Listen with Nicko! Part IX

...what ho! Nicko here! Welcome to Nicko's "Not alot of people know that, number 9!" Yes! This is the one that comes after eight or before ten, but if you don't have number eight, it comes after seven, doesn't it? Yes, well you stupid little people out there, if you do not have number eight or number seven or one of them's missing, because if you don't have those little tokens in your sticky greasy palms and you don't have ten of them at the end of these ten weeks of releases of the re-released rather singles of Iron Maiden, you won't get your little box set, will you? No! Because as you know by now... I haven't told you but you should know... you will be the proud owner of a special box with some seriously good artwork from Mr. Derek Riggs. Yes! And you will then be able to put all those greasy horribly grubby pieces of vinyl in there which as you know will have those amazing pictures on them and the little artwork, packages, and sleeves... and all that good stuff in that box! So, keep them all or else you'll be in severely good trouble! ... Take that!

Now then! Now! You are severely in some trouble now, because you've got 'Can I Play With Madness', 'Black Bart Blues', 'Massacre'! Mmmmmm! 'Can I Play With Madness' written by Harry Harris, 'Black Bart Blues' by Harry Harris and Bruce Dickinson, 'Massacre' Lynott, Gorham, and Downey. Yes, released the 2nd of March 1988, and it got to... ... what was that? ... Three! Yes, number three! It debuted at number four in the charts, thanks to you lot out there, you horrible viscious mean people to go out and buy such a seriously good single as that and get it to number three. Hahaha! No serious, folks, hah! This, what can you say, debuted at number four.

Oh by the way on a more sombre note, and something like that... must say before we go much further... is that, as you may know, remember the video and all that good stuff, this here single. Well it was featuring a chap who I think we would all agree was one of the great comedians and one of the major contributors to the Monty Python mob and gang cohooting geezers out there doing all that mumbo jumbling stuff... with the big boot and stuff, squashing everybody... yes! Was Mr. Graham Chapman. Well, here's a little memorandum to him... ah, memorandum... in memory of him... memorandum... crazy, off the wall. No, I think what we gotta say is thanks to Graham for such a great contribution to comedy in general and everything, he's gonna be sadly missed. But this was one of his last film performances before he unfortunately died. So, lets hope he's having a good time up there, and we'll... undoubtedly we'll meet one another time somewhere else in a different place.

Anyway! Moving on to a lighter note, yes! You've got 'Black Bart Blues' on this here single, and as you know after the old 'Black Bart Blues' there's some various mumblings and jumblings from yours truly. And these were not "not alot of people know that" mumblings and jumblings, these were stupid mumbling jumblings that were put together off of all the... at the ends of all the songs that we recorded over that album of Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son such as "hmm... they're gonna put this on a CD!... And I got a lil' solo! ...I said I seen'em..." and all that stuff right? Well you know what I mean, cause you just f'kin' listened to it, didn't ya? So there we were, picture this. We were at the playback after we had made the album, recorded it, all that good stuff, mixed it. And we were at the playback for the EMI people. And all the band were there, and all the press... Micky Wall and a few other people... hello Micky! ...were all there, and they're doing all their old reviews of this album and stuff, so we played... kinda played... now, you've gotta bear this in mind... none of the chaps, not one of them let me know what was going on, see? So I was clueless! I know, but as I usually... no now look, I was, I didn't have a clue. See? So! There I was standing there... now you picture this... there's the PA system that we were playing this here stuff back through, behind me. And I'm looking down and all the band, and we'd already gone through the album and all this, and we'd got up to singles time, see?

Everybody was out, all the EMI bigwigs are there, you know, "yeah what ho, yes, eh pretty damn good album don't you think?" "Well yes I do, pretty damn good, don't you think, yes." "Eh, shall we pay them money this week?" "Yeah, I could think we can ...pretty good stuff, lets go." So! Anyway, having said that, there I am... this damn thing comes on the bleedin' music box. After it finishes... 'Black Bart Blues' finishes that is, there's "whooo, hello!" You know and there's all this stuff like answer phone stuff, I phone someone I forget where they got that from, oh it was the studio answer machine... "Hi Hi, Nicko here...hi." Anyway, you know, just stupid stuff. Then it starts, don't it. Well, can you imagine my face. There's all the band creased up falling all over the place laughing... they all thought it was the funniest thing since whatever. So there I am looking at this lot, and I'm kind of feeling a bit embarrassed you know, cause I'd not heard this, and I thought "what's all this mumbling jumbling coming out these here big speakers?" Then I looked over at the other side of the room... you know those... you know those faces that you get from the theatre, right, you know you've got the comedy chops and the thriller, you know, and the sad stuff, you know. There's one smiling and there's one looking like, you know, he's just lost a quid and found a tenner, you know. And er... So, picture this... the room's one half crawling all over the floor laughing, and the other lot are like "eh, what's going on? What's this stuff coming in?" Can you imagine this is the world... EMI world people you know from all over the place. And I tell ya, when these people saw everybody going "Hahahahaho!" they're going "ho ha ha HA HA HAAHA! Oh what ho jeez, pretty funny hahhaa." So they also saw the funny side of it after awhile, but it took awhile I'll tell ya. And of course I was really really embarrassed to say the least, cause this was my lunacy stuff, and you you lot f'kin' got it in your sweaty greasy horrible little palms again, ain't ya!

