Who we are - The Autobiography!

Iron-Alf, Maidenaustria, RudyTrooper666 and Nomadofvienna thought about the fact of no Austrian Iron Maiden platform.
As there isn’t such a service, we considered of having a fanbase for all nations but especially for Austrian Fans which is more than necessary. After our fist meetup, everything was clear and work needed to be done – we needed to found such an institution ourselves.
We think that we are a bit different to other Maiden-Fans, ‘cause we always try to extend our personal collections.

As we are probably a bit more than an usual fan we are here to show-off our collections – that’s the reason for our special MAU-Section .

Hier ist unsere Geschichte (by Rudytrooper666):

Everything started at an concert of Austrias one and only Iron Maiden tribute band Maiden für Jeden at a pub called Baraku-bar, where IronAlf and Maidenaustria met for the very first time and and sang Running free together on stage, afterwards they chated and kept in contact.

Rudytrooper666 visited sometimes Maidenaustrias first internetsite which he found with Google. As there was the news that Maidenaustria found another great Iron Maiden fan (IronAlf) and linked his internetsite Rudytrooper666 started to contact both of them and told em that there is a third Maidenmaniac in Austria himself.

All three met at the record fair in the Stadthalle in April 2004, after a little chat they decided to keep contact to each other and try to meet in the future. After a bit of thime they really did it in the apartment of IronAlf and there was a very long discussion until 2 oclock in the morning issue: Iron Maiden. At the same time IronAlf told them that he has a new mate on his workingplace which want also to meet with us together as he is a big Maiden Fan, too.

IronAlf and Rudytrooper666 visited together a concert of Maiden für jeden at the Planet music club, great gig and one reason more to do something more to make a fan community. A tribute band is a perfect thing for other Maiden fan actvities.

Next event was the DVD presentation of the Early years DVD in the rock club Planet music. A very funny evening and the first real Maiden party for pre-MAU. Everybody was exited and had a great time to sang along Maidens old hits.

The third meeting in December 2004 was the birth of Maiden Austria United as the fourth founding member Nomadofvienna joins the party at Maidenaustrias appartment. The goal was/is to gather all the true Maiden fans from Austria together and do events and concerts together. A meeting with the band was also a vision which they wanted to make real. Everybody got his homework to do and the biggest part was to create the internet-presence which was done by Maidenaustria.

I took nearly three months until we launched the great site and in the mean time we also had the first tourdates for Prague and Graz for their Eddie rips up the world tour. Everybody made much promotion on various other websites to get visitors and Austrian members. The forum is the most important thing for us to communicate and change opinions and get the latest news. Next thing is the Austrian touch the site has because we dont want to do another of those standart Iron maiden fan sites with information you can get everywhere else. All together a very good virtual presence.

Meeting No.4 was in Rudytrooper666s apartment where the 4 founding members discussed most of the details for the forthcoming concerts and gave more homework to each other. The ideas got better and better, spare time was the greatest problem and it was not easy to do everything which was planed for the gigs in May.

Maidenaustria did the hardest work from April to May as he improved the website and made the legendary Graz T-shirts and MAU flaggs. At the rock pub Benjamin the whole MAU squad did a get warm for the 2 concerts party and made their first official (or public) meeting. It was the first time to meet our two new members Sanctuary and the legendary Korbal who is a big Maidenfan and friend from Nomadofvienna. It was an amazing evening where everybody played airguitar and sang along. We got another two more members on this event and made a bit promotion for us again.

Prague 2005 was our very first Maidengig as MAU together and our first journey into a foreign country. The mood was fantastic and we raised our flag in the city to show the local people who are the real Maidenfans. Concert was awesome and we met many Austrian fans after the gig who saw our flaggs and T-Shirts.

The home match and first Austrian Maiden concert together was on 31-05-2005 – which will be our red-letter day for the future!
We had the unique chance to meet the band (only Bruce was missed) and saw an awesome gig of the band. Everybody wanted to have our T-shirts and said that we are on the right way.

After the gig we had a new record on visits on our site and where the Top 5 site on maidenfans.com!

There was another gig by the Austrian Iron Maiden tribute Band Maiden für Jeden on 7th July at the Backstage club in Wr. Neudorf (near Vienna). It was the debut of their new female singer Suzy Q. who was very nervous on this evening. After a short trustful chat with her the band played a good gig in front of 30 people. The fact that Maiden für Jeden did not split up and was one of the most important things to keep the Maiden scene alive in our city/country.

