Crushing Krisis

Category Archives: Year 8

Highlights from 2007-2008

Happy Birthday To This

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Lately I’ve been struggling with the concept of success – specifically, how to discern the difference between progress and success.

I am always progressing – I do not do well with sitting still. Nevertheless, moving forward doesn’t equal succeeding. Motion doesn’t equal a milestone.

Or, at least, that’s my typical mantra of over-achievement.

It can be hard mantra to upkeep; over-achievement requires a lot of regular achievement to maintain, and that requires plenty of milestones to mow down while you’re in motion.

It’s an especially hard mantra to have when no new milestones are in sight … when it starts getting tempting to view motion as a milestone. It’s akin to the kid who wants a teevee break just for doing the first page of his homework. Should I reward myself just for learning one new song, or completing one workout? The slope from those minor successes to learning a new chord or doing one push-up is treacherously slippery.

This was the quandary that stopped my progress cold last week, grinding my life to a halt. I spent a long night of discussion with Elise, reviewing the successes of the past year, and trying to figure out how to translate further forward motion into more milestones.

Elise is the panacea to those inconsolable moments, and as we laid in bed talking it became apparent that part of the problem is that I had forgotten the other, single, proven solution to all of my various doldrums – eight years of Crushing Krisis archives documenting every success and failure, and all the moments of paralysis found in between the two.

Eight years of proof that I am always in motion, and always finding a new milestone.

II.

As of today Crushing Krisis is an alarming eight years old – absolutely ancient in blogging years, and still the reigning longest running blog in my fine city of brotherly love.

I have a blog old enough to be in third grade. If that’s not a major milestone, I don’t know what is.

Not only is CK itself a milestone, it’s a collection of them – a chronicle of my greatest hits, the succcesses that sketch my evolution from aimless straight-A college student and hapless singer-songwriter through hopelessly overcommitted yuppy and emerging artist.

The amazing thing about the last twelve months is how many successes they encompassed. I played a show at the Tin Angel with my band (two, actually). I got engaged to the love of my life. I completed six months of voice-lessons, emerging with newly revitalized vocals. Lyndzapalooza threw not only a hugely successful music festival, but two modestly awesome off-season events. I finally became the senior member of my team at work. I’m planning the most kick-ass party I’ve ever thrown, which coincidentally happens to be my wedding.

In hindsight I feel as though the vast majority of my personal greatest hits record is contained in the last year of my life – like I’m one of those artists who has one big album and that ten years later my record company will release a 21st Century Masters collection of me that regurgitates that one album end-to-end, plus some random cover I did for a soundtrack.

In the midst of all those hits I could easily lose track of the progress I made, but that’s exactly what CK is here for. I already chose the best of them to feature in the Year 8 topic, but my most indelible memories extend far beyond the posts I’d deem as “best.”

Our band got censored for the first time. I had two of my most memorable taxi-driver conversations. I played a game of “what if I managed Britney?” I conquered my quarter-life crisis. I co-invented (and later conducted) an Upscale Bar Crawl. I blogged daily for an entire month for no reason at all, highlighting my favorite (remastered) Trio Tracks along the way.

I dissected Radiohead’s record release, along with the entirety of the “blogosphere.” I became fascinated for an entire night by a trick of photography. I learned valuable lessons from my longest period of bachelorhood in the past half decade.

I began telling the story of our engagement, further chronicled here and here. I disclosed my previously deeply personal delight in hot food eaten cold. I saw Elise’s brother make his theatrical debut. I posted a rare Trio that I liked as soon as it was recorded.

I contemplated being a real band. I reflected on my childhood masquerade as a born-again Christian. I posted yet another awesome-right-out-of-the-box Trio. I celebrated Gina’s birthday by recounting our first time singing together. I cultivated an ulcer. I learned about sibling rivalry by way of working out regularly for the first time in my life, and in the process got to know Elise’s sister a little bit better.

I almost shattered the fragile, bird-like skeleton of one of my SVPs. I taught the entire internet how to edit their MySpace Music profiles (seriously, you should see the referrals I get on that one damn post). I nearly got laughed out of a coffee-shop due to my savant-like knowledge of Clue.

I played my band’s first honest-to-goodness solo gig, and made friends with 13-year-olds. I spoke at my mother’s wedding, and reflected on how just a few decades ago mine would be illegal in some states. I became a big brother, and started becoming my mother, all in the span of a week. I reflected on GBLT rights in Iraq by way of Ani DiFranco and teenage theatre. I posted the best and worst of my teenage poetry.

And, still fresh in my mind, I was the victim of a crime of hate.

Other things happened too – good things and bad things left unsaid as I skipped a few months of blogging while I was out succeeding a life.

