OK, I’m going to admit that I watch American Idol. I brought it up at the show the other day, and someone in the crowd shouted out “Scott needs to go home!” But he ended up staying last week. I’m wondering if he might go home tonight, though? There seems to be a strong contingent of teenage girls into Federov, for whatever reason. I find him very annoying. The other 3 have been my favorites all along. But Bo is my boy. Gotta love that hair! And most of his song choices are really imaginative and sound great with his deep, bluesy voice. He has really blown me away a few times, and I don’t ever expect to be blown away watching that silly show. Anyway, the results show is on in half an hour and I feel kind of bad that I forgot to vote last night. I’m really bad about that whole voting part of the show.
Soundclick Music Updates
If you’ve ever wondered what Anji did musically before joining forces with
Ryan, then check out her solo page at: soundclick/anjibee. You can also listen to an interview by DJ Carolee during
Lovespirals 2002 tour on Anji’s page. While you’re there, be sure to see both soundclick/lovespirals and soundclick/lovespiralsdownwards for some exclusive content!
Datura
I was going through some old recordings I did with my old band, Datura, and decided to put them online for fans to check out. It’s funny hearing them after so much time has gone by. I realize how little I really knew about music or singing when I began. What’s funny to think about is how I kept slacking off on sending a demo to Projekt back then. Veronica begged me to send Sam a CDR, thinking he’d want to release our stuff, but back then I didn’t even have a home burner, so I never got around to it. Someone from Tess was asking for a demo, too… I dunno. We were always popular when we played shows, but I guess I got so caught up in trying to make the perfect recording, doing endless song revisions and new recordings, that I never took it to the next level. It really started out as a recording project just to learn studio techniques at college, but I started getting more serious as things progressed. Eventually I suppose we just got sick of the whole gothic subculture that embraced us, and wanted to move on to other types of music. Of course, I ended up being on Projekt Records anyhow, oddly enough! If someone had told me that I’d be singing for Ryan back then, I’d never have believed it, that’s for sure. I don’t know if Projekt would have really liked the later stuff Datura did, which is some of what I put online. I don’t even want to distribute the more swirly gothic songs, like the one that was on that comp with Jarboe that C. Reider did… People said we sounded like Current 93. Anyway, for the time being at least, there’s some old stuff at www.soundclick.com/anjibee.
Su Tissue's Amp
John from the Suburban Lawn’s (anyone remember them?) lives down the street and was having a little garage sale last weekend, so I brought Ryan along for the friend’s only presale. Turns out he picked up Su Tissue’s old Bassman amp head from John. The thing sounds pretty amazing. Ryan geeked out and did a ton of research on it, narrowing down the date and everything. I guess he should really be posting about this, not me. I was just kinda tickled by the fact that this thing was formerly being used by a punk rock princess!
Last night's show
Thanks to our fans, friends, and family for coming out to support us last night! Also a big thanks to Rodney Rodriguez for playing guest guitar in our set. Oh, and to Louise Fraser for booking us with her band, The Flir. Ryan and I had a lot of fun hanging with Rod after soundcheck over at Poom Thai and I really enjoyed sharing a drink with Louise after our show. Good times, all the way around! We’ll definitely have to set another show up sometime soon.
Lovespirals Performance THIS WEEK!
Rodney Rodriguez (formerly of The Von Trapps and Elysium) who performed
with Love Spirals Downwards for their final live shows in 1998 — as well as with Suzanne Perry’s new band, Melodyguild — will be joining Ryan and Anji at their show this Thursday on second guitar. This is the first time Lovespirals have worked with another guitarist, so it should be pretty exciting. Doron will not be joining the band on sax this time, so all the way around it will be a very different show than past events. If you live in the area, you should drop by 14 Below, in Santa Monica, to check it out. Full details on the previous news posting.
Interview Archive
Just finished uploading a fairly complete interview archive to the LSD site this weekend. It’s composed of 18 pdf files of scanned magazine articles dated between 1992 and 1999, some of which are quite interesting. The first Fond Affexxions one is particularly cool, as it contains a number of unique photographs that we don’t even have copies of.
If anyone out there has a magazine feature that’s not included in the archive, I’d love to get a jpg file of it for our collection! I’m especially looking for the Option one that’s a special issue on music and LSD, the drug. Ryan’s copy has gone missing…
Anyway, hopefully folks will get a kick out of reading the history of the band in the band’s own words, through all of these great magazine articles. Kind of makes me nostalgic for the days before the internet, ya know? Since 1999, nearly everything we do is for websites! There’s something about thumbing through paper magazines that’s kind of cool — even if it wastes trees, creates refuse, and all of that…
Check out the archive over at lovespiralsdownwards.com in the “interviews” section!
Baby it's the guitar man
Our upcoming show is going to be quite different from our previous ones. Ryan is going all out with his live guitar work now. He’s using my Strat and Fender amp now, which gives him a really different sound than the hollowbody he was bringing to shows before. Now he’s all about guitar solos! He did one or two in past shows, but mainly focused on the rhythm guitar stuff. I prefer what he’s doing now, ’cause it’s a much better use of his talent. It’s a shame that practically every LSD show he did was just strumming acoustic guitar. That didn’t show of his skill at all! I did see him play bass for “Sound of Waves” live at KUCI, which was cool, but still not that big a deal compared to this. Anyway, he’ll probably be embarassed by this gushing, but I’m just so excited to hear him play guitar solos live. It makes performing that much more cool for me.
PS does anyone get the Bread reference?
Live rhythm section
Ryan was talking to his old friend, Tom, about doing percussion for our live shows last year sometime. We haven’t taken the time to meet up and work together yet, though. Anyway, it turns out that he’s playing drums for the band Red Lily at the 14 Below show. Great opportunity for him to check out our live set and see if he thinks he’d fit into the sound. Oh yeah, we also heard from Rodney, who we were talking to about playing bass for us. There’s a slight chance Ryan will have him do second guitar for our show, instead. I think that would sound great. Maybe we can still find a bassist in the near future, and really round out our live performance.
Coffee
I think I’m going to give up coffee for the sake of my voice. I’ve been reading that caffeine is bad for the vocal chords. So is sugar, surprisingly. So sugary coffee is probably really bad. I love coffee, and have loved it since High School so this is going to be a big sacrifice for me. I haven’t had any the past two days and I do feel a bit cranky and tired, but oh well.
I love the smell of coffee. I’m going to crave it when I smell it. Just thinking about it right now makes me want some. Darn it. This is going to be hard.
Lovespirals Live Show!
Lovespirals will be playing a show next month with The Flir. This is their first performance since the 2002 Tour. Ryan and Anji will be doing an all-new set composed mainly of tracks from their upcoming album, Free & Easy. It’s a very moody set with lots of soulful, bluesy numbers and plenty of guitar work. Copies of “Windblown Kiss” will be on hand for sale, which the band will gladly autograph. Come on out and get a sneak peek at what Lovespirals have
been up to the past few years!
April 14, 2005 at 14 Below
1348 14th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401
14below.com
Cost: $7 ($6 w/ flyer) | 21+ with ID
Doors open 8 pm
The Flir go on at 9:30 and Lovespirals follow them at 10:30.
Don’t forget to download and print the official flyer for your discount.
Napoleon Dynamite?
Many people I know have been praising this as a great comedy. I’m into odd comedies as much as the next person (ie: Spinal Tap, Ishtar, Death to Smoochie) but I didn’t get this one at all. I feel like I must have missed something, but I don’t think so. So if anybody who ‘got it’ could help me out here, I’ll listen to what you have to say.