We did a short break during the summer of 2005 to reload our batteries. In autumn we started to renew our website with much more information for the Maiden fans. We didnt wanted to do this in the beginning of M.A.U. but things changed very much in the last time. Our webmaster spent a lot of nights to learn to program the software for improving the site on his own.

Complete autumn of 2005 stood under the sign of Maiden für Jeden. It all started with a gig in the Kreativ club in Vienna when we also had the first appearance of some new M.A.U.members for the first time. Suzy had integrated herself in the band much better and it was a very good concert. MFJ planned to do a special last gig with some guest musicians later this year with the assistance of M.A.U. So we gathered our ideas and were fully motivated to do this event together. The band asked us to do some songs with them together, too and we decided to do it because we have some amateur musicians in our rows. We had just one practice session together but it was very funny.

The gig itself was at the end of November again in the Kreativ and it was sold out with about 50 people. We didnt like the location very much due to the technical problems we had with our simple ideas. The gig itself was awesome and we also produced a selfmade DVD for our archive

We made several new plans and ideas for our internet site during Christmas and new years eve. The new Maiden DVD Death on the road should been release in September 2006 but was postponed to February 2006. So we got the chance to do a release party with EMI Austria together which we did. Maidenaustria and IronAlf were the presenters of the evening and it was a great honor for M.A.U. to do this event. There were more people in the Planet Music club than the year before and we were very proud.

At the same time we started our mega project the Iron Maiden Superfan Enzyclopedia in March 2006. It should contain every item with the Iron Maiden letters on it. Everybody who knows us can imagine how exactly this enzyclopedia looks. We made thousands of photos and scans until now and describe every item as good as possible. Its a lame and sometimes frustrating work but makes a lot of fun, too when you see the result. There was never a bigger project started by fans as far as we know.

We stopped our activities for M.A.U. a bit and worked on the internet site, the enzy and on some connections in the Maiden fan scene. In the meantime we celebrated our first M.A.U. day on May 31 one year after met the band in Graz in a club called London Music Club in Vienna. Maiden released their concert dates for autumn 2006 and we started to plan our tour (3-5 concert for each member).

The legendary Vienna Donauinsel festival took place in June and we saw some fantastic gigs by the bands Maiden für Jeden, Eisregen and Pungent Stench. In the break between the bands we watched an England football world cup game in a tend near the Gasometer. We drank a lot there to give England the right support, lol.

We did another release party for the new Iron Maiden album in August 2006. It was a very spontaneous thing and so we had very few time to make a good promotion for it. But we did our best and biggest promo tour ever and spent a lot of spare time to give beer mates and posters to as many people as possible. It was the first Maiden album that our fan club could celebrated together on its release day A matter of life and death.

We did a live radio interview on a local station called 88.6 which is the second biggest in our country the same day the party was held and it was a really big success for us and the reward for our hard work more than 300 people came to hear the new album in its entire length for the very first time in a public place on this planet. It was not easy to do something in Austria and we are very proud of it. We got also a video message from Bruce Dickinson extra filmed for this event which makes us more proud than it could possible be.

We continued with our normal business after the photos and reports of the release party went over the world via internet. A big part of our work was the preparations for the tour in autumn. We made a lot of connections to fans in the cities we would be at the gigs and the pressure was increasing steady until the thing started.

Some of us travelled by car, some others by train or flew to the citys. We stayed at Zurich, Stuttgart and Dortmund to see the legendary Iron Maiden. The first two cities were under the sign of searching Maiden until death and it was a search to our mental boundaries. The concerts were all awesome and we found the band on the last chance in a pub in Stuttgart. We met everybody of Maiden with the exeption of Steve Harris. We talked with Dave Murray and a very nice Bruce Dickinson until 4 oclock in the morning. So we have another M.A.U. day to celebrate each year December 8th!

Another life dream came true for us and we dont know at the moment how we can go further. But as the past shows we will find other goals to achieve. Four more members of us did the two London gigs at the end of the 2006 world tour which were awesome, too. 2006 was a definitive M.A.U. year!

2007 started very easy for us, too much was happen in December for us to start through as usual. Everybody of sorted his private life und did other things than Maiden. Besides our website was updated with many new things and our encyclopedia reached the 2000 item mark!

We celebrated our second M.A.U. aniversery day in a metal club called esape which was far better than the last time!