I never finished our engagement story. I haven’t been blogging about wedding prep, including dress shopping and invite-making. I didn’t relate how I got chewed out by a co-worker for bashing Jesus on our last Live @ Rehearsal disc. I continuously redacted a post entitled “Figure Skating Pants” because it never turned out as funny on-screen as it was in my head. You haven’t yet heard about house-hunting.

A hundred other things.

If Crushing Krisis is as much about progress as it is about success, as much about motion as it is about milestones, it’s also as much about silence as it is about sound. My evolution is sketched as much by the words I withhold as the ones I write.

III.

I write these birthday posts each year … letters to my future self. Internet time travel.

Last year I said:

If Year 6 of Crushing Krisis was about finding stability, then this past year has been converting stability into happiness.

To amend that quote, if Year 7 was about converting stability into happiness, this past year was about finding a way for happiness and success to finally co-exist in my life.

In their own quiet way, those successes have brought me as close to quitting CK as I’ve ever been. Even though this blog documents my successes the actual act of blogging is all progress, and progress without success in sight can be daunting.

On and off, I plotted CK’s demise. Merge it into a band blog, I thought. Not as important as wedding planning, I decided. My writing has already peaked, it’s time to focus on other things, I resolved. Not saying much of importance anyway, I mused. It’s not as if anyone’s reading it, I whined. Blogs are ubiquitous and thus unremarkable, I opined. I’m out of things to say, I worried.

Yet, here I am, still, heading into Year 9.

Why? Because Crushing Krisis is one of the best ideas I’ve ever had, one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and the best way I know to show that I am not only progressing into adulthood but slowly and surely succeeding at life.

And because of you. You – indefinable and intangible, yet indefatigable.

Not just you – singular you, tu – you there on the other side of the screen reading this now, so much as you – plural you, vous – all of you. The royal you. The Schrodinger’s Cat of you. The mere potential of you.

“You” could mean you – now, in the present, two seconds after I post this; you – far in the future, maybe after I’ve gone; you – both of you; or you – neither of you … some other you entirely.

Thank you, no matter which you I am addressing. Thank you for being a part of and a party-to my never-ending progress and my continuing success. Thank you for reading, listening, commenting, and linking. Thank you for your time, for your attention, and for being you.

Thank you. And, happy birthday to this.

Also filed in Engagement, adulthood, arcati crisis, august 26th, betterment, corporate, elise, essays, gina, lyndzapalooza, memories, over-achievement, resolve, self-critique, singing | | Comments (4)

Steer Clear

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Last Saturday we awoke to some vicious knocks on our door, and declined to answer.

It was another block party on our street – another one of dubious legality where we were given less than ten hours of notice before its start – one situated plumb in the middle of our first long weekend together this year. We keep to ourselves, and no one thinks to ask us to sign their petition, or remind us there is a party upcoming, or ask us we have anything to contribute (such as, I don’t know, my mixing equipment? But, I digress).

So, we declined to answer. The first time. But a few minutes later the knocks came again, insistent and vicious.

We had hoped to sleep in – at the back of the house, away from the noise.

No such luck.

I dressed quickly, pieces patched together, and flung open the door to be greeted by an unfamiliar face. White, stubbly, firepluggish but not so intimidating, a tattoo or scar on his cheek next to his eye.

“Izzat your car?” Gesturing broadly at a boxy sedan parked a few spots to the right of our door. Already a tent had been struck on our sidewalk, nearly obstructing our front steps.

I replied sharply. “Look, we don’t own a car, and even if we did we wouldn’t have to move it for the block party. That’s not how the permit works.”

I closed (not slammed) the door to an echo of protest (“Hey, I’ll break your door down and kick your ass”), but that was a wolf not big or bad enough to warrant my concern on a summer Saturday morning. I’ve lived in South Philly long enough to know an idle threat.

Nothing else happened, and several hours of booming, inescapable music later we left. We were dressed as sharp as my earlier words for Erika’s engagement party, and everyone on the block saw us depart just as the daylight was ripening into a pretty golden evening.

The party, which is a topic for another time, was wonderful. The two parts that are germane to this story are that I drank quite a bit of Bombay Sapphire and we that took a cab home shortly after 3 a.m.

I stepped (stumbled) out of the cab, intent on a trip to the bathroom and the chance to get into some more comfortable clothes (having entrusted Elise with my wallet and the ability to do arbitrary math).

At the steps I fetched (fumbled for?) my keys, and when I looked up I was greeted with black magic marker scrawl across our door:

Steer Clear of Queer

Was it the message or the gin that sent me into hysterical sobs, pounding on the door with my fists until it was feeling unsure on its hinges?

Does it matter? What was I supposed to feel, or do, the first time a message of discrimination I’ve heard off and on for years at parties and bars and from passing cars found itself tangible and branded on my home?

