Photos from our session with Barry Manilow!
Here are a few photos taken in the studio with Barry - good memories!
It was a thrill for us to do this session, and we're really, really proud of the result of all the hard work. These are a few shots taken with a cheapo camera just after we'd finished the recording:

The band with Barry in the main recording room

David in his drum booth - that mic next to him is NOT for singing!

The Misadventures of MaD Fusion in Belgium
(A travel log)

Well, where to begin! This tour was truly a unique experience. The shows were fantastic, as were the audiences. We did, however, run into some problems along the way...

First, our drummer, David Rozenblatt, was arriving for the first show a day later than myself and Mat Fieldes, the bass player, in order to play a show at Madison Square Garden with Barry Manilow. As he'd be arriving the morning of the show, which was in the evening, the risk seemed relatively low that he'd miss the first concert. However, being the middle of January, I wasn't so sure about that. He arrived in Amsterdam just fine, so the weather was not a problem for the flight. However, there was a huge, major storm just in that area, and he couldn't get out of Amsterdam! No planes, no trains, buses, nothing. He got on a train that was going as far as Rotterdam, then was herded off it and got in a cab with a couple of other people to come to Brussels. He sat in the cab for several hours while I didn't move in paralyzed traffic, and finally called to say he was staying in Antwerp for the night and would not make the concert. I'd been talking to him off and on the whole time; our presenters wanted updates on his situation, but mostly they wanted me to call him because they said he sounded “extremely despondent” and were getting worried and asked me to reassure him. I soon saw what they meant; David waited long stretches between talking, and when he did say something he sounded like he had absolutely no energy left and just wanted to die and get it over with. I assured him that the world would not end if he couldn't get here, that this was beyond his control and we all knew that, but his spirits had already sunk to the bottom of the ocean, he was clearly out for the night either way.

Mat and I played the show just as a duo, and we somehow pulled it off. Just as I thought we'd successfully gotten through all the obstacles the evening threw at us, I returned to the dressing room to retrieve my computer and banged my head against a low hanging pipe in front of the door so hard it knocked me backward. If the pipe had not been covered with foam, I would have surely split my head open. Guess I wasn't paying attention to the pipe that time - you just can't ever let your guard down, eh? The presenters told me that that was a fairly regular occurrence at the hall, which didn't really make me feel any better knowing that there were scores of unsuspecting musicians giving themselves concussions at their shows there. They gave me a few beers and a shot of rum to numb the pain – Mat also took a few shots for medicinal purposes – then we then went out for dinner with the presenters. It was a very cool evening - decent food, good beer, good company. However, later that night I started getting really, really sick, and proceeded to start a puking fest that would last until 5 am. I heard it hit Fieldes at around 4am. We finally deduced it had to be the mayonnaise for the fries, as that's the only thing we ate in common. And that brings us to the close of our first day of the tour - we're off to a rockin' start, eh? Fortunately, after taking a local remedy provided by our hosts at the B&B I was good to go the next day.

The next morning Mat and I showed up at the hall to load the van. When we saw David there he was quite a wreck - this tour wasn't off to very good start for him. Even Mat and I felt sorry for him. David pointed to a over-sized vehicle and said “Is this what we're driving?” Looking around we saw something that looked like a cargo truck, with two seats up front and no back seats at all. “Nah, that can't be for us,” I assured him, but we were soon told that it was. I asked why we had to turn in our nice, comfortable van with plenty of room for ourselves and our gear for this monstrosity. They said that the owner of the drums they were renting for us insisted that we only use hard cases for the drum kit - he didn't have this problem the day before, but apparently he'd checked his insurance policy which only covered damage if they were in hard cases so he changed his tune. We didn't get a chance to say we'd take financial responsibility for the drums, they'd already gotten the truck, and our van now had to be returned that day. Stuck with this over-sized van-truck, we now needed to take the hard case for the double bass as well, as it could no longer be securely nestled between the drums like it was in our other van. What could we do? We squeezed in there - before I continue I just want to give you an idea of our sizes; David and Mat are both really, really big guys, somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds, and I'm a pretty small dude at around 140 pounds, so you can imagine our discomfort, and mine in particular -  and set out for the next hall in the next town. David was sitting next to me and had to wrap his leg around the gear shift, leaving me less room to shift, as well as less room for my leg. I had to do all the driving; David didn't know how to drive a stick shift, and Mat, who's from New Zealand, knew how to drive a stick but had only ever done so from the other side. I had never driven a truck before, so I was initially a bit freaked at having to manoeuvre this thing on the small, curvy two-way roads we were driving on, but eventually I got the hang of it. We managed to play a surprisingly successful show that night, considering our disgruntled condition. 

