BLAZE BAYLEY (ex-IRON MAIDEN) has issued the following update:

"So far so good.

Our evil plan of doing small warm up shows instead of just rehearsing seems to be working. We have changed the set around at each of the gigs so far. At the Victoria's Biker's Pub in Coalville it worked in ways I didn't expect. It really shows the songs' streangths in a differrent way when you put them next to songs you normally wouldn't think of.

At the Vic we opened with 'Voices From The Past' and from a vocal point of veiw i really enjoyed it. It felt good starting off a bit slower and building up to the faster songs. The main problem Ihad there was the smoke and the lights. Some of the newer songs I'm still getting the lyrics sorted out for, so Ihad them written out and put 'em at the front of the stage. Unfortunately the lights flashed or went dim on the songs where i needed to look at my notes, so I ended up jamming a couple songs, but it was fun.

The next problem was the smoke machine. Every time I went back to the drums to get a drink of water the smoke machine came on and I couldn't see my water! So during one song I missed a whole verse and chorus while trying to find it!

The exact same thing used to happen to me, years ago, when i was in Iron Maiden on the X-Factour. The lighting guy put the smoke machine right in front of the drum riser - and that was a bloody big smoke machine - I couldn't see myself let alone the water.

Great to see so many people at the Bullingdon Arms in Oxford on Thursday. We changed the set again and left it up to Jay to write out the set lists. This, of course, caused a few problems 'coz not all the set lists were the same. It could be 'coz Jay had a really bad flu starting or 'coz there was pickle on the sandwiches they gave us. Anyay, no one in the band was quite sure what song was next and we kept asking Jay. So the set didn't flow quite the way we expected.

I really enjoyed the gig' coz it was so different. This time I could see the water... but it ran out during the first half of the set.

We have confirmed another little warm up show in Tamworth on Sunday the 7th of December at Vertigo. It is Tamworth's only metal pub and it is owned and run by people who love this music. The gig at Vertigo will be an open reheasal. It's the last chance we get to go through all the stuff in the set before Z7 so it will be quite casual. Which means if we make mistakes or have problems in any of the songs we will stop and work on them before moving on to the next song. We will be filming it as well for part of the documentry DVD disc that goes with the Z7 gig .

Cheers and thanks for all the support you have have given, and are giving us, through these difficult times."