July 01, 2003:

Hey folks,

I'm sitting in the Harmony Hut right now staring into a computer... how unlike me. Right in back of me is Brandon Sanders and Aaron Williams and they are feverishly at work editing and compiling the DVD. That's the live footage from Astoria. They've been working like machines. Starting tonight, I begin mixing the audio and hopefully it'll be out by the end of September. The footage is looking pretty raucous, and poor Brandon has to squeeze footage of my fingers when there's not really that much that exists. So don't blame him if you can't fetish the nuances of my hands gracing the neckÖ but I sure do have some cool pants on!

Regarding the new albumÖ I have a tendency to make sweeping decisions at the drop of a hat. I shelved the record and am starting over. I'll explain:
Whenever in the past I had sat down to make a record, the vision was very clear and I never seemed to compromise on any element of it. This was the case with Flex-able, Passion and Warfare etc. I remember when I had started to work on Fire Garden, there had been so much time since Sex and Religion, and I knew that Fire Garden was going to be a massive undertaking. So while I was jogging in the Hollywood Hills it came to me: put Fire Garden on the shelf and make an EP of stripped down guitar tracks. It took 5 weeks from start to finish and that's basically how Alien Love Secrets was made.

The concept for the record I was just working on is tremendously ambitious. The idea was to create a musical with characters, and an interesting story. I have all the music, and it's very different than anything else I have ever done. Two separate records of accessible rich music. Well, I found myself starting to compromise the concept quite a bit. First was the pressure of time constraints of getting it done in time. It got chopped to one CD instead of two. Then there was the pressure of including enough instrumental things so the folks that want to hear guitar playing are not too disappointed - so I had to start losing important characters and songs to make room for the guitar songs. Plus, even the stripped down version was going to take another year to complete due to the density of the music and the availability of some key characters. Every time I turned around the concept was being compromised more and more so I decided to shelve it until next year and do the record that I visualize.

As of now I have taken the instrumental songs (that never really belonged in the musical,) and am complimenting them with some additional instrumental lunacy and I should have the record done by the end of the year for an early 2004 release.

For those of you who were looking forward to this concept record as the next CD release, sorry, but hold tight because the stuff I'm working on now is dope! I'm in the middle of a song right now whose working title is "Freak Show Excess."

My fingers hurt much.

Later

s.