During the week, Mat Ward created this pic which resulted in a flurry of Facebook activity on our band page.

“Miniature Rock Bands are the latest craze. Every home should have one!”

Mat with miniture On Fires.

Checkya later.
Fires out

Another big day today. Started with the mastering suite to finalise the latest releases. Sounds fantastic – always great when John at Crystal works on our stuff.

John Ruberto & Marty X at Crystal Mastering, Melbourne.

We’ve been mastering there for years & it’s always lifted our audio mixes up a notch. John was talking today about how there’s a lot of competition our there with people now mastering from their garages & audio engineers offering the service as an ‘add-on’. It sounds crazy to me that bands would spend endless hours on their recordings (and a pile of cash) only to put the whole sound in jeopardy by skimping on mastering. It’s one of the most important steps & there’s no substitute for the guys who really know what they’re doing.

The rest of the day was spent running around like a headless chicken locating power supplies and other stuff related to the upcoming China tour (Melbourne’s traffic is definitely approaching Sydney’s grid-lock mayhem).

Now, I’m sitting at home working on promo-videos for China – which should have been done a week ago. Ahhhhhhhhh! (It’s a Friday night dammit)

He he.
Fires out.

Yesterday was a big one, starting with sitting in line at the Chinese Consulate. The good news – we’ve finally got our visas which is a good thing seemings as we’re touring there next month. We leave next Thursday.

After the good visa news, we started set up for a video shoot which started around 1pm & finished about 9 hours later, give or take.

Max & Marty on set yesterday for the next video single release.

We’re both really sore today – I’d have to liken the experience to several hours of aerobics with a few breaks here and there to catch your breath. And we’re not exactly aerobic fit at this point. When the final take was done, we had general collapse. Suffice to say, it’ll be an energetic vid. I think we shot the song about 40 times.

Tomorrow, we head into mastering for the final phase of the next recordings – with a single & video to be released in time for the China tour.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.

Yep. Back at the Chinese Consulate in the visa process. This time, surely.

More news later today – we’re shooting a video for the latest single this afternoon.

Check ya later.
Fires out.

Something special for today’s post – and we’ll also run this article as tomorrow’s post. Tell your friends.

Mat Ward is not just our official photographer he’s also a creative IT Project/Business/Service Analyst with great team leadership, stakeholder management and customer relationship building skills. His background is in IT infrastructure at large companies such as Australia Post, Bendigo Bank, Hewlett Packard and Coles Myer.

Mat Ward with Chewy.

He’s currently between gigs and available for new roles straight away. You can see more information and contact him at Linkedin: http://au.linkedin.com/in/matward

While looking for fulltime work Mat’s also available if you need someone to take photos at an event or gig or if you’re looking for someone to help you out with a little creative writing.

You can also view Mat’s creative side at www.eyehunger.com – his very own site featuring his photographic & writing works.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

Visa Stuff:
Just spent an hour (this time) at the Chinese consulate. And we had all the relevant documentation. They’ve ticked the boxes, so we should have those all-important visas by next week.

Michael From SOM – Now An Actor:
Micheal from Sons Of Messengers just dropped over. Great catching up. He’s playing Hamlet next week at a theatre somewhere in Mt Waverley (will post the details here when he shoots us the link). We’re going down to check it out – only just found out he was an actor.

TC Does it again:
Tony C just sent this pic through on Facebook. The world’s coolest fridge?

Release Update:
Mixing is done. The 2nd new song landed last night and we made the mistake of listening to it before going to bed. No sleep possible til very late in the early morning. Tired today – but pumped up something stoopid. Time for mastering & we’re ready to release.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

Had a massive night last night. The latest mix of one of the new singles landed at about 5pm. Pulled the speakers out of the studio and set up in the lounge, cranked the volume, cracked a beer & sat back to listen. A couple of mates dropped over to hear the new stuff & shoot the breeze over a few quiet ones. The verdict was good. A few hours later Scotty rolled in from darts & we sat up til all hours YouTubing classic videos at volume through the studio speakers. Awesome. This was one of em –

Love it when the rock kicks in after the acapella.

Gotta make a decision today about the latest mix. To fiddle with it a little more – or to leave it right where it is. I’m thinking, the latter.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

As promised earlier in the week – Beard Rock vid number 2…

Mat Ward sent us the link to the above vid… and he wrote, “The Beards in excellent 80’s rock mode. And a video parodying Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up vid.” Yes indeed, bring it on we say.

Recording news:
Just heard another mix of the next single. Scary. Need to go away for a little & listen in prep for that last round of changes tomorrow. Agonisingly close…

Checkya later,
Fires out.

Sitting in line today at the Chinese consulate waiting for our turn at the visa counter. The place was packed – lunch time crowd… A swing and a miss. Got to the counter, didn’t have the relevant details (they never told us to have said relevant details) and the girl at the counter seemed thrilled that we’d have to come back and do it all again. At least she was happy. Nice way to blow a coupla hours & parking fees for a smiley bureaucratic ‘don’t argue’.

New Release Saga:
Ya know, we’re nearly there: Heard the first mix last night & sent it back for some adjustment. That said, it sounded huge. Dave Carr is a genius (producer). We’ll have to wait a couple of days for the next proof though. Dave’s main computer died yesterday. And thus, he was expressing a desire to smash it into small pieces. All in all, it’s been an expensive recording session on both sides. One dead computer, another one on the way out, a dead hard-drive costing over $2000 to fix, a blown out Marshall head needing complete valve replacement, and we’re not done yet…

Checkya tomorow,
Fires out.

Long live the beard rock…

Mat Ward sent us a link to the video above. There were a couple of videos he drew our attention to – so we’ll feature the 2nd one in another post this week. Ahhh, bring it on we say here at TOF HQ.

Checkya tomorrow,
Fires out.