the spin cycle. (on iTunes NOW!)

My name is Joshua Andrew. I'm 20 years old. I make music with knobs and circuits and little bits of animal crackers. Talk to me cause I'm really nice and I like giraffes a lot except not the kind with fangs.
I was born July 29th, 1987 in Denver, Colorado, with a blue face and orange hair. My parents were Spanish dictators and ruled the country for several years before migrating to the States to begin a new, humble life with their soon-to-be baby boy and my then-four-and-a-half-year-old, web-footed Swedish sister Inga, who, at my birth, took the liberty of naming me after a character from the popular daytime American soap As The World Turns. As I took my first breath, a room full of eager family, Spanish servants, and a bartender suddenly gasped almost simultaneously, then shifted their eyes toward my mother at my eerie and uncanny resemblance to the milkman, Señor Thomás, from the City of Aragon where I was undoubtedly conceived. I suppose the blue skin was a dead giveaway.
I remember very vividly the moment I left the hospital and got my first glimpse of the planet. Immediately I began to wonder, about anything and everything. I had constant access to literature, which fueled what would rocket into fluent literacy at the tender age of two-and-one-half and an incredible love for the written word. To learn was a typewriter, and I was the ink.
After graduating preschool with five star-stickers, I attended a private Catholic school, where I was promoted from Kindergarten to the second grade with nearly zero hesitation. But my education was not to be led by outsiders. My stubborn nature had already dictated my learning process, and any attempts to change the way that my mind had grown within myself to absorb information were shredded by my inclination to ignore directions and wear my own path through the meadow. The nuns did not like that.
I spent the second half of the third grade hospitalized from a ruptured appendix. My health declined rapidly, and had I been taken into the emergency room any later than I did, I would have died. Despite my inebriation from several sedatives and pain-inhibitors after my third and final surgery, I still believe I saw something that day. A small, green, elf-like creature who wore Jordache jeans and vinyl suspenders with silhouettes of deceased American presidents printed on them. His name was Janice Davidé LaDoucéur III. "Jan you call me," he said with an Eastern European accent, a wink, and a smile. I asked Jan what he wanted with me, and he responded, "Sound for the eyes, and picture for the ears." He winked again, and before I could say anything, I awoke in my hospital bed, startled by the voice of the giant flying dog from The Neverending Story on the television in my room.
I left the hospital fully recovered.
Months later, after years of hoping, I received a small box turtle who had been found accidentally by a stranger's dog. The stranger, after attempting and failing to sell it to a pet store, made small talk with my mother in a Mexican faux-tanning booth and soon thereafter made her sale. The turtle had orange forearms, hence my decision to name him Michelangelo after very little deliberation. I was to be his caregiver, and though he refused to leave for anything else, he left his shell just long enough to offer his thanks by biting off my left index finger. He had a mind that mirrored mine. Independent and stubborn, but ready to learn without any aid. Michelangelo learned quickly, absorbing information like an obese child absorbs saturated fats. After only weeks, he had learned to roll over, play dead, beg for food, stand on two feet, and rehearse the Preamble to the United States Constitution verbatim in six dead languages. His talent landed us three years later on a popular Nickelodeon game show called Figure It Out in the summer of 1999. Among the prizes we'd won together was a set of drums.
For weeks afterward, I was told repeatedly by my parents, "Drums are much too loud for our home; they must go directly to sale, and you can purchase something equally appalling. When the drums arrive, do NOT open them." Needless to say, when the drums arrived, I opened them. My parents, however, stood firm on their opinion, and I traded the drums for an electric guitar. Inside the box, I discovered a new love for a new kind of learning. The sound tickled my eardrums, and for the first time I discovered my ability to see music, and to draw a picture with nothing but the air around me. I began learning guitar on January 9th, 2000, at the age of 12.
Though my parents had been wealthy dictators in Spain, their wealth had been suppressed by the US Dollar exchange rate, and my family had fallen instantaneously into the lower-middle class of monetary society upon our arrival in the States. My parents struggled all they could to afford a good private education for their children, but I was on my own to learn my new instrument. Day in and day out, for hours and hours, sometimes not even resting for days or weeks at a time, I sat alone in my cage and mimicked every sound from every record I could get my hands on, soon thereafter tinkering and cross-training myself with every other instrument I could find a way to.