The next part is a blur: Elise getting to the door, our exchange, my dash into the house only to collapse on the floor, crying, screaming:

“This is our house; I just want to live here.”

Elise, rational and sober, called 911, and discovered as she shut the door that our newfound aphorism had been accompanied by an even more tangible reminder – used cat litter fed painstakingly through our mail slot so that it would be swept across our threshold when the door was opened.

I’ll spare you the visit of the police, protective and sympathetic, or my repeated calls to Lindsay, my voice splintering and breaking as I screamed to her that I didn’t understand, upset as much about myself as with my demographic-sharing double, the straight white male who thought this sort of thing was okay to go writing on someone’s door because he didn’t have enough muscles or force when he opened it or because he left the house in a wrong-colored shirt, and also how I would be happy for people to write on my door and shove crap through my mail slot for the rest of my life as long as they left Lindsay and Kate and our gay neighbors (yes, the irony) alone and in peace.

I would never compare this experience to the discrimination that other people endure every day. It was passive – intimidation from a coward. It’s not even really about me. It’s not even really offensive, as a statement.

Yet while I would never compare, it remains that those words were written on our home, and that the crime of petty vandalism was undoubtedly about hate. I articulated as much to the lieutenant in my living room, feeling strangely sober and my stare fixed on the floor.

“Do you feel that this was a hate crime?

“Yes, officer. All that matters is what he thought of me when he opened the door, and the intended effect of his message.”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you and your roommate.”

“Fiancee,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “We’re getting married.”

With Sunday came concern; we had no way of knowing if the vandalism was an arbitrary one-time event or the first step of continuing harassment; we didn’t know if it was the work of a single actor or a faceless group of disgruntled neighbors. But we discovered that – after the initial shock – we were not concerned about the words on our door.

To scurry out that morning to clean it off would mean we didn’t want the neighbors to see. To cover it up surreptitiously by cover of darkness would mean we didn’t want to be seen responding to it.

Both would show that the message met its mark – that it had intimidated us. We may be a lot of things – maybe even a little queer – but one of them certainly isn’t easily intimidated.

I’ve been avoiding this box all this week because I’ve been uncomfortable with my own voice – the voice that got me into this mess – just as I haven’t felt comfortable in my own living room. Now that our door is finally back to its single solid color (plus a peephole) I also feel okay to return here, my virtual home, to begin to describe how I feel … how I’ve felt the graffiti on my own skin all week, how our house feels different now, and how every time I approach our door I am ever-so-nauseous in anticipation.

As to why we ultimately decided to leave the words on display until our landlord could have them painted over in broad daylight for the entire block to witness, Elise blogged it better than I ever could, so I’ll let her speak for me:

[I]t doesn’t reflect on us, it reflects on the people who did this and on the people who allowed it to happen. It’s a reminder to us of what emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually small people are capable of (though we would still see it there whether we painted it over or not), and it’s a reminder to everyone else that while this time we were the target, it could just as easily be them, next time.

They probably have not realized this, yet.

Also filed in Philly, gblt, memories, stories | | Comments (6)

Alla This

Saturday, July 26, 2008

On Thursday morning I was very much in my head while sitting on the trolley, listening to Ani DiFranco’s madly terrific new song “Alla This.” The song is partially about the intersection of the personal and the political, with Ani at one point delivering the following:

i won’t rent you my time
i won’t sell you my brain
i won’t pray to a male god
cuz that would be insane
and i can’t support the troops,
cuz every last one of them’s being duped,
and i will not rest a wink
until the women have regrouped

I already love the song as much as anything she’s done this decade, but at her concert earlier this month that verse sent a thrill through my body – in eight lines it succinctly hits commercialism, religion, war, and feminism. Amazing.

The verse ended as I stepped off the trolley, and my mind began to wander. I thought about Ani’s constant challenging of the patriarchal status quo, and how any form of discrimination ultimately connects back to that hegemony.

In the distance between the trolley doors and the stairs to sunlight somehow that rolled into my wondering about the Iraqi citizens, and if life has actually improved for those that exist outside of the patriarchy both of that nation and of the force the world is imposing on it.

I wondered, what about the gays and lesbians in Iraq? I knew nothing about this group, though I was sure they existed. What was their life like before the invasion, and what was it like now? While I am advocating for the rights of my lesbian friends to marry are their Iraqi counterparts struggling for the simplest of rights – for the ability to exist as themselves without fear?

Sometimes my brain and the internet do a peculiar zeitgeist tango, where the same day I wonder about a topic it shows up in my daily reading, and sure enough when I got to my desk CNN was running a story entitled “Gays in Iraq terrorized by threats, rape, murder.”

