist sounded like ACDC lead vocals Bon Scott, he made remarks like "This is the greatest day of his life" (to which i agree whole heartedly) and Chanted "Maiden" for some time. They played some of thier OC's which were pretty awesome. Then the band's Violinist played mostly same stuff with different speed, so the crowd went mad about the voilinist, as if he is some jimi hendrix of voilin. According to me, he sucked a big time, if you had heard a full time violinist, you will understand, what i meant, in country like India you will find violinst better than him in circuses, and if I talk class, then the classical musician who plays violin, are so good that violin starts singing by itself(okay that was a hyperbole). But , here the crowd was all metal people, so to them voilin was new and they thought it was simply too good. Anyway Parikrama finished with huge applause. They were indeed, very good.

Next came Lauren Harris Daughter of Steve Harris(i will revert back to him a little later), she was a real Hawt Babe, one worth watching English Beauty. But the songs she sang were totally out of sync with what crowd were here to listen, she was singing some alternative or pop rock or i donno what? But no body like it. Mind it, in India Metal fans are very explicit on expressing thier opinion and don't give a damn who it is?
So one can hear the chanting of "U Suck" and middle finger in the air, but she thought that all the shouting was applause, so she sang another 5-6 songs. Holy Christ, we were feeling like being killed. The wind was not blowing at all, people were standing too close to each other, i really felt the lack of oxygen and had to breathe with my mouth facing towards sky, dope and smoke was in the air, some of the girls started fanting and my feets were aching as if they will kill me. Rajjo and Gupta were in similiar state and we were thinking to leave the goddamn concert. Somehow Lauren finished, when she was leaving, i thanked god for having mercy on us.

Stage was all dark, revered silence all over, we we sweating, feeling like being screwed for nothing. suddenly i noticed drums were being beaten like military parade. I knew this is the time............ this is nobody else other that Nicko McBrain. Holy christ man!!!! i saw the drum set appeared like eddies' face and then i saw picture of Eddie in the Tank. Here was the band. Crowd went mad, people were shouting screaming and chanting "Maidens!!!" "Maidens!!!" all over. Iron Maidens and MegaDeth are probably the biggest and most repected name among the metal lovers in India(I am not talking about all those kids, who love alternative and punk). They are the pioneers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, in my words they are the gods of NWOBHM. I saw five English Gentlemen standing like mighty knights. The first one who got attention was off course, Bruce Dickinson, the great operatic singer, whose voice has given greatest edge to Maidens. Second person whom i noticed was Steve "The Eddie" Harris, one of the most repected man in the history of rock, the man behind the band, one of the greatest bassist ever, along with all this he is the main songwriter and composer for the band. He was wearing his trademark 3/4th and his fingers were so fast on the guitar that you can not see them. I was too too happy to see him.
Bruce started singing "different world" form new album a matter of life and death and on the screen above them, they displayed tank and eddie look-alikes, while singing Bruce was running here and there and Dave Murray and Andrain Smith were standing together and holding the guitar like a gun and were shooting towards crowd. Man! what an awesome site was that. Then they sang "colors don't run" and "incarcination of Benamin Breeg", the crowd was humming the tunes. Bruce started talking now and when he said in his typical british accent "scream for me, banglo' '', crowd was shouting at the peak of their voice. Then the light went out and the next song was "The number of the beast", oh man! i had goose bumps all over my body. While he sang tropper, Bruce was wearing a red coat and waving Union Jack, then he sang "run to the hills" and then he sang "Iron maiden", which i didn't like since Bruce has totally different way of singing song, whereas that song was sung by Paul Diano originally. Suddenly lights were off, drum was sounding like i have heard thousands times before and crowd started waving thier hands in the air and sound of the "Ho ho ho ho ho!!!" was in the air. This was "FEAR of the Dark", crowd went berserk, absolutely crazy as Bruce started singing. This was the moment i was here for, i was jumping and singing. Everyone else was also jumping and i was pushed by the wave of people, which came from behind. Afterwards it was difficult to even breathe, everywhere you see people falling on each other and some trying to survive. As Bruce laughed in his Devilish way, i felt a wave of happiness in me. After this song he sang one more song form new album and one or two more song, after which they have shown the tank on the stage and Dave Murray was moving guitar all over his body insanely. Then Bruce made an announcement "we will come back again" and he said "you don't have to wait for 17 years". We thought it is over, with heavy feets we started walking toward the exit. But the crowd was not in mood for such a small exit, so they shouted "we want more". After sometimes, they all appeared back, I said "yes". They then played "evil that man do" and "2 minutes to midnite", then they brought a huge Edie on stage, who was dressed as a tropper and his eyes were glowing dark red. Finally they sang the greatest song ever by Maiden - " Hallowed be thy name". This song is one song which all Maiden fan loves and considers it to be sacred. So here everyone was singing with them and i was banging my head, throughout the song as a symbol of my repect to the band.
Those moments were most precious moments to me. I wanted to keep listening to them live for as long as possible.I heard that many people were in tears, some of them bowed to Maiden on thier knees, I know this sounds insane but for Maiden people can do that.

Well we were here on Yeswanthpur station, tired like anything and struggling for sleep. Somehow(God knows how), We left the B'lore with a sigh of relief, but the next day was hot and we were feeling like dirty pigs and were totally dehydrated. By now Gupta has regained his powers, so we were having good bakarchodee sessions one after the other. I was in utterly bad shape, but then i remembered my last B'lore trip, where i have travel on the bonnet(or whatever is the right word) of the bus, so i thanked god for all that he has blessed us with. Finally we reached Pune, with memories that will remain, throughout my life.
I know that the day when Metallica will turn up to India, i will be mad and will be more happier than this, but as for now, i am very much contended.