Anyway! Enough of that, moving on. On the other side you've got 'The Evil That Men Do', or on the same side, I dunno how the bloody hell they put this record!! ... Take that! 'The Evil That Men Do'... Written by H. Smith... Adrian Smith, B. Dickinson... Paul Dickinson, and 'Arry Bomber Harris... Steve Harris. Hmm. Released the 1st of August 1988! And on the other side of that we had 'Prowler '88' and 'Charlotte The Harlot' written by Mister Murray and Harris! Yes, Dave came out of the closet for that one. Whoah! No, I didn't mean it badly, I mean Dave doesn't... when he writes a song he writes a cracker, don't he? But, he... he sort of... he writes one every couple of years, and he's got a couple in reserve at the moment, and so you lot might hear some of this in the next couple of months because I think he's got a cut for the new album that you ain't gonna believe.

Anyway! Evil That Men Do. Shar... sh... sh... sh... I had one of them this morning... no, a shower. Chart position five, it debuted at number six. Do-de-de-de-do! Now, 'Prowler' and 'Charlotte The Harlot' we recorded... we re-re-re-re-re-recorded these because the band... ah it's getting silly, I've gotta get out of here and get some fresh air, I mean you ain't gonna believe what it's like in this little room. Anyway, the band never were completely happy with the original versions, you know, from way back. So... And you lot, you greasy despicable mean mangy looking lot out there, you-ou-ou-ou been requesting some of this stuff from the early material to be recorded... re-recorded... with your's truly. Hahahaha! No, no, no, no, I'm joking! No, you know, re-recorded with Bruce and the... how's that, we'll put me in there too, so... Actually, Steve and I were actually discussing a few months back about all these old songs... the old stuff that we've re-recorded, about doing maybe in the future, keeping it the same format so basically the end of the day we might actually have the whole back issue of all the stuff with this sort of Maiden re-recorded, all the old stuff that we weren't on... myself, Bruce, and H. So there you go, you never know.

By the way, here's a joke for ya. I gotta tell you this before I leave, because I got to... I'm running out of time. And... yeah, it's like this, see:

Superman and Batman talking to one another one day, so Superman says, "'Ere Bat." "Yeah, what, what's the matter Sup?" He said, "I was out having a little jaunt over at central park the other day", he said, "I had a touch of the hold-on light, and you'll never guess what!" He said, "What's that Sup?" He said, "I f'kin' looked down... strike me down, there's Wonder Woman wiggling about, legs up in the air, lassoo, all that old stuff... ooh, she must be having a good time... f'kin' hell, what's she doing!" He says, Batman says, "Well what did you do?" He said, "Well I got f'kin' serious touch of the hard-on, didn't I? It nearly shot me out to Jupiter!" He said, "Did it?" He said, "No, I got as far as Mars!" He said, "F'kin' hell, that was a touch, wasn't it?" He said, "More than that! I came back I had such a bone-on, there she was wiggling and wobbling out on the grass, f'kin' legs up in the air... oh, she was rubbing her dun great tits! Rubbing her thighs... and she was just kinda caressing... oh!" he said "I couldn't resist!" Batman says, "Well what did you do then, Sup?" He said, "Well, I unzipped my boy... you know, my fly, and I got my boy out and I f'kin' shot down from a thousand feet!" He said, "Did ya?" He said, "Yeah! f'kin' great!" Batman says, "Well, what happened then?" He said, "Well, it f'kin' landed... you know, on top of her!" He said, "Did ya?" He said, "F'kin' right!" He said "I bet Wonder Woman was real surprised, weren't she?" He said, "Yeah, not half as surprised as the bleedin' Invisible Man!"

Hahahahahahah! Hahahah! Oh dear! Nevermind! I'm off! I'm going! Tada!