As it turns out, as the Iraqi government came unmoored the situation of their GBLT citizens deteriorated. Any hint of their sexuality risks not only their own lives, but the lives of their entire families.

What a terrifying closet to be trapped within.

Just a day later I was at the Philadelphia Theatre Company to see Elise’s brother in his weekly theatre lab.

One of his classmates – barely a teenager – wrote a brilliant play about how bullying can go too far, as the actions of a few are enabled by the inaction of their peers at large. Here the result was the death of a young girl at the hands of her tormentors – their faces unimportant, as all of her classmates were complicit in her fate.

In the play’s last scene Elise’s brother acted as a federal agent, gingerly interrogating one of the girl’s classmates, getting nowhere. Finally, grimly, he asks her:

“Is it true that the girl who was murdered had a crush on you?”

And then, brilliantly, sparking immediate tears in my eyes as much for his delivery as for the line itself:

“Have you ever heard of a boy named Matthew Shepard?”

So powerful, and from the pen of a girl half of my age. Vital proof that we still have some terrifying closets of our own, whether their doors are open or closed.

As the lights came up, Ani’s voice rung out again in my mind as the voice of murdered girl, of those Iraqi men, of Matthew, and of Larry.

i will not stand immersed,
in this ultra violent curse
i won’t let you make a tool of me
i will keep my mind and body free
bye bye minutiae
of the day to day drama,
i’m expanding exponentially,
i am consciousness without identity

Also filed in ani difranco, essays, family, feminism, gblt, journalism, politics, theatre | | Comments (2)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A few nights ago we were walking home after a sushi dinner, talking about all the shopping Elise and her brother did earlier in the day.

During the conversation he mentioned finding a particularly awesome pair of jeans in his exact size, and I caught myself subconsciously filing his size away for later use in case I ever see a similar pair in my travels.

And then I thought, OH MY GOD I HAVE BECOME MY MOTHER.

Also filed in elise, family, mom, self-aware, walking | | Comments (1)

Loving

Monday, June 16, 2008

There were kittens in our yard, but now there are not.

You were going to get a whole post about the joys of kittens and the joys of pet fostering, with a smattering of Bob Barkerisms, but we returned from work to find said kittens and accompanying momma gone from the yard.

So, no wacky kitten pictures with captions in stilted lolzcatian English.

Honestly, I’m only mentioning it now so that in five years I can recall when it was we found the kittens in our yard.

So, for historical reference, the apparent close of the kitten incident happens to coincide with the first day of legal same-sex marriages in California.

Just as I am a feminist, I am an advocate for civil rights for everyone, and that includes the GBLT community. I honestly don’t understand how anyone can not be an advocate and an activist for both, because each movement is rooted in a simple concept: equality for all.

As we celebrate the landmark California Supreme Court decision and the many beautiful unions that it will yield, I was also reminded today of another beautiful union – this one fifty years old.

The union in question was of Mildred and Richard Loving, two Virginia small-town sweethearts who in 1958 found themselves pregnant and decided to wed in neighboring Washington, D.C.

Back in Virginia, five weeks after their wedding the couple found themselves on the receiving end of an unfriendly visit from the local Sheriff’s department because they were in violation of the state’s Racial Integrity Act.

Richard Loving was white; his bride Mildred was black.

The Racial Integrity Act made their marriage – and, for that matter, any marriage between a white person and someone of another race – a felony.

This post isn’t meant to be a history lesson- you can read other sources detailing the Loving’s arrest, or their subsequent exodus from Virginia under threat of imprisonment, and how – nine years later on June 12, 1967 – the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Racial Integrity Act in their landmark Loving v. Virginia decision.

I know most people (maybe even you, reading now) see the Lovings’ story in black and white – literally and figuratively. However, laws like the Racial Integrity Act were leveraged against couples of any interracial combination across the country. If it weren’t for the Loving’s and the unanimous SCOTUS decision their case garnered, interracial marriages might never have become as visible and accepted in mainstream American society. (And, similar laws lingered on the books for decades until the last one was repealed in Alabama in 2000.)

If those same laws were prevalent today it might not be legal for me to marry Elise. And, it certainly would have been illegal for her parents – one white, the other Chinese – to marry and have children.

Consider that for a moment.

All of these years I’ve been one blessed white male in the multi-ethnic sea of America. I never experienced any personal discrimination to cause me to believe in feminism or civil rights, but I believe in them because equality should be for everyone, without strings attached.

Little did I know at age five, or age twelve, or age twenty-two that my blessed life would benefit from the battles waged before me in the most meaningful way possible – because they cleared the way for me to have and hold the love of my life.

Could you imagine denying us legal recognition of our happiness just for something as trivial as the colors of our skin?

Your answer, I suspect, is “no.”

