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Welcome Back Irving Plaza; You’ve Been Missed…

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irving plaza logo, irving plaza, venue logos

So maybe my title is a little bit misleading because the physical space has not gone anywhere at all and still sits firmly where it has stood for decades on Irving Place, just off 15th Street in NYC. Despite that, Irving Plaza did “go away” for a few years but was now back. Let’s continue shall we? I start with a little background history on the place.

The venue known as Irving Plaza opened its doors way back in 1860 when it was referred to as Irving Hall. Now, I didn’t know this from experience of course and learned it from some historical research that I would need for this little side narration. After a number of interesting changes and owners it came to be called Irving Plaza and the venue would feature Rock, Punk and Heavy Metal shows. My own first experience as a concert goer would be in September of 1997 when the British Progressive Rock legends Marillion were performing for their “This Strange Engine“ album. Having never been inside the place before I had some high hopes as to what I would feel once inside its walls. I liked what I was seeing, but since I was so interested in the show more than my surroundings I had to leave it as “really good” as an experience. Of course I wish I could have said the same for Marillion who had seemed to lose me with this recording and show. Musically it was true that the band was different with Steve Hogarth now on vocals, but I had enjoyed his earliest stuff with them and based on all the changes to format was growing distant from the band as his tenure progressed. Anyways, this is not about my Marillion concerns and is slightly off topic from where I was going with this narrative.  So where was I? Oh yeah, the Irving Plaza venue.  Well, in 2007 Livenation (a division of Clear Channel Communications) took over the place and did some serious renovations.  The standard stuff in regards to paint, interior sprucing up and oh yeah – they also renamed the joint.  Ladies and Gentlemen presenting “The Fillmore NY at Irving Plaza”.
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Features, PiercingMetal Says

PiercingMetal’s “Best Of” 2009: The Books and Videos

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I know what you are thinking, gee Ken you guys sure did like a lot of stuff over the course of 2009 and you are not kidding. This will be my last installment from the “Best Of” rundowns and we will not only cover the videos and books that we enjoyed the most but also will line out a bunch of the things that disappointed us here at the Metal Media Command HQ. DVD releases continued to impress and amaze as not only were new and exciting videos being released but also a number of cool historical archives had finally come to see the light of day. We reviewed quite a bit of them this year and still have a number of them to go but the list below focuses on some of our favorites which we made sure to line out first to be a part of this list. Let’s take a look.

The Best DVD’s of 2009:

Iron Maiden “Flight 666” (Universal Music): Maiden’s documentary about their “Somewhere Back In Time” World Tour that discussed how the band flew their own airplane to dozens of countries to deliver the Metal to the faithful believers has to be seen to be believed. Filmed by the famous Sam Dunn of “Headbanger’s Journey” fame.

Anvil: “The Story Of Anvil” (VH1 Classic Records): Anvil finally gets their due and some proper attention based on this fine documentary film by Sasha Gervasi.

Journey “Live In Manila” (Wal-Mart): If you didn’t get enough of Arnel Pineda when Journey delivered us “Generations” then wait till you get a load of him doing his thing in his home country, the Philippines. This show rocks and the crowd was going crazy for their countryman as he led this legendary band into the future.

Rick Wakeman “The Six Wives Of Henry XIII” (Eagle Vision): Former Yes keyboard wizard gets to fulfill a dream performance and we are members of the audience thanks to this special DVD release. A companion CD was also offered and this is a must for the legends fans.

ZZ Top “Double Down Live” (Eagle Vision): This DVD presented not one, but two performances from ZZ Top and while one comes from recently, it is the vintage show from 1980 that is the one to appreciate most. There isn’t a lot of footage of the band that’s been made public, so this was something that many classic rock and blues rock fans can appreciate quite a bit.
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