Manifest

An archive of memory

A legacy of the beast, kept for the generations here now and the ones still to come.

I came to it sideways

Iron Maiden played Łódź in 1984 and again in 1986. The 1980s were the band at their peak, and I was born in 1990, so I missed all of it by a lifetime. My whole collection started right there: a teenager hunting for discs of exactly those Polish nights I was born too late to attend. The recordings here are how I get into the rooms I was never in, and how I hold on to the ones I did get into.

I did not arrive as a casual fan. As a teenager in Łódź I was already building websites and chasing the local rock scene with a notepad. For two years I wrote for Blackastrial, a Polish metal quarterly, interviewing musicians, among them Bariel of Imperator, one of the founding names of Polish death metal. Metal was the first thing I took seriously enough to want to document it. Two decades later I am doing the same thing, only with bootlegs instead of interviews.

The shows

My first Maiden show was Ostrava, 2007. Since then I have caught them whenever they came within reach:

In 2013, on the Maiden England tour, I won a first-to-the-barrier wristband in a fan-club competition. The photo below is from another barrier: Warsaw, 24 July 2022, my wife and me, front row. Still one of the best nights I can remember.

Wojtek and his wife at the front barrier during an Iron Maiden show in Warsaw, 24 July 2022
Front row, Warsaw, 24 July 2022.

Chasing the band off-stage

The band is more than the stage. In Dublin, June 2025, I stood outside Eddie's Dive Bar, the pop-up the band ran during the tour (that is the photo on the home page). And on a trip to London I made it to the Cart & Horses in Stratford, the pub long known as the birthplace of Iron Maiden, where the band played weekly through their earliest years in the late 1970s. Standing there felt like visiting a source.

Wojtek at the Cart and Horses pub in Stratford, London, long known as the birthplace of Iron Maiden, with an Iron Maiden poster and memorabilia on the walls
The Cart & Horses, Stratford, London. Where it started.

When trading meant the post office

One moment from those early years stands in for the whole ritual: standing at the post office counter, asking the woman not to bring the stamp down too hard, so the postmark would not bite through to what was inside. Then the wait, sometimes weeks, for a padded envelope to cross a border and come back. The internet made all of this easier, and I am glad it exists. But easier is not always better. When every show is one click and a download, some of the romance leaks out of collecting. Part of what I keep here is that older feeling: that a recording is an object, that it travelled to reach you, that it cost someone patience.

The collection

I have been collecting bootlegs since 2006, on and off. Back then I printed my first covers on the printer in my mother's home office and caught an earful for burning through her ink. There was never money for proper printing gear. Then life got busy and the hobby paused. The Kraków show in 2023 pulled me back, and this time, finally settled enough in my career to afford it, I bought my own printer and started making covers the way I always wanted to. There is something honest about holding a show in your hands, sleeve and all, instead of a file in a folder.

Why it is slow, and why that is fine

I had a collector's site years ago and closed it. In 2023 I brought the idea back and rebuilt the catalogue on WordPress, properly this time. I have an intensive working life, so it grows slowly, and that is the point. Nothing here is for sale, nothing is rushed. It is built the way I built sites as a kid: for the love of it, on my own terms.

Built with AI, and honest about it

The catalogue I brought back in 2023 has lived on WordPress ever since, and that older version is the one I am now migrating here. What you are reading is its rebuild. When I started learning to work with AI, I pointed it at this: a way to give the collection a site far better looking than I could ever have drawn by hand, and to help me run and catalogue the whole thing. So yes, this version was made with AI, and I would rather say so than hide it.

In music that word is loaded, and rightly so. Tools like Suno, which generate the music itself, frighten me: they lean on the very people who make the thing I love, and I want no part of that. Building a site is a different craft. The words here are mine and the discs are mine; the making of the site I shared with a machine, on my terms, for something that only ever credits the band. If nothing else, here is proof the thing is good for something.

For my son

My son was born in March 2026. One of my quiet hopes is that he grows into this too, that one day he inherits the discs and the reason behind them. That is a large part of why I keep going. I am building something I can hand down.

This page will grow. The archive is never finished.

If something here is wrong, a credit is missing, or a recording is yours and should come down, write to wojtek@wojciechwawrzak.pl. For data and rights, see the privacy and takedown pages.

No affiliation

This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Iron Maiden, IM Holdings Ltd., Sanctuary Records, BMG or any related entity. Iron Maiden, Eddie, and all band logos and album artwork are trademarks and copyrights of their respective owners.