The next day we drove to the next town and looked for our hotel. This was not easy to find; we had to take the back roads, then turn up a small and very muddy dirt road which we got stuck in for a little while. We finally found the place, which was at the end of a long, steep and muddy driveway, which I almost got stuck in again. It basically went straight up, so I had no idea how I was going to get back down - something to worry about later, though. We walked up to the place; it was a charming looking old house, beautifully decorated. We were led around to the back and through a small door. There we saw three rooms, one normal size on the ground floor and two extremely small kiddy rooms upstairs; you could tell they were kids rooms by the entrances and decor inside. You had to duck your head to get in, and the door was just wide enough to get your body through, let alone all your luggage. We looked at each other in disbelief that this could be our digs for the next four nights. I explained to our host that this would pose a rather difficult situation for the next four days considering the size of my drummer and bass player. She readily agreed with this assesment, and called the manager of the concert hall we were playing that night to ask him to arrange other lodgings for us. We then went to the hall to unload our equipment, then drove to our new hotel; it was like a castle, with big, beautiful rooms, great homemade breakfasts served for us in the mornings by our extremely gracious hosts and access to the office to use the internet. We were very happy to be there. It was also much closer to the concert hall than the kiddy-palace, and I couldn't understand why we weren't booked there in the first place. I thought it must be very expensive, but it wasn't. Our tour organizers said they'd booked other groups in the kiddy place before and never had any complaints, so they'd never bothered to actually see what it was. This only made sense to me if the other groups were midget acapella ensembles with one suitcase, but I wasn't going to express that thought to our otherwise accomodating tour sponsors.  

We played another show the following night, then had a day off. We were situated pretty close to Liège, so we decided to go there and hang out for the day. I parked the van in a public parking lot outside and we walked around town a bit, then went to a bar for dinner and fine Belgian beer. The beer was good, the fries were great (no mayonnaise this time though) and we were happy. After a little more bar-hopping and a good sobering walk we went back to the over-sized van that evening and discovered that the driver's side window was no longer there. I opened the door and glass fell out all over the street. It was cold and raining. Our mood somewhat flattened, we piled in the van again and drove back to the hotel, freezing our asses off. By the time we got there we were pretty soaked. That brings us to day four...

By now I figured the worst must've already happened and things could only get better. We drove to the next concert hall the following afternoon to unload our gear and do the sound check. After we'd finished I asked if there was any plastic sheets around to cover the broken window. After about an hour of waiting around, they finally came out with a plastic sheet which we then cut and taped the window. This held for a little while, but within 5 -10 minutes of getting on the highway that plastic sheet was gone. The next hall was quite a ways away, around 200 kilometers, during which we had quite a nice breeze happening in the van. The drive was stunningly beautiful, but the route was a bit confusing, and we were often driving on small, winding roads with barely enough room for two regular-sized cars and a steep drop waiting for us below. We did finally find the town and then the hall. When we showed up the crew there were amused by our vehicle. Fortunately, the manger of the hall offered to call the rental company and get us another van, which he did. The show that evening was really a blast for us, and we received an immediate rousing reaction from the audience, so that lifted our spirits a bit.

