We’ve pretty much got the master disc together for the new album, but now we’re stuck on the artwork. That was kinda the case with Windblown Kiss, as I recall… Back then, we flew out to San Fran for a whirlwind photography session with Susan Jennings, but this year she has been too busy to hook up, so we’re trying to go it alone. We’ve been crazy mad busy, too, honestly. Even with the last album, I put together the cover only to have Projekt reject (or should I say rejekt) it and had to start over. I was lucky to find a few nature shots alongside the band photos that were pretty cool.

This time around, I think Ryan would like to try something different from his past albums. You know, everything up to now has been an indistinct fuzzy image made up more of color than form, in the tradition of early 4AD and Projekt. Now that we’re on our own, I think we want something more representative of us. I’ve been tossing around various ideas for the cover, but I’m not sure anything has quite stuck yet. Plus it’s been so fricken hot that I just don’t feel creative. Especially not sitting here at my computer in this bright hot room. Yuck. I just pray that some muse appears and rescues me!

The third episode is now up and ready to download from the Lovespirals site! Ryan and I chit chat about our recent Pacific Northwest roadtrip and announce the inclusion of our podcast in the both the iTunes store and Odeo. I’m excited that these two services will make it much easier for fans and friends to subscribe as well as for new folks to discover us. I’m not really sure how many subscribers or listeners we have right now, but I imagine it’ll take a bit of time for everyone to find out we’ve got a podcast and start listening regularly. I was a bit hesitant to check out podcasts at first, but being a fan of Kevin Rose, I started listening to TwiT and now Diggnation, and I’m sort of hooked. I’ve begun wondering what other fun shows are out there that I should check out. If anyone reading this has a favorite, please comment back with a link!

OK I don’t often find points of connection with Billy Corgan, but this quote from a Business Week interview definitely struck a chord with me:

Up until MySpace, my interactions with the Internet were negative. The anonymity can bring out the negative in people who use message boards. People argue, and I’m not the kind of person who’s going to argue it out. But MySpace encourages a personal connection. It makes everyone kind of equal. I don’t have a message board on my own site anymore. I felt like I was creating a forum for people to be negative.

I dunno why people are jerks on messageboards, but they totally are. I don’t really miss our old one too much. Forums seem really 90’s now, anyway. Ha!

Our pal and sometimes sax player, Doron Orenstein, has a gig tonight in the So Cal area:

I’m playing with the very up-and-coming SHE-J Joplin so it’s gonna be funky, it’s gonna be raw, but it’s gonna be sweet. Just come on out – aaiiiight? This Saturday- 10pm-ish at:
DELAY @ The Canal Club
2025 Pacific Ave
Venice Beach, CA
All Ages
Sushi till 1am
Free!

Watched the Pink Floyd set streaming live and had tears in my eyes when Dave started scatting over his “Wish You Were Here” solo. Man, they sounded great. Dave’s guitar was amazing. He totally still has it. If they really do tour, as some have speculated, you can be sure that I will be there somehow. I wish I could’ve been in England tonight!

We recently hooked up with the marketing director over at Griffin Technology and he kicked us down a box of goodies! I’ve been checking out some of their stuff this week, like the iTalk and lapel mic. Its really weird hearing sound coming out of the iPod through the little speaker. I’m thinking I’ll use it to quickly capture lyrical ideas when I’m on the move. I used to use a cassette recorder for that, but I could never find blank tapes to use, since I don’t exactly listen to cassettes anymore, and it’s such a pain in the ass finding the part of the tape with the song idea you want. Digital files have really simplified that process. Still, it is sort of interesting going back and listening to all the stuff I’ve recorded to tape since 1998. Some ideas I’d totally forgotten about. I was just telling Ryan about the recording I have of the very first time I asked him to “write me a song” and we sat down and jammed with guitar and voice. Maybe I should digitize some of that stuff? I guess I’d just use the Griffin iMic to plug the cassette player into and then record it into Final Vinyl, like I’ve been doing with the turntable… that’s what I did with some old LSD tape demos a few years back. That iMic might be one of the handiest things those guys came up with! I also use it to power my speakers and it sounds considerably better than when I plug ’em in direct. I’m excited for their SmartDeck connector to come out this summer. Right now I’m using an old 90’s CD car adapter and the cable is too fricken long.

We just uploaded our 2nd Chillin’ with Lovespirals podcast tonight, wherein we talk about our involvement with the Pink Floyd fan tribute, None of Us is Pink. This time around we spent just a little under 10 minutes talking, but who knows how long the next one will be? We’re thinking we’ll be doing them once every 2 weeks, but that could change if things are more or less exciting, I suppose. Ryan’s still not sure what all we’ll talk about, but we love to talk, so I’m not too worried about it. Now I’d love to know how many people are listening and if we’ve done an OK job getting the word out there that the podcast exists?

Wow I feel like such a geek right now. I just upgraded iPodder and am downloading the new episode of TWIT (This Week in Tech), plus I’m using the newly installed MacFLAC to decode a few bootleg tape trader files, and I’m getting ready to encode our latest podcast from AIF to mp3 (whilst I blog, of course). Oh, and I just got a big box of goodies from Griffin (Derrick is da man!) and so I’ve been checking out iTalk and iTrip a little bit. They always say Aquarians love technology, and I’d have to say that is completely true!!! Back to the fun…