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…

I can hardly believe I faxed the RIAA today. I felt all creepy doing it. Even though I’m a recording artist, I feel that most of what they’ve been doing is largely misguided and wrong. I guess I think of them as “evil.” But I do want to get ISRC codes for our songs so that BMI can track our royalties. We don’t get tons, but it’s nice to get checks now and again from radio play and stuff.

Finally got around to ordering Griffin’s turntable interface for Final Vinyl. I had used FV before to grab some stuff off the tape deck, but now I’m grabbing stuff from the 1200, which is really weird. The first album I converted to mp3 was some tracks from The Best of Buffy Sainte-Marie. I don’t mind hearing the record static on that album at all. Just keeps the 60’s vibe. It is really weird hearing record sounds on an iPod, though, I must admit.

I converted some Mick Karn and Japan stuff after that, which was cool, but I’m realizing I need to pick up Quiet Life on CD. That’s got to be my favorite album of theirs. It would be cool to hear it all quiet for once, ironically I suppose. Actually the first Japan tune I grabbed was “Suburban Love” which I had listened to not that long ago and realized how much it sounds like the kind of stuff that Ryan’s been into the past year or so. The whole instrumental breakdown part is tres “Summertime” and “Peace Love & Happiness” and hence “Sandcastles.”

Anyway, the converter is pretty cool. There’s a little hum, but unless the music is super quiet, you don’t notice it much. It still beats having to buy everything in my extensive record collection over again in CD format. And now I have a great excuse to listen to some old records I haven’t checked out in awhile, to decide what I really do want in digital format.

Wow. I really like how the site looks now with the extra box for the podcast. The page is finally balanced out just right. Before we had a blank space just waiting to be filled. I guess I could standardize all our feed tags at some point, though… It seems there really are no web “standards” at this point, just the unspoken rule that they should be orange. I read about this new CSS way of making the links now, but we’re still using small images. I dunno…

It occurs to me that I should update the LSD site to link their discography to the new CDBaby pages now. We just sent out a box of CDs to them to sell because they had Ardor back-ordered by someone somehow. I thought it would stop offering them for sale if they were out of stock, but I guess not. I dunno how much longer the albums will be in press, but I’ll keep sending them over as long as I can get them. I think CDBaby taps into a different fanbase than Projekt, which is kinda cool.

I’m already sort of looking forward to recording the next podcast. I wonder how many people have heard the first one?

I don’t get heckler fans that write to say, basically, that they do not accept Lovespirals and want Love Spirals Downward to return. I mean, how do they think Ryan is going to react? “Oh, they’re right. I better try to record another album like Idylls now.” I suppose these same people hassle Robin Guthrie about Cocteau Twins? Bands can’t remain static forever. People change and move on. Band members grow apart and lose interest. Things change. A decade is a long time for a little indie band to stick together, really. The bands that stay together longest are the ones who attain great popular success, and even those don’t always make it. Like Pink Floyd. They had to go through several different variations to get through their 30 years. I can hardly believe that Roger has rejoined the others for this special gig they just announced. Hopefully it will turn out better than the Cocteau Twins reunion that was supposed to go down earlier this year…