Then, consider that as of today one of my co-best-ladies and one of my dearest friends can only legally marry each other in two states in the country, solely because they are both women.

Why is it that we can all imagine denying them legal recognition of their happiness just for something as trivial as their gender?

In my mind, the two are the same – the two couples, the two imagined denials, and the two inevitable, ineffable sets of basic human rights.

Just as I advocated for those rights before I ever knew they would effect my life so directly, I will continue to advocate for them even after my marriage is legally recognized – because everyone should have the same rights as Elise and I, regardless of race or gender.

That’s feminism. That’s civil rights. That’s equality.

As I write this post there is a tiny dent in the dish of cat food we put out in the yard, hoping to lure back momma and her four stray kittens.

And, at the same time thousands of Californians have had the imagined denials cleared from their path to a legally recognized life of loving.

Also filed in Engagement, current events, elise, essays, feminism, gblt, identity, lindsay | | Comments (5)

After these messages…

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Today I woke up early so I could go to work early so I could get stuff done early so I could go to a press check and, ultimately, leave early.

After said early departure I engaged in a four-mile marathon walk past and through every hip men’s clothing shop in the entirety of center city Philadelphia, in search of my Lyndzapalooza outfit.

This is a time-honored tradition stretching back to 2003, when I wore my brand new orange sneakers to the first event and got them hopelessly dingy climbing up and down from our stage AKA neighbor’s elevated backyard.

Anywho, the trek, it was long. Every store is selling the same ugly men’s clothing right now, except for Diesel, which is selling fucking uglier men’s clothing. What I really wanted was a Flash t-shirt … well, no, what I really wanted was a Cheetara shirt and a Wonder Woman shirt, but in the midst of writing like 20k unique words over the past month I forgot to order them, which initiated this whole sad hunt. Eventually I found what could be my new favorite piece of clothing (only, mine is green).

Late in the game I dragged my ass the length of South Street, now quite sweating underneath my favorite suit, and increasingly parched. I bypassed mucho de Starbucks to hit one of my few favorite indie coffee shops, Java Company, on 4th and South.

As I ordered my iced soy chai latte (one of my few truly yuppie vices) I overhead a conversation:

“Rip Torn?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was in Clue

And, now, make sure you are picturing this correctly. I am at my most corporate, in my best suit, and also sweating to death and in running shoes trailing shopping bags, and I whip my head around and say the following:

“Um, are you talking about Clue, the movie? Because Rip Torn is not in Clue. Clue starred Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, Leslie Ann Warren as Ms. Scarlet, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White, Eileen Brennan as Ms. Peacock, Colleen Camp as Yvette, and Lee Ving as Mr. Body.”

(Actually, it took me one or two tries to get it all out in a string, because I was getting the McKean’s name tangled, and also because I kept getting distracted by 20 ounces of iced chai latte sitting in front of me, but that was the gist of it.)

Absolutely dumbfounded at my sudden outburst, one of the men from the original conversation replied.

“And Tim Curry.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged, exasperated that he even felt the need to point this out, “and featuring Tim Curry, also as Mr. Body.”

At this point the entire coffee shop, and some children outside, are all staring at me.

“It’s my favorite movie.”

The men stared back at me, their dumbfounded faces slowly melting into a wash of pity and revulsion in reaction to my savant-like obsession with the film.

“Um, yeah. Funny how it’s a movie, but it’s a board game.”

“Yeah, my brother loved that board game. We watched it, like, a dozen times.”

“I’m going to go in the back and look it up on IMDB. I think Rip Torn was in it.”

“Yeah, I think he was.”

I turned, finally, to retrieve my drink, and received a conspiratorial wink from my barista.

“I love that movie. I thought it was so funny when I was a kid, and now when I see it I catch all these different jokes.”

Sensing she was on my side I chose not to delve into a treatise on the obliquely scatological and intensely political humor of the film.

“Yeah, it’s actually pretty subversive.”

Now completely dehydrated and about to crumble into a dusty mix of my constituent non-H20 molecules, I paid for my drink and left.

And that is why it is after 1 a.m. and my heart is beating about as fast as a hamster’s.

Also filed in Philly, flicks, lyndzapalooza, stories, walking | | Comments (2)

All In the Family.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Just to show that nothing is safe from competition in Elise’s family, her sister Jenny left an encouraging comment about how she respects my bloggingness – leaving unspoken the inference that the respect is intact despite my hopeless fat, lazy, dumb, ugliness – and parenthetically mentioned that she is on a Dragon Boat team (huh and the what now?), so I should not count her out of the fitness competition just yet.

And, by the by, she is also a blogger, only her blog is broadcast from Taiwan and features regular lessons in Mandarin.

