With the new Spin Doctors release featuring the original four members set for upcoming release, this month we’ve decided to feature the More Than Meets The Ear – The Spin Doctors Archive. Here are the word’s of the site’s creator Daniel Heinze, reporting from Leipzig, Germany…

It’s more than 12 years ago that the Spin Doctors were the ‘band of the moment’ – being on the cover of the Rolling Stone, touring 200 days a year and selling millions of albums. A lot of things happened since then and it is kind of a miracle that the original Spin Doctors will return with a brand-new album this September.
I don’t know what you think of this band, but I feel honoured to know them: to listen to their live shows, their albums, their solo projects. If I had to name one band that means the world to me, I’d name Spin Doctors. I think this is the main reason why ‘More Than Meets The Ear – The Spin Doctors Archive’ exists. Not that there weren’t any Spin fan sites before, but I felt it was time to create a place at the web where you can find all those things fans might be interested in: setlists, discographies, FAQs, news, some live music downloads etc.
It all started in early spring of 2002 when the Spin Doctors announced that they would do an eight-dates reunion tour after the successful reunion show at Wetlands in September of 2001. Suddenly, the Spins online community woke up again – I was impressed by the fact that there are still a lot of fans after all those years (to be correct, the band was defunct for about two years only, but you can tell that the 1999 album Here Comes The Bride was hardly noticed by anyone although being a pretty cool record). So I started a little website including all the latest news, some links and stuff like that. It turned out to be the only regularly-updated SD site for some time.
Back then, I had no idea that the band’s reunion would be a permanent thing and that they would even write new material and re-invent and -create themselves again. Since 2001, they played more than 100 shows, wrote brilliant new songs and became a real band again. So it was only logical to me to develope a ‘real’ website including the old setlist archives and updated information on the band. In July 2005, ‘The Spin Doctors Archive’ went online and tries to be excactly what the name promises: an archive to the work of a band that is better than ever and has an interesting history of nearly two decades by now.
The site would not be possible without the help of a lot of Spin Doctors fans from all around the world: Mark Mezrich, who hosted and maintained the old setlist archive until the year 2000, for example. Or great guys such as David Landsberger or Chris Sink who helped with the FAQ or provided scans of old newsletter etc. Even the great folks from the band’s official site (most of all, JB, the band’s webmaster) helped to create this new site. Read the ‘About’ section of the site to find out more about all the people who contributed.
As I wrote earlier: I feel honoured to be a Spin Doctors fan and the SD Archive is meant as a tribute to both the band and the coolest fan community I’ve ever been part of. So, with the new album "Nice Talking To Me" coming up in September and with more than 40 shows coming up later this year, you can tell that the future looks bright – and of course, "More Than Meets The Ear – The Spin Doctors Archive" wants to document and comment that future as well as it already documents the band’s past.