Rods Diary Feb 10 -- Sydney 2

Woke about 11am, shower and breakfast and on to laptop. Tomorrow I am going off tour for a few days diving on the Great Barrier Reef up in Cairns. I will miss Brisbane and Yokohama but will be back for the Tokyo show. I deserve a bit of R and R!! But more about this later. However as I am going to be off I want to catch up with as much as I can so l don't have to do too much the next few days. So I settled down to a long session of catching up with this diary (as you have probably noticed), drafting out some significant press releases about touring, the success of Live After Death DVD (which you will all be pleased to know looks to be no 1 or at least top 3 in most places round the world.. Although I say it myself it really is a great package!) And organising media schedules for up and coming dates. Plus clearing any backlog. Pretty well managed it too and have got largely up to date even to the point of writing this the morning after -- its only 10am and I am on the plane to Cairns.

Hotel room Sydney
Time: 3:35pm.
Sunday 10th February 2008

Well, well, well, how are we all today?
Aahhheeee!!!!!!

Having an absolute blast down 'ere in Oz I can tell you.
We played a couple of shows in Melbourne last week and we got the second one in Sydney tonight.

Swedish rock radio station Bandit Rock 106-3 (www.bandit.se) will host a Bandit Maiden Party at Pub Anchor in Stockholm on Feb 28th (9 pm - 3am) to celebrate the release of Iron Maiden's "Live After Death" DVD.

ROD DIARY - FEB 9

Can we sleep???? Forget it!! Lay awake til 1am and got up. As I said before we are 11 hours ahead here so 1am is 2pm GMT so by then I have plenty of emails to keep me happy!! Especially when we are starting to schedule media for LA and after in South America -- it does actually take a fair bit of planning if you want to get it right and with Mary and Val we do try to. Also some press releases to work on -- I have always done this myself from the beginning as I know what I want to get across so its easier and better than using PRs etc to do it. Sometimes I will have Dave do a draft along a brief if I am busy but generally I write them especially on the road when Dave is busy playing with his cameras and of course his new Maiden News for you guys. Due to having to do that intro in Melbourne he is a bit behind but promises to have a double bumper 10 min issue on India and Oz ready for you very soon. We shall see!!!!!

Lauren Harris — daughter of IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris — has posted a new seven-minute video blog from the Tokyo, Japan stop of her current road trip as the support act for IRON MAIDEN. Watch the clip below.

According to IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson, the group's concert in Tokyo, Japan tonight (Saturday, February 16) was filmed for an upcoming DVD. No further details are currently available.

CAVALERA CONSPIRACY — the new project featuring SEPULTURA founding members Max (guitar, vocals) and Igor Cavalera (drums) alongside vocalist Joe Duplantier (bass) of the French progressive death metallers GOJIRA and SOULFLY guitarist Marc Rizzo — will be IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson's guests on Friday, March 7 during Bruce's weekly BBC 6 Music radio show, aptly named "The Bruce Dickinson Friday Rock Show".

Rod's diary - Feb 8

Awake, shower, breakfast, emails -- another typical tour morning. Its bags in the lobby by 9.15 am so they can go ahead onto the plane. Back in the room work til its time to leave at about 11. Everyone on time, off we go to airport, cars go straight to steps of the plane, the air crew and our road crew are all on board and prepared so its off we go with Bruce once again at the controls heading for Sydney.

Things are pretty crazy at Maiden HQ at the moment, with lots of emails flying around saying 'ooh this is cool' or 'post this'. So here are a few bits and bobs that have landed in the IM.com inbox today...

Rod Diary Feb 7

Up fairly early as a few things l need to get done. After a couple of hours work and go out to get some breakfast as feeling a bit stir crazy. A muffin with bacon and egg, delicious. Take a 20 min walk then return to room and work. Mid afternoon went back down to studio to check the intro footage with Dave. We spent a couple of hours making a few tweaks and then headed to the venue to be there before the audience were let in so we could run it "live" on screen with the whole intro package (I wont go into detail -- wait til you see the show) which we did and I felt it worked well. It is something we will be adding to occasionally as we go along so it sort of represents the whole of this tour). Also ran it past Steve as I always would when music is involved as the footage of course has music to it. Steve is a real stickler on edits -- as of course you would all expect -- but fortunately this time, for a change(!), he was happy first time round so we were able to use it that night. I think it was a cool idea which works well so hope you all do too.