(cont from Part 1)

So, with seemingly no-one noticing the musical journey I had started out on I decided to take a stand. The stand was fairly simple, buy more music of this nature! See as much as I liked the music, I think it been something completely different to what everyone you knew liked and rebelling against them gave the music that extra edge.

The journey really started kicking off when I got my first job. It was an Apprenticeship placement at our local council earning £80 a week. With no responsibility, £80 was a lot of a money. So, how did I spend all this money? Music of course! Me and my best mate used to go in town, scan through the aisles at HMV and buy cheap CD’s. We’d go to Subway for lunch and sometimes Starbucks for a hot chocolate if we were really pushing the boat out! For some reason, I really remember the first time we did that back in 2006. I remember buying Peace Sells..But Who’s Buying? by Megadeth and A Matter Of Life And Death by Iron Maiden. I remember the Maiden album hadn’t been out long, it sounded completely different to Run To The Hills and I didn’t really take it all in. Was this a deterrent to buying more Iron Maiden albums? Of course not, the beginning of the end had started!

Not the bext start, but that wouldn’t put me off…

Pretty much every trip into town became another opportunity to buy another Maiden album. I remember just loving the artwork for pretty much all of the albums and thinking Eddie was the coolest. This combined with the excellent songs and the dirt cheap prices, I was onto a winner! I would literally look through every single part of the CD booklet, reading the lyrics, looking at the pictures whilst listening to the music and loving every bit of the whole package.

After dissecting almost every Maiden album, my next mission was to see them live. I was desperate. Unfortunately I missed them on the AMOLAD tour. The next one after was the first leg of Somewhere Back In Time tour. Unfortunately, there was one date. Down in London. LONDON?! I can’t go that far, I proclaimed. London seemed an awful long way at the time.

London was so far away…

More than a little gutted, I continued playing the studio albums. Desperately hoping they would tour again.

But, it wasn’t to be the lack of touring that would frustrate me. Tune in to the next part to find out what happened next.