Just saw the FMQB charts this week. Sleep with you made the top 25. In 23^rd place this week. That's awesome. DJs are spinning the album and the peeps are digging it. 

Processing a lot. Had almost over an hour CHP today with one creation. A wild ride. 

Current Spin: Justin Clayton, Limb. This is a great guitar pop record by a master songwriter and producer. Really good. Listening to this on the way over the causeway from the beach to the mainland extremely loud. Makes you wonder what more is left to create with music. that's how good it is. makes you not able to think of anything better to do on your own. so you just don't want to make music for a while. 

I wonder, do you ever wonder, how would we ever make something really grand and wonderful? With any lasting value. Think of Rome for God sakes; it is filled with giant memorials to many men's quest for the same ambition. Or Egypt. [one has to wonder underneath this if the reason why we feel this way is just because we long to make something real and valuable and meaningful for ourselves. I mean this can’t just be for other people, for the fans, or whoever. In the long run who really cares about that? It has to be about what is of lasting value to us. I think that secretly that is who we are trying to please.] Listening to Justin’s CD here, thinking about how it went so un-noticed around the world. What is the difference between the famous and the not famous? How does p diddy get to be a millionaire but Justin is still just one of the many songwriters who put out an album? I wonder what else is at play there besides music? Underneath the surface of it? things cosmic or karmic? Or just the luck of the draw? Right place at the right time? I don't know. but listening more you can just hear it. you put on p diddy, and as base and shallow and inane as it is, it is really creative; it really gets you moving. It just has this “thing” about it. sounds and feels upbeat and contemporary. And you can tell that it is going to appeal to a broader demographic. You put on Justin's album or any number of other singer songwriters out there and its just guitar bass and drum pop rock music. a lot of times really smart and catchy and intelligent and sometimes even moving (like Justin's song Drag—download this track for sure). And sometimes, rarely, it can really be sublime like Robbie William’s Escapology, or Aimee Mann magnolia, or Jeff Buckley’s Grace. But that's it. its still guitar bass and drum music. Frankly I'm sick of music sounding like that. I hate it. Which is funny cause that's what we do stll. I always tried to avoid it. Until sleep with you, where we really tried to embrace the idea of sounding like a band of five guys. There were a lot of moments where I reached out and tried to do stuff that was out there but the producer didn't let me, he would scream and say I was crazy and remind me that I was broke and that we were trying to make an album where we all could make some money. so I held back on being experimental and just tried to sing and play really well. But before that I was always into trying to rise above that. on rise and shine we really tried. People thought we were all over the place. Which we were. But totally on purpose. There is no mold to making albums. Like all art. and every time you discover a mold, you should immediately break it. our new album is more of the same. Five guys making music on their instruments. Very natural and organic. You can hear the voices and the instruments. Whereas say on a p diddy or the new Justin Timberlake album, you can’t hear any instruments. Its all just music, because so much of it is made in a computer or on keyboards. So its just this combination of sounds---rhythm and melody and harmonies—that come together to create this sound. And I like that. and man I could go on and on, because my favorite stuff the last few years has been like that. ginger baby by father Bloopy is very raw at first listen but it is very experimental; the two Radiohead albums kid a and amnesiac are more mainstream examples of that. They almost got there. but cats like takemura Nabukazu or the silver mount Zion memorial orchestra or stars of the lid really go all the way out there, where there isn't even a song structure anymore. And I think that's the future. Been so busy trying to make it mainstream I haven't had time to create more music like this, but I would like to focus more on it. I think then I would feel as if I was contributing more value to myself as an artist. Because at this point I think that as an artist I have kind of superceded where I am in my music career. Still putting out three and four minute pop/rock songs with a five piece band, but my heart is longing for twenty minute one note drone music that goes somewhere else entirely.