Album Notes

Perfect Pain CD Comments

The Cover
“Did you really have all those needles in your face?”
Yes I did, and more.
“Why?”
I couldn’t afford a vacation…

No seriously, I felt stuck in a lot ways and didn’t like the emotions I saw on my face. (The lines -- I couldn’t afford to do anything about.)
I highly recommend it. And you get some wonderful health benefits as part of the package…if you’re into that kind of thing.

Anyway, we took pictures of the process and then modified those images. We like it. We hope you do too!

The Songs
Questions and Answers
This was the first song I wrote after I moved to Atlanta. I thought it would be my Top 40 hit!

Online
I wrote this song for a friend who asked me to write a song about her finding her soul mate online. Ultimately it ended up sounding kind of creepy…like a song for a stalker.

Yesterday Boy and Puppet Video
“Why did you make a sock puppet video?”
I just thought it would be fun. Also - I have a bunch of friends who were game for a “summer project”. The video was shot with two consumer grade Canon mini DV camcorders and edited using Adobe Premiere video editing software. Over two hours of footage was filmed (it was more like a party than a filming session), ultimately edited down to the 5 minute video. We have loads of outtakes and deleted scenes which may hopefully see the light of day sometime.
Cameras: Courtesy of Troy Lukarilla and Roy Peak.

My Sin
Actually, it was someone else’s – but I thought it was more effective singing it from my perspective.

Perfect Pain
I didn’t write the song during or because of the acupuncture. But while I was getting the treatments, the concept of using this image occurred to me. Plus, there’s a reference to a Chinese maze in the song…so what else would I think about with 100 needles in my head!

Pray for Magic and Video
The song… I’m not going to explain that… The 8 millimeter footage is of my mother, sisters, and other relatives from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. My aunt gave my sister some old family footage and her boyfriend used Adobe Premiere to edit the movie footage for the video.
During this process we discovered that had more shots than would fit the length of the song so we went back to the archived audio and found this beautiful solo piece that Carol had played, placed it at the beginning and the song was so much more powerful for it. Without the video, we never would have discovered this.

CD Enhancement
Mike Kozlowski Comments: “The enhanced portion of this CD was created on a PowerMac G5. It is two parts Adobe Flash, one part inspiration - derived solely from the songs on this CD, and one part direction from a semi-patient golden retriever. We will be releasing a special, web-friendly edition soon, but only if you promise to buy the CD first!”