Spesh and I were in the office, slogging thru "The Yellow Pages of Rock" and getting rejected by A&R secretaries, when the phone rang. Caller ID said "Blocked Call." Fuck it, another sales call. I took it anyway (with my "make it quick" voice) - "Loöq Records". English accent - "Hello this is Paul Oakenfold ... er ... are the boys around?" Turns out he was just calling to request a couple back catalog items, but he did mention that he really digs "Al-bom." Have to say that definitely raised our spirits, at least someone likes the damn thing! Actually we've been getting really good feedback, but half the people who've heard it are related to us, played or sang on it, or are on our payroll, so the truly objective opinions are still few and far between.

Spesh emailed Timo Maas a few days later to confess the origin of our album name (see earlier post). He emailed back right away, having already heard the story, and was really nice about it - he seemed quite amused. Of course he did confess to "smoking a jazzy one in front of the fire" so perhaps his amusement threshold was pretty low at the time. Everyone must learn to speak English just like Timo.

A fun side project - we're doing a little musical tag for PBS show. There will be several versions and we're of course doing the "electronicy" version ... but I was eager to do the project when I heard Josh Redman was doing the jazz version - I went to high school with him (Berkeley High) and he's probably one of the most talented people I know.