Here is the tale of last week's trip to New York City to master our record.

Part Three: Tenacious "C"

Woke up in that damn fine cozy W bed. I had heard raves, and boy were they true. Got my act together and prepared for a walk through the cold streets to listen to the final mastered sequences. I still wasn't convinced that the 2 we got yesterday were right.

Bundled up in the lobby of the hotel. The wind had picked back up, and it was cold from the looks of people outside. I didn't have any cash for lunch so I stuffed my pockets with energy bars and crap from the minibar. Interestingly, that would be charged to the room, which would be charged to the record company, that we will in turn pay back. So in essence, those fucking Clif bars were mine anyway.

Got out into the world and started moving uptown, the plan was to hit Central Park and have me a little look-see. Just outside the W's front door, two New Yorkers were engaged in a very New York-y kind of loud public shouting match, that consisted of a few "you're an animal's" and "suck it's". I was in such an over the top New York appreciation mode, that I sat there for a second thinking "aww that's nice, how quaint... a real New York almostfight.".

I cot cookin' northward and stopped by Times Square and snapped some pix. A huge crowd flipped out and charged a group of black SUV's, as apparently Beyonce and some others came out of a play. As I walked, I had the realization that my feeling of unfinished business wasn't going to end until I tried to end it. I called up the mastering studio, and arranged to come down and have them run off one more sequence, the one I had been listening to on my first walk on the first night in NYC. It just felt like I had to at least have that one as well as the others to choose from when picking the "final" sequence.

Never made it to Central Park, it was back down to Chelsea, back to Sterling Sound, to drop them off a list, and they set to making a "C" version to be sent to the hotel later that night. I felt worlds better. By this time (5:30pm), Jared had left town, and Dave had just woken up and was ready to head out.

We went downtown and searched out an Italian place that would make pasta and pizza. "Last night in New York" kind of throwdown. Settled on a little place in the West Village, but the pizza was weak. Triscuit Pizza would have been better.

The Mercer hotel. Coffee. Coffee table art books. Phone calls. Switching tables.

Josh had plans for the evening and we eventually hooked up with him at a club called Marquis, where we sat on a couch behind velvet ropes watching Meadow Soprano dance.  Afterward we hit Bungalow 8 again which was going off.

At a certain point the unsatisfying "pizza-like experience" from dinner was too much to handle, and we took off to the West Village to Joe's to grab a few slices. Sadly, those slices apparently had been under a heat lamp since Clinton was in office, and our New York trip was destined to to be free of any kick-ass true New York pizza. Can't win 'em all.

Back at the hotel, we fired up the "C" version of the sequence. It sounded really good, sonically and sequence-wise. Finally I got that sense of resolution, of completion that I had been hungering for. Before the trip, I had envisioned coming back on the plane with a sense of relief, of the end of a huge phase in the life of this band, and now it looked like that feeling would happen.

The next day was departure day. Back to JFK, and an almost 2 hour wait in the food court. jetBlue offers up free Internet WiFi right in the center of the food court, so Dave fired up his laptop and "broke in" on his looping Spread Radio Live archived broadcast so we could go live from the airport. This was a blast. We were both running on maybe 3 hours of sleep between us.

We sat at a sushi place and they gave us a free sushi smorgasboard, while we babbled on the web radio. After the airwaves, we took to the air.

Once I was back home in L.A. I couldn't seem to shake the feeling I got in New York.

...that there is something out there for me.