IRON MAIDEN Hit By Power(slave) Outage At Madison Square Garden

A BLABBERMOUTH.NET user has submitted the following report:

"There was a strange event right in the middle of [IRON MAIDEN's] set [at Madison Square Garden in New York City Sunday night, June 15]. Halfway through the song 'Powerslave', the power died to the sound system, and MAIDEN were onstage with full lights, shrugging their shoulders. I was right behind the soundboard, and there was never any problem at that end. In fact, [cycling star] Lance Armstrong and [actress] Kate Hudson were standing beside the mixing board making out, which made the whole situation even weirder. Who's the MAIDEN-head in that celebrity family? Anyway, obviously this was a high point of their set, and within a minute after the stalls the band produced a soccer ball on stage and began kicking it around to entertain the fans while the technical nightmare continued. After about ten minutes of silence, Bruce Dickinson picked up one of the Egyptian sarcophagi and began using it as a shield to play soccer. He was pretty good with it, too! This entire time, the lights were fine, and the soundboard was perfectly okay and didn't appear to be reset. There was definitely no panic at the board. Suddenly and happily, Steve Harris's galloping bass reappeared in the monitors, and the band regrouped and moved onto the next song. My friends and I were joking that this was a long-distance dedication from Sharon Osbourne, and evidently Dickinson thought the same. As soon as his mic worked, he muttered dramatically something like: 'The revenge of Sharon...the wicked witch of the west rises again!' Strong words, preached to a crowd of 18,000. MAIDEN had spent the whole night, and indeed the past two years, proving themselves leagues above the egg-throwing spat at Ozzfest 2005. Evidently, they are still sensitive to the long-reaching powers of the Sharon. Why would he even joke about that if he didn't think it was possible?"