After the show we loaded our gear into the new van, which was identical to the old one except with an intact driver's side window, and headed back to our castle about 200 kilometres away. Fortunately, it was a pleasantly uneventful drive. We watched a heartwarming film together (Hostel), then got a good night's sleep for the first time on the tour.

The next show was in the city of Brussels itself, and we were really looking forward to performing and hanging out there. I also had some friends there who were coming to the show, so I was looking forward to that. We arrived at the hall, and to my horror the load-in place was an almost completely vertical slide down about 100 meters which I would have to back in to. I wouldn't do it - there's a limit to how much danger I'll willingly put my own life in. Fortunately our sound man was also a professional driver, so he backed it down there no problem. I wondered why he wasn't driving our enormous van, but it's not really productive to dwell on such things. We played a good show, but the audience seemed almost completely unresponsive. This was getting on all our nerves, especially David's, who said that he was getting really annoyed with this audience. I agreed, but what can you do? We continued on with the show, and at the end finally got a response; this is apparently quite common in some major European cities - or in any major city for that matter - that people somehow feel obligated to act like snobs until the very end, and then it's OK to let on that you actually enjoyed the show. It was a tough one though, we worked a lot harder that night, so we were anxious to go out and get some dinner. One small problem; we were now staying in small hotel in Brussels proper, and had seen that we would not be able to get the hard cases up the narrow stairs or in the tiny elevator, so we asked if we could leave our gear at the hall for the night and pick it up in the morning. They said that we couldn't, that they were locking up for the night and no one was going to be there the next day to let us in. Well, we screamed and hollered a bit at this, and over an hour later a solution was found and we were allowed to leave our stuff there overnight. My friend in Brussels who showed up to the gig was waiting patiently for us, and when we'd finally finished moving all our equipment down to the basement to store for the night he took us out to a very hip, exclusive restaurant in the center of town. The place was all white marble, with giant columns and beautiful, tasteful decor, as well as beautiful, tasteful women! Again, we were happy. We ordered some great wine, dined on fresh fish, had a great time and spent a rather large amount of money. No matter, you gotta blow some money on tour, right?

We got back to the hotel, had another good night's sleep, and headed out to our last show, in Sprimont. We arrived at the theater and found ourselves looking at a nice big poster they'd made themselves from our best photo, with MaD Fusion written in large letters, looking really cool in the window. My spirits were suddenly lifted a bit at seeing this nice gesture from the hall, but it would soon dissipate as Mat and David starting giving me a hard time because there were little Canadian flags next to their names. I tried to explain that the reason we were there was because I'd been discovered by the presenters of our tour at a big showcase in Quebec City, after which we were invited to participate in their showcase in Brussels, which led to the present tour. As I'd been invited to perform at the Belgian showcase from their having seen me in Quebec we were therefore considered a Canadian group, which was the reason for the little flags, and who gave a shit anyway, but it all fell on deaf ears and the argument continued until I gave up in frustration, realizing it was just too stupid a scene to continue. As most people seem to think foreign groups are better than home-grown anyway, I thought it was a good publicity move, but try telling that to a proud American and proud New Zealander; I seriously doubt anyone in Belgium would recognize the New Zealand flag anyway. I don't think I would recognize it, for that matter...

Anyway, after the “flags” debacle we loaded in and were told we had about an hour or so before our sound check could start. Asking about restaurants in the area we were told a route to take into the next little town where there would be plenty of good restaurants there. We continued up the steep hill from the hall, took some very windy roads, crossed quaint little wooden bridge, curved around some more, and soon wound up in a beautiful little town filled with lots of interesting restaurants, bars and shops. We saw our poster all over town – the guys were so thrilled to some promotion happening here that the whole Canadian flags issue stayed thankfully dormant. It didn't take us long to find good eats, then good drinks, then it was time to head back down to the hall.

The audience at our concert was really enthusiastic, and we played one of our best shows that night. The CDs were flying off the table too; we all agreed that this was the best possible note to end on.

Well, all's well that ends well, eh?

-Matt Herskowitz, MaD Fusion