I walked three and a half miles every day for the next five years to the bus stop with a guitar strapped on one shoulder and a small practice amplifier I had named Fracturetta for her flawless ability to inflict painful hairline fractures to my tibia when struck at the correct angle.
In high school, for the very first time I met others who spoke in a similar language that I did. I'd never had the opportunity to speak to other musicians. I played in a few bands but was never allowed to participate in musical functions in school because of my inability to read musical notation and my enormous, glowing red nose that I've since had corrected by surgical means. I'd never had a reason to learn musical notation up to that point. All I needed was my ear.
For my senior year, I'd made the decision to attend Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. Although the school was forty miles away from my home in Denver, I had heard a lot of good things about the music department. Although I didn't find what I thought I was looking for, I found something I didn't know I was. Kenneth Alexander Natalia Johnson III was a bassist. Not a bassist - a child prodigy who had learned music the very same way that I had, but had also learned to speak to musicians in a way that all would understand. His fingers were faster than a teenage boy's first physical experience. He was to become my mentor, and my bandmate.
I became the vocalist and guitarist in a band called Dear Amy... . The band started slowly, then built quicker than we could have possibly imagined. Weeks after recording low-quality demos with a bag of cracked magnets, a BB gun and a tangled Sony Beta videotape in a basement, we found ourselves in a New York City recording studio under the supervision of representatives of Capitol Records and others. I turned down a $15,000 scholarship to the accredited Berklee College of Music in Boston to work full-time on the band. However, after a short amount of touring, the tragic and untimely death of our drummer left us exactly where we'd started, and after a few auditions from local drummers, the band faded away.
After a brief hiatus, in the fall of 2006 in a miniscule studio apartment in SoHo, I began to record demos more reminiscent of today's indie rock and pop acts than the inspiration summoned for the band from the more influential rock acts of the '20s through the '90s. For lack of space, my keyboards sat on the stovetop, my amplifiers in the shower stall, and my computer atop a non-functional washing machine. the spin cycle.
My name is Joshua Andrew. I am 20 years old and I call my musical endeavors the spin cycle. I don't have bandmates; I refuse to rely on others whose futures are unsure to support my project. I write, record, and perform all of my music on my own with the occasional help of a cardboard cutout of Humphrey Bogart. I offer danceable electro-pop to those who will accept, and will continue to do so until the circuits and wires inside my synthesizers wear irreparably thin. By then, the whole world will be dancing.
LYRICS TO POSTED SONGS BY THE SPIN CYLEbeauty pageant dropout: i remember she was simple she's afraid to be alone spreading drama through the hallways spreading rumors through her phone then she starts screaming in her bedroom then we stop breathing in the airshe's a beauty pageant dropout don't you know? she's a beauty pageant dropout and everyone knowsi remember she was tragic trophy life and trophy wife then every memory that she had spun twirled in her hair againshe's a beauty pageant dropout don't you know? she's a beauty pageant dropout and everyone knowslast: you stole an ounce of me but i've still got the rest and if it's any consolation you were good but not the best you threw it all away and you watched it fall away but it was not as hard to say as you thinktell me what you mean tell me anything tell me everything you never could so what can we hope for? you're bleeding everywhere so tell me everything, everything you never thought you would it's your last chance to say goodnightit was a tale grown so tall and penned in makeup on the glass it was a hollow compromise it was a hollow compromise you threw it all away and you watched it fall away but it was not it was not as worth the time as you thinkand maybe once but maybe twice maybe not at all this time cause i've had all that i can take and all the choices that we make are our lastmy innocent: hello, my innocent i'm so guilty i could die and you changed everything i'll see you. i'll see you. but don't, don't go i've known you all my life and this can't change cause you're leaving me ahead of timebaby when it's over will you tell me cause we're looking out for you i'm looking out for youhello, my beautiful tonight we'll run away and we'll change everything i'll see you. i'll see you. but don't, don't go i've known you all my life and this can't change cause you're leaving me ahead of timebaby when it's over will you tell me cause we're looking out for you i'm looking out for youand when you stop don't stop cause we can go away from here. all songs © 2007 the spin cycle