And, oh, in case I forgot, she used to be a competitive ballroom dancer, and she’s choreographing our first dance when she gets back from Taiwan, so I better watch my mouth or I’m going to have to learn to do walkovers and cartwheels.

Do you see what I’m up against here? Elise already volunteered herself to do upper body workouts with me when I move up to a higher set of weights. Next thing you know I’ll have have their brother emailing me songs he’s written and telling me he’s starting his own music festival.

Although, there’s something to be said for marrying a hyper-intelligent, pro-active bombshell with two similarly equipped siblings, in so much as any time I choose to slack off in some aspect of my life I just picture the appropriate one of them sitting on my shoulder, doing that same thing about five times better than I do it.

Whenever it doesn’t send me into wracking sobs or a panic attack it’s very effective. Like, just a few minutes ago I didn’t do enough bicep curls and the trio of them mocked me in imaginary three-part harmony to the point that now I can’t even lift up a glass of orange juice.

Ahh, family.

Also filed in betterment, elise, family, over-achievement | | Comments (3)

This is why I don’t like to stay late at work.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Scene.

Thirty minutes past the proscribed quitting time I – in sharp gray suit, curly hair tucked under my stereo headphones, and bright red sneakers – sigh with resignation, shut down my computer, and walk out to wait for an elevator.

(I am most likely singing along to an Arcati Crisis song at the top of my lungs while walking in a circle, because that is what I do anytime I am alone and waiting for or riding in an elevator.)

The elevator opens.

In it is our CEO and all three of our SVPs. They grin like a school of sharks.

I sheepishly slide my headphones off of my ears, nod hello, and squeeze in next to the highest ranking woman in the company.

The doors close. The air hangs silent for a moment, and then they continue with the conversation they were having when I arrived.

I am sorely tempted to push a button. The floors pass ever so slowly. Any button. Each floor passes, doors shut and unrelenting.

After what seems like an eternity of biting my lip and pretending not to understand the fine details of their conversation, the elevator finally reaches our upper lobby.

The doors open, and we all hang for a second to see if anyone is going to give anyone else the right of way. “Oh, you first.” “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” “Well, you are the CEO.” “Yes, but…”

Nothing. Silence.

The wait continues. We are in danger of the elevator doors closing and sending us back up for another excruciating ride.

I am dead center – a straight shot out the door. And I am the lowest-ranking employee, so it made sense for me to exit first.

Were the doors beginning to inch shut? I would not survive a ride back up.

Flashpoint. I dart out of the elevator … at the exact same moment that the highest ranking woman in the company also makes a break for it.

She was, after all, the only woman in the elevator.

We collide.

In the continuing silence my world slips into impossibly slow motion – I feel my cushy hips rebound sideways off of her slight frame, feel as though I can hear my cellulite churning to reform itself.

It is not just a little bump, either. No. It is a straight on, full-contact body-check straight out of raucous-yet-executive game of deck hockey. I pray futilely that the the men will all pile on (or at least cheer) to make the moment less awkward.

If only.

Finally, my forward motion arrested mostly by utter mortification, I turn back to regard my partner. She is askew, as if I delivered said body check followed by a headlock/noogie combo.

Hers is the laugh of drops of water slicking off of an icicle.

“In a hurry?”

Scene.

(ps: Dear management: I redacted all of the names and sensitive information. And the mean parts. Particularly the word “bony,” which I had mistakenly used twice. So, please do not Dooce me. Thank you.)

Also filed in corporate, day in the life | | Comments (2)

No, Not I

Thursday, March 20, 2008

On the list of Arcati Crisis’s mutually favorite artists I don’t know that there’s a musician that debuted within our lifetimes ranked higher than Tracy Bonham.

Tracy’s was the second concert Gina and I saw together; the first was Presidents of the United States of America. Gina and I were possibly the first people into the TLA that night, because I remember standing almost directly in front of Tracy, pressed up against the barricade, Gina intently watching her fingers on every song.

At the end of that school year, Gina decided to audition for the school talent show, and the song she decided to play and sing was “Sharks Can’t Sleep.”

I had just starred in my first play, but at the time I didn’t play guitar. Or sing, for that matter. Yet, when Gina told me about the talent show, I had an unexpected reaction – I asked if I could sing with her.

Our friends were immediately skeptical about this – not only did I not sing, but I was at some point banned from singing entirely in the basement hallway where we all ate our lunch. Suffice to say, I was not experiencing widespread support for my sudden impetus to vocalize.

However, I did have one supporter: Gina. Gina brought in her guitar so I could practice, and gave me my own verse to sing.

As murky as some of the details of this story are, my memory of auditioning for the talent show committee is crystalline. We were seated in the corner of the band room, Gina and I and our friends Lucy and Joanna, who were singing harmony. When we got to my verse I shook like a leaf, but ever-so-carefully sang “Met a star today…”

Afterwards someone on the committee said, “I didn’t know he could sing.”

