Bruce Dickinson – Alive in Studio A (1995)

I must say, this was the first album in this blog that I kind of struggled to listen through. I used to be a huge Iron Maiden fan as a pre-teen and this is why I ended up owning this album, but I would never really listen to this album anymore if it wasn't for this blog. Dickinson's solo material is not as melodic as Iron Maiden and the heroic guitar solos are absent as are the amazing bass lines of Steve Harris. The only thing that is left is Dickinson's screaming vocals. This album is not actually an album in a traditional sense. It's a collection of remakes of Dickison's songs from the first two albums. There's also another CD that is the live recording from Marquee Club in London. I wasn't that impressed by this album even back in the day when it came out, but now my musical taste has changed quite significantly and this album really wasn't that enjoyable.



Bruce Dickinson has some historical significance to me as a music fan. Probably the first ever rock concert I attended was a Rock Against Drugs concert in Helsinki back in 1994. Bruce Dickinson was headlining that concert after having released his second solo album Balls to Picasso the same year. That concert was an acoustic set played on two guitars and I remember enjoying that gig quite a lot. I ended up buying Balls to Picasso quite quickly afterwards. This album, however, has a way more aggressive sound and I remember being a bit disappointed when I bought this album, because I've always been into melodic music.

Tears of the Dragon was a huge hit back when Balls to Picasso came out. Back in the day, I really liked the original version, but on this album the sounds are a lot grittier and it doesn't sound nearly as good. Even the original is a bit cheesy when I listen to it now.

This whole concept of redoing an album by playing it live in studio is a bit strange to me. It reminds me of some of the BBC recordings that many bands made back in the 70's. I own at least the Led Zeppelin's BBC Sessions. Sure, this allows bands to make different versions of their songs, but very rarely you get better versions than the original ones. I feel like this album doesn't even change the versions of the songs that much. The sounds are just crappier than on the original albums.

I seemed to have ended up just bashing the album, but I do think this is one of the worst albums I own. I don't think I will really return to listen to this album from now on. Unless something strange happens. This might actually be a CD that I could imagine selling, but then again, my mind about something like this has changed a couple of times before where I regretted selling off some albums that I owned, so maybe I will hold on to this, anyway, this was the worst of the albums on this blog so far.

Listen to the album on Spotify.