Ryan is currently the Personality of the
Week on the South African based Underground Press website.
They’ve included some nice photos of him alongside his rather brief
interview. He’s a man of few words…

Crap! I just realized I missed Robin’s show at Club Violaine last night!!! I was working out in Santa Monica and went to dinner afterwards with some friends and it totally slipped my mind. Somehow I was thinking it was tonight. What a bummer… I really enjoyed his show at The Knitting Factory a few months back. I wonder how it went last night with the whole improv set thing?

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

Picked up a copy of Tim Buckley’s Happy Sad the other day and was blown away. I loved Goodbye and Hello but had mixed feelings about some of the other stuff I’d heard. This album is really dreamy and groovy all the way through. One of the songs that most grabbed my attention was “Love from Room 109 at the Islander (On Pacific Coast Highway).” I’ve read that Buckley was originally an Orange County musician who performed locally, and The Islander sounded familiar, like I’d seen it around, so I looked it up. Indeed, there’s an Islander Motel not too far from here. On a whim, I went out to see it, with Happy Sad loaded into my iPod shuffle. I can’t say for sure it’s the same place, but the architecture is classic 60’s and it’s right near the beach (hence the ocean sounds in the song). The size of the hotel seems to fit the 109 room number. I resisted the urge to get out and actually look for it. Anyway… just a romantic gesture for a romantic song by a romantic artist.