Monday morning after a big weekend. We flew to Brisbane for the Nicstar Christmas party on Friday night. They had a full stage set up for jamming into the early hours. We all had a ball drinking & playing (pulled out a few old songs from the first album, Rob on bass…).

Foo Fighters at Carrara Stadium (Dave Grohl out on the platform to the right).

Hangovers on the mend, Rob & Nic took us down to the Gold Coast on Saturday night for the Foo Fighters at Carrara football stadium. The Fooies were fantastic – the full blown rock show, Dave Grohl running back and forth along a 70 metre catwalk stretching out into the vast crowd. It was a thoroughly engaging set, one of the best live shows I’ve seen for a long time.

Tenacious D opened proceedings. Jack Black & Kyle Gass were totally hillarous, as you’d expect – complete with mock band break-up & make-up live on stage. Still laughing about it…

Rob & Mick at Fooies – Max in RHS foreground.

By yesterday morning we were spent, up at 6am to catch a flight back to Melbourne.

That was a great weekend.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

Mat Ward, emailed these shots to me after yesterday’s post (Mat’s the band’s official, long-serving photographer)…

“Hi Marty, thought you might like a slightly better shot of Rob. Here’s two from the Dan O’Connell in 2004 – and one from the Lock In Love In in 2005.”

And here they are –

As mentioned yesterday, Rob was our bass guitarist for 3 years right from the start in 2003. We’re catching up with him in Brisbane later today. Thanks to Mat Ward for digging into his photo archives & plucking these gems out for us. Check out Mat’s stuff at eyehunger.com.

Checkya tomorrow, airport in a few hours.
Fires out.

Flying up to Brisbane tomorrow to hang out with our first bass player, Rob Oshlack, for the weekend. Rob played with us from the very beginning in 2003 before moving up north with his family in 2006. These days he runs a tech company called Nicstar & the Christmas party is on like Donkey Kong tomorrow night. They have a permanent, fully equipped stage set up in the company warehouse – so there’s a whole bunch of jamming going on after work whenever they feel the urge.

The shot above is a little out of focus (band shots of Rob are hard to come by these days). It was taken at one of our shows in October 2005 – the ‘Lock In Love In’, I do believe. That’s Rob on Max’s right.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

Back in September 2008, we played about a dozen shows across Ukraine as part of a two month European tour. I kept a video diary of the tour & this episode below features the Goblin Biker Festival in Odessa and some of the shows leading up to it…

We returned to Ukraine in 2009 for a weekend of shows across the country. It was totally amazing but we haven’t been back there since – economic and apparent political/social unrest conspiring against us. We certainly miss our friends there. Maybe next year…

Checkya tomorrow.
Fires out.

Clive posted this video link on Facebook. Right now he’s out in a remote desert region, somewhere north of the Nullarbor Plain, South Australia.

Clive’s been on a solo traveling odyssey around Australia with caravan (Missy Daisy) in tow. He’s a long time supporter of The On Fires & even has some bootleg recordings of early shows (which he keeps well hidden). Clive was there at almost every show when we played every Sunday during 2005 at the mighty Yak Bar, Abbotsford.

It’s rumoured Clive might be back in Melbourne some time early in 2012.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

TC shot me this video link late last night – sitting there bright and early for Monday morning. Great way to start the week…

Nice work TC!

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

It’s two weeks today since our final show for the year at Cherry Bar, Melbourne. We’re now back into the writing phase for the next release. We’re also in talks with our US promoter about next year’s tour of North America. At this early stage we look like adding Chicago to the tour – as well as shows in Florida, Georgia, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

As part of next year’s US tour in March, we’re also discussing the release of an EP on vinyl, along with the usual download & CD release. More info here as it comes to hand – including US tour dates as we lock ’em in.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

An old family friend of mine, David Evans released a solo album this year called ‘Internal Temporal Order’. I know this because his mum told me late last week. Anyway, I jumped onto David’s MySpace & listened to a track from the album (1am to 2am). It’s a really cool, ambient instrumental sound.

David Evans.

Before this solo release, David played drums (and other instruments) in Melbourne band, This Is Your Captain speaking. They released their first album to critical acclaim in 2005, signing to UK label, Resonant Records & touring Europe shortly after that.

I remember meeting with David & band mates for a few beers early in 2007 to talk about their OS tour experience. We were just about to take off to Europe for the first time & wanted a heads-up on what to expect. Check the video below, a song called ‘lift’ taken from This Is Your Captain Speaking’s ‘Storyboard’ album –

Checkya later,
Fires out.