Iron Maiden
Cross Eyed Mary

About fifteen years ago, I was going through my most intensely metalhead period.

I was probably 13-14 years old and, having just left puberty and its great desire for discoveries behind me, I was confidently stepping into adolescence and its great desire for fooling around. At that time, my greatest passion, along with a particularly busty middle schoolmate to whom I devoted all my energies in the solitude of my bedroom, was Medal music.

There had always been little music listened to in my house: my father worked in a workshop 10-12 hours a day and when he came home in the evening, the most he wanted to hear was Paolo Valenti presenting 90° minuto. When I was little, my sister was all about the various New Kids On The Block, Bros, Nick Kamen, and the like, but since they weren't too noisy, everyone at home respected her. I, on the other hand, listened to Medal from morning to night, even on my scooter with my walkman (which basically meant hoping to catch a lot of red lights, otherwise you couldn't hear a damn thing..) and everyone thought I was crazy.

Among the dumbest things I did in the name of Medal music was the time that, together with four other Medal enthusiasts, I went to a lost place in the Cremona area where we had been told we could find cool records for a few thousand lire. Once we arrived, we discovered that it was a kind of stationery shop run by a nice lady whose son had long been a true Medal enthusiast, but had now started a family and wanted to clear out the garage. Upon hearing this, we true lovers of Medal were deeply saddened: knowing that the sacred fire had left the Heart Of Steel of a True Brother was really very painful. So we knelt in the middle of the stationery store and, after buying a box of colored pencils, drew runes on the floor and prayed to Odin to fill our hearts with a thirst for vengeance. After putting everything back in order, we started browsing through the records and there, among the various Giudas Prist, Medal Ciorc, and Sleier, we stumbled upon this “Cross Eyed Mary” by Airon Meiden! At the time, we were a bit puzzled: we thought we knew the entire discography of Murray and company by heart (naive..), but we had never heard of this one! In the end, needless to say, I snagged it, and here we are at the subject of this review.

Let's start by saying that this “Cross Eyed Mary” is a bootleg assembled (officially only 1,500 copies.. yeah, right..) by a label particularly active in this kind of production at the time: the Alternative Recording Company. The tracklist, at least on paper, is quite appealing. The first six tracks (“Phantoms Of The Opera”, “Innocent Exile”, “Drifter”, “Sanctuary”, “Prowler”, “Running Free”, and “Remember Tomorrow”) are officially claimed to have been taken from a concert held on April 20, 1981, in Saarbrucken. A particular feature of these songs is the presence, behind the microphone, of the boozer Paul DiAnno, who, it must be said, delivers a very good performance not only from a technical standpoint but also in terms of pure entertainment. In general, the whole band is operating excellently: the tracks are presented at a slightly faster pace than the official recordings (even “Remember Tomorrow”!) with small arrangement variations, yet the delivery and execution are truly remarkable.

Even a so-called "distracted" listen, however, raises some doubts about the real source of these first tracks: the volumes and the quality of the recording are rather inconsistent, and it almost feels like the audience size changes from one song to another (did everyone go to pee during “Drifter”?!). In fact, “Prowler” (for the record, among my top 5 favorite Iron songs of all time! Oh yeah!), is not recorded live but presented as it is on the record! ..what the hell is this mess?!?

The answer comes from the World Wide Web, which informs us that.. well.. this entire first part of the bootleg is a scam! The Irons never played a concert in Saarbrucken. In fact, they probably never did a concert on April 20, 1981! Just the next day, the band was supposed to perform a concert in Toulouse, and considering the means available at the time, their participation in a festival in such a remote location seems quite improbable. Most likely, it is a collage of B-sides gathered across the band's discography!

Continuing with the tracklist, and skipping over the cover of “I've Got The Fire” by Montrose (good in itself, but disgraced by an embarrassing recording..), we reach the “gem” of the package: the cover of “Cross Eyed Mary” by Jethro Tull! And here I have to admit my faults.. At the time of buying this record, I was so ignorant that I thought “Jethro Tull” was the full name for “Tool”.. In short, I believed this was an original song by Harris and company! You can't imagine how stupid I felt when, a few years later, someone passed me “Aqualung”... Returning to the reviewed record: the cover is, in my opinion, decent but not outstanding. Instrumentally, it's a decent reworking of the Tull classic (with some bass fun by Harris, heavier use of guitars, and, of course, no flute), but Dickinson's performance is almost irritating! Usual tortured, intense interpretation and blah blah blah.. but man, how much he screams! As long as he's singing the verses you can bear it, but in the end, it really seems like good Anderson is using his scrotum as a whistle case.

At the end of the album, we find, lastly, five more tracks (the inevitable “The Trooper”, “Revelations”, “Flight Of Icarus”, “22 Acacia Avenue”, and “The Number Of The Beast”), probably recorded with a Fisher Price microphone by some sound technician with otitis, locked up by colleagues in a porta-potty, during a concert (I believe actually) held in Dortmund, on December 18, 1983. What to say: with “his” songs Dicky certainly makes a better impression, the band's performance is - as usual - exemplary, and the audience truly seems to be having a blast at every “Sing For Me Dortmund!..SIIING FOR MEEEE DORRRRTTMMUUUNNDDD!!!”.

Finally, I want to emphasize another aspect of this reviewed bootleg: I honestly had completely forgotten I had it! I found it in a drawer in my room a few months ago, while I was tidying up, and it took a really long time to remove all the dust that had accumulated on it. And this, considering the fuss I made to snag it, should make us reflect on the fickleness of the human soul.