Now we have added the song Caetano and a Vancouver track called Andrea’s fault to the new new album. I spent all night last night sitting around listening to cassette tapes and flipping through notebooks from the last two years of songs trying to decide what songs to record next. Don't want to ruin a good thing by choosing the wrong songs. 

I got pulled over last night by the cops. I was flying down the highway with this song we just tracked Caetano blasting—I was trying to see how long I could drive with my hands held up above my head flailing in the wind with this song blasting. This cop pulls me over—‘do you know how fast you were driving just now?” ‘Uh no. ‘Well you passed me going over thirty miles an hour over the speed limit.” “Really? Wow.” “Were you aware that you didn't have your hands on the wheel of the vehicle?” ‘Yea, I know. I was just testing the alignment for a second.” He gave me a “smaller ticket” he claims than he could have. But this song was just killing me. it made me want to drive fast and scream for joy. There are these cello parts in it that are so good. Vancouver and Bloopy are both geniuses. It is an honor to be in a band with them. 

Watching the wilco documentary I'm trying to break you heart. This is an amazing story whether you are a fan or not of this band. Whereby the band, the artists, lose their “contract” with the label right after making the most ambitious album of their career. But it comes off more like the artists dropped the label. They just realized how little the label was actually doing for them versus what they could for themselves and contrasting that with their own value. Got picked up by a different label (owned by the same parent corporation ironically) and went on to a have a huge “hit” with it. I think more and more this is going to happen in the art world, with music books and film. Real art is going to prevail in spite of these nameless, faceless, unwilling to take responsibility or take a stand, large multi-national corps that run the entertainment world—they are doing their best to ruin art for the sake of money, but somehow art is still surviving in its own way—thriving really. It happens in the coolest and most coincidental ways. MTV and clear channel corporate radio will always be full of shit—that’s their business—to pump out shit. [I typed in the words corporate and radio into google search engine and its just millions of pages and sites talking about how it sucks and what to do about it by just regular people venting on their own sites. Here is the link; http://www.google.com/search?q=corporate%20radio . There is this huge backlash going on worldwide against this push towards corporate crap taking over our lives. People always ask me how do you find the good stuff? And I guess you just keep your ears and eyes open for it. Because the truth is that in today's America the good stuff isn't on the surface anymore. Maybe it never was. I’m not that old enough to have enough hindsight to know really. Sometimes the good stuff slips through the cracks regardless such as the case was with the Norah Jones album or with Rufus getting in the door. 

But I still feel like I'm missing something here with all of this. Me and everyone else who rambles and rants about this stuff. Being an art snob. Cause really, I mean, in the end, who and how can you really judge what is the crap and what is the art. I mean, how do you know? who is to say that Radiohead is more art than Britney’s last album? or Nelly’s? its easy to sit and rattle the shit off like its so black and white. But who is to say. All I know for me personally is that I can only watch MTV for a few seconds literally at a time because when I turn it on it just seems like a very insulting and pre-school crap-fest. And the same goes for any radio stations owned by clear channel which are the majority in America now. but when I turn on college radio or national public radio or satellite radio you hear a lot of variety of some pretty interesting stuff. and the only stations playing us are the college or npr or the satellite stations so I guess that's a good way to sum it up if you want to be fair, which is what I am trying to be with it. i don't want to be one of those people that sits in some ivory tower and says that artists like Nelly pink sisquo and jlo all suck and Radiohead u2 and white stripes are cool. Cause in the end that's just bullshit. Its all just having fun with arts and crafts basically and one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.