You can rock at a Maiden concert on a school night.

Yes, indeedy, the Maidens rocked the house at the Allstate Arena Wednesday night. I whined. I puled. I howled. First about the late hour; then about the new album they were playing start to finish.

Let me tell you something: they rock.

I'm still digesting A Matter of Life and Death, but there are songs that scream "old school" to me. "These Colours Don't Run," or "The Greater Good of God." I've only listened to the songs in the car--I need to get them on my MP3, or in my living room. But I don't even know all the lyrics yet, and the only reason I know there's an anti-war theme is because of the bigass tank on the cover. My car is ok for acoustics, but the Allstate leaves much to be desired.

So there I stood, 31 years old, wearing a secondhand Hawaiian shirt and my dog-chewed concert jacket, cheering like a loon along with the appropriate lyrics from "Iron Maiden" and "Hallowed Be Thy Name." I'd never gotten to wail along to "Fear of the Dark" (it being post-1985 work of theirs), but I did not miss my chance Wednesday. They put me to shame: Dickinson has got to be past 50, yet he can still run and bellow high notes nonstop without even breaking a sweat. They had energy. They had depth. They knew how to put on a show.

When I left, my ears were ringing. My head was splitting. I needed a shower. I needed a drink. I needed to pull out all my Iron Maiden tapes and play them back to back until one a.m.

So why was it, then, that in the car, after fiddling with the radio for a while, I found myself singing lustily along to George Michaels' "Faith"?

Not exactly the capper for my first metal concert in over a decade. I swear, I have ADD for music taste.