The new tourdates fort he summer were released in spring und this time M.A.U. parted theirselfs more than ever. First concert was in Ljubjana and was also the first gig on the tour. We met many known faces and saw an average gig. The aftershow party was a real enjoyable thing and it was the longset and funniest evening we ever had!

Another part of M.A.U. visited Sofia and saw an awesome gig by the band with a very friendly audience. Third concert was in Ostrava and M.A.U. were complete for the first time in 2007. We met the band again in front of their hotel and Nicko rembered us well from the last two times, what an honor! We could also give our infocards to Rod Smallwood, we will see what will be happen! The gig itself was awesome (over 30.000 people) and also the aftershowparty was very wet.

Summer time was vacation time for everyone. We started to continue our encyclopedia in autumn. Our things were most completely inside it and so we needed a new source of Maiden stuff which was found in our friend Oliver who lives in Austria, too! We are sure that he has the bigest Maiden collection worldwide. On a cold November weekend five of us traveld to him to scan and photograph as many items as possible. It was unbelievable how many things he have and we did not more than 15% of all on this weekend, insane! It was an infinite challange to put all the things in the ency and after it we had 3400 items in it!

At the same time Maiden gave the first information and tourdates of the forthcoming Somewhere back in time tour 2008 on their internet site. We discussed which cities we will visit and checked the site many times a day. The first European dates were anounced before christmas and we started to plan our tour. There will be at least one MAU member at half of the gigs!

EMI contacted us in January 2008 to do another DVD releaseparty. This time for Live after Death. We were very proud to do this because of the release its one of our absolute favorite ones! We spent much time in promotion and creating items. The party was on the 2007-01-29 and was a big success for us more than 150 people!

We got many new members within this release party and are very happy about it. Everybody waited for the new tour dates in Europe and was exited about the forthcoming gigs and cities which we had to investigate and celebrate. Date by date followed in spring but unfortunately no Austrian gig again. But we dont care about it anymore because of the cheap possibilities of travelling today.

It would have been a very huge tour for MAU Paris (2x), London, Athen, Prague, Budapest, Basel und Bukarest for the most members of MAU. The organisation was not easy to do but we did our best to get a good program for everyone. But before the tour started we had another release party for the new best of album called Somewhere back in time which was promoted during the tour. We changed the live band this time and they were awesome. It was a nice and successful evening which brought us a lot of new members. The community gets bigger and bigger.

The gigs came closer and closer but before we did em we had to celebrate our 3rd MAU anniversary. The party was held in a rock pub called Grafitti in the city of Vienna and we had visitors from upper Austria and even Germany! On the same day one of our female members Nomadofviennas-Sister married and was also escorted by some of our members. There could not be a better date to get married!

In July/August it was time for seeing the best band in the world live, again! Most of us joined the gig in Twickenham/London a gig which will be remembered for the next years. We had a lot of fun on every concert and in every city and a few of the MAU members were on stage during Heaven can wait, a great experience. Sad thing we will probably never see such awesome concerts again.

Autumn was very easy for us and we worked on the website and the encyclopedia. This was the end of the BEST Maiden year ever 2008!

2009 began with a real highlight! Iron Maiden in Belgrade the one and only concert in Europe that year. We decided to see this gig, due to the near distance to Austria and the unique chance to see Maiden again on the great somewhere back in time tour. The whole journey was great but also sometimes difficult, nevertheless weve learned a lot more things about trip organisation.

Flight 666, the great concert documentary movie, was also shown in many Austrian cinemas in spring. So we organised another great event for the Maiden fans in Austria. This time we had 3 events in different cities at the same time in our country Vienna, Linz and Hohenems. It was a proof, how big MAU has become in Austria since the last years and we are very proud of it!

The following releaseparty of the DVD was celebrated a few weeks later in a Metalpup called Escape in Vienna. A MAU event with a handful of hardcore fans was also done.

But the real big challenge for this year came in a way, which we never had thought of it. One of Austrias concert promoters asked us to organise a concert in Vienna with the former Maiden singer Paul Dianno. Nobody has to ask us twice in such situation and we started to prepare the MAU machine for an unforgettable event. Together with the promoter we raised hell to get as much people as possible to the gig. In the end the Viper room was sold out with 300 people and we had an awesome concert, which we will never forget! There was also an exclusive signing session with Paul, who is a very nice bloke!

In december we did our last member of the board meeting in which we talked about the future of MAU. We still want to continue in the way weve stated and try to make everything more better as it is!