The contractor came back today to complete work on the house. Between seeing him again and the sunny weather, I feel like I’m timewarped into last year! Hopefully everything will be wrapped up with a minimum of fuss and muss. Last year was a real disaster. I can hardly believe we managed to get out our album with all the shit going on in my live/work space! Its a testament to our iron clad will, to be sure.

The garden is coming up so strong this Spring. Last year at this time, it was all just dirt and pine needles. All my hard work has certainly paid off out there. Now I’m just taking seeds from one area and planting them into another, wherever there happens to be a little blank space. Those are quickly filling in, though! I guess the “cottage garden in a can” seeds worked pretty well. Ha! All the bulbs I put in this Fall have gone nuts, so that I’m actually cutting them and bringing them in to enjoy.

What does this all have to do with music, you ask? Not much perhaps, but our state of mind and circumstances have an awful lot to do with songwriting. I had been writing some pretty sad songs over Fall and Winter, but maybe now I’ll start writing happy ones again?

Check out today’s Daily Source Code #369: Best of Charlie #5 that I put together for Adam. It is basically a collection of all of our conversations over the past year on his show with a bit of added commentary from me. Included are two Lovespirals tracks. It seemed like a good idea at the time I edited it together, but I’m a little bit embarrassed now…

OK it was weird enough to hear my big Best Of Anji Bee feature thingee on Adam Curry’s DSC today but then I was driving around with Ryan listening to the Tom Leykis show on the radio, and I started commenting on the topic to him, and Ryan pulls out his cellphone to dial Tom’s comment line. I told the screener my thoughts and he said I was “the perfect demographic” and put me on next without any wait! I start talking to Leykis, which is already bizarre, but then he keeps me on the line for like 10 minutes! It was so odd to talk to him, because he’s such a radio persona – completely “ON” the whole time. He was going off about how someone should make a Hollywood movie about M.I.L.F.’s, starring an actress that was superhot in the 70’s and a starlet that is superhot now. Pretty good idea. Ryan was way into the Julie Cooper M.I.L.F. storyline on The O.C., as I recall. Anyway, I think I’ve had more than my share of media attention for the day. Right now I’m chillin’ a bottle of French rose to go with some French cheese and a baguette. Maybe if I’m lucky I can enjoy a little sundown moment out on the porch, looking out in the the flowering garden? Mmm…

Joseph from Noise Kontrol backstage at DadaX with Anji, moments before Lovespirals take the stage.

We’ve been working on our new live set the past week or two. It’s quite a bit different from our last tour! We did one show last year with The Flir, so we had worked up a few songs from Free and Easy and our cover of Floyd’s “Cymbaline.” Now we’ve added 2 of our brand new, unreleased, songs to the set. We’ve also been testing out an old LSD tune to play acoustic, rather than the version of “Ring” we did in 2002. It’s cool to have so many more tracks to choose from when we play! Now we can actually have a few extra tunes tucked away for encores, if we need them. The first time we went to Mexico, we only had one album out and no extra tunes for encores. I ended up doing an acapella Billie Holiday song at one gig, and an acapella LSD song at another. This time we’ll actually be prepared. Should be cool.

Matt Rowe recently interviewed us for Music Tap. You can read an excerpt in our interviews section or view the the entire feature at musictap.net. It’s a nice little interview, so check it out when you have a chance!

How odd! I just finished reading a book about George Antheil yesterday, only to see on Yahoo! News that his “Ballet Mecanique” is about to be performed – with the 16 baby grand pianos and various percussion mechanically controlled, as he originally wished. But the nutty composer called for a 152bpm performance, whereas — apparently — pianos can only be played at 138bpm by machine, and 120 by humans. Interesting…