I don’t have any memory at all of being on stage at the talent show, although there are photos to prove that it occurred. What I do remember, and will always know, is that afterwards I – completely out of the blue – demanded that my mother buy my a guitar.

I’m sure I demanded a lot of things at the time, being a stubborn only-child teenager, but for some reason this particular demand was taken seriously. Within a week I had my clunky old Ashland guitar in my hands, and a guitar lesson once a week. I kept taking them until I learned the F sharp i needed for “Sharks Can’t Sleep” and never looked back.

Over ten years later it is both completely apropos and batshit crazy that I am playing guitar in a band with Gina, since I wouldn’t be playing or singing at all without that first nod of support.

This fall Tracy blogged about “Sharks Can’t Sleep.” (She also spent some time co-writing with Garrison Starr, which blows my mind, as Garrison is my #2 longest supported indie song-writer right after Tracy. Whatever song they wrote, it is surely the best song in the known universe.)

Last year Tracy stealthily released an acoustic disc, In The City + In The Woods. She also peppers her homepage with downloads of new demos, so I suggest you keep an eye out.

Happy birthday, Gina.

Also filed in arcati crisis, bonham, gina, guitar, high school, memories, only childness, stories | | Comments (1)

Imagine There’s No Heaven

Saturday, January 12, 2008

When I was in grade school a frequent topic of conversation and consternation was heaven.

As the Born Agains would have us believe, every thought we had or action we performed – from doing math to running on the playground to watching television at night – had a direct relationship to our eventual destination. Heaven. So, we ought to pay good attention to every decision we made, lest we get diverted from said destination, thus sharing the fate of the gays, Jews, catholics, &c.

It mostly seemed like bunk to me from the start – did god really care which version of the Our Father I recited, so long as I was still name-checking him? Or, to put a finer point on it, did he mind if I listened to a tape of the B-52’s Cosmic Thing on the bus to our field trip?

I didn’t think so, but my principal did. He, and the entire staff of the school, shared that same opinion about all popular music, which increasingly lead me to rebel in tiny ways, like asking if we could pray for Gloria Estefan when she had her big accident (“we don’t pray for those people”) and writing The Immaculate Collection as my favorite album in a survey for class (“it’s Conception, and it’s not an album, Peter” … “No, not this one”).

If you think you understand where they were coming from – that the B-52’s and Gloria Estefan and Madonna were actively sexual and inappropriate for grade school – then you’re only seeing a symptom of their insanity, rather than the depths to which it ran.

I was a precocious reader, and by fourth grade I had exhausted the Nancy Drews and every other Young Adult novel in the school library. My mom, who was in danger of being run out of house and home by fueling my voracious reading habit with monthly trips to the book store and weekly trips to the library, decided I could start reading her books as long as she read them first to screen for anything truly inappropriate.

At the time my mother (and most of America, I suppose) was on a heavy Stephen King kick. All the classics – Pet Cemetery, It, The Stand, and every other one that wound up as a movie. Some of them she rightfully screened from me for a year or two, but others she passed along.

One was The Eyes of the Dragon, which was not horror so much as a dark fantasy. Or, at least that’s what I remember from the first 20-or-so pages, because after that it was snatched away from me (on yet another field trip) by a teacher.

“Where did you get this?”

“From my mother?”

“You shouldn’t steal books from your mother.”

“I didn’t steal it, she gave it to me to read on the bus.”

The teacher clearly did not believe me, but my mother – as always – came to my defense. “He’s a smart kid,” I imagine she argued, “and he needs stimulation.”

Of course, they couldn’t be trusted to trust my mother, and so I received long, personalized sermons from everyone from my teacher to the janitor about why reading Stephen King books was a bad idea. Why would I want to jeopardize my spot in heaven for some gory horror novel? It just didn’t make sense.

Well, they were at least right about that. Every time I thought I had them figured out they’d find a new way to paint me into a decidedly unheavenly corner. Reading fantasy books was frowned upon if the fantasy wasn’t directly derived from god. GI Joes were not an appropriate toy, because they had guns (nevermind that they all supported Iraq #1, and I’m sure Iraq #2 as well). And, AIDs was a plague the gays deserved, and anyone else who caught it was just collateral damage.

It was around the time of that last one that I decided I was definitely not going to be a Born Again Christian.

So, yes, they talked a lot about heaven. Or, at least, a lot about getting into heaven. Not so much about heaven itself.

It seemed strange to me, that they were so focused on getting to a place they didn’t know much about. It seemed analogous to begging your mother to go to an amusement park without knowing how many loops the roller coasters had.

(Clearly my Stephen King reading had left me a little remedial in studying up on the concept of Faith.)

(Or, maybe I’m just not wired that way.)

Gradually, I started to make my own concept of heaven that would match all of the tedious effort they put into getting there.

The whole point of heaven, it seemed, was to be awesome. Clearly it was always blue-skied. All of the food would taste great. You would never have to sleep, and you could re-watch television shows you missed by mistake.

(Yes, heaven imported TiVo from the future. Heaven is that awesome.)

God, I decided, was sortof a hard-ass – what, with all the smiting and sending Jesus to pal around on Earth for three decades just to get himself killed. I mean, the “only begotten son” bit just didn’t ring true to me – god was definitely the same Old Testament hard-ass he always was, he just looked softer because he had a kid. I had seen the same thing on television.

God was effectively Gargamel – old, batty, mean, and chasing around little people who barely came up to his shin with a big club. But, in a wacky, non-threatening, recurringly eposodic way.

By contrast, Jesus was definitely John Lennon, walking around singing “Imagine” – or, if you asked very nicely, “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” It definitely put his “bigger than Jesus” comment into a particularly ironic light, I thought.

However, I determined that the greatest feature of heaven was that you would know everything anyone ever thought about you. Not in an intrusive way … just a tally. Like, Leah, the girl I had a crush on for four years, would be able to see every distinct time I thought about her. Or Victor, the bully, would be able to discern the times I feared him versus the times I just felt sorry for him.

It made a certain amount of sense to me; if you were going to spend the rest of your life mingling through the clouds, you ought to be on equal footing with each other.

(Slightly later I amended the list to include people being able to get a tally of how many times people thought of them while having an orgasm, with a second tally indicating how many times that was during an orgasm had with someone other than you.)

(In retrospect, that might not be the kind of thing you find out in heaven.)

I still remember our last exchange with anyone on the staff in the sharpest possible focus. It was after our sixth grade end of year assembly, and we were all running around behind the stage drinking carbonated punch, which I claimed made me feel a little tipsy since I had never drank anything carbonated before in my life.

My mother was talking to the wife of the school’s principal, and as I ran past her I overhead this snippet of conversation…

Mom: “It would be nice if you held some events where they could just socialize together.”

Wife: “Oh, yes, that’s always nice.”

Mom: “Maybe even something like a dance.”

Wife: “A dance?”

Mom: “You know, with music? Around this age the kids in public schools and Catholic schools start to have dances.”

Wife: “Oh no. No. No no. We could never…”

I don’t remember anything else. Maybe I zoomed out of earshot, inebriated on bubbles. Or maybe my mother excused herself and ushered me out to the car. Either way, it was the last time I ever set foot in the building, or spoke to any of them other than my best friend Monica.

I still dream about them sometimes, about the teachers and janitors and principal’s sons. Sometimes I dream that I am 10-years-old but still myself, desperately trying to escape their serpentine corridors without notice. Sometimes I dream that they invite me to a twentieth reunion and I try in vain to explain to them how they made me so hateful and distrustful of religion.

Sometimes I dream that they all wound up being gay, and that they each confessed to me in turn that they were afraid they would never get to heaven.

I really hope they all get to heaven, since their whole lives have been dedicated to the practice – to the exclusion of school dances, Stephen King novels, and Madonna albums.

I wonder if when they get there they’ll see how much time I’ve spent worrying about them.

I wonder if they’ll care.

Also filed in beatles, books, childhood, dreamt, gblt, madonna, memories, mom, religion, sex, stories | | Comments (7)

How is it that we made it out to be so hard?

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Earlier this evening Gina and I spent some time watching a DVD of a performance of ours from 2004.

The experience was at once reassuring and horrific. Horrific because of the sheer terror of some of the choices we made on dynamics and harmony. Reassuring because the core of what we were doing four years ago – the good part – is identical to what we’ve been doing for the past thirteen months.

Bands, unfortunately, don’t come with an instruction book. Luckily, Gina and I are unshakeable friends with the same ridiculous sense of humor, so the interpersonal part hasn’t been difficult, and any stumbling blocks have been handled with aplomb. But, it’s taken a lot of trying to figure out how to run an effective rehearsal, or how to approach learning a new song, or how to salvage a floundering set, amongst a myriad of other difficulties.

(For the record, the former includes eating dinner first, and the second involves having multiple copies of printed lyrics on which we make constant, extensive notation in pencil. We haven’t completely figured out the third, but so far it would seem to involve playing “Pocahontas,” multiple times if necessary.)

I feel as though now that we’re in our second year of formal existence the training wheels on our band are slowly starting to disengage. Clearly we know how to write lead sheets and arrange harmony, or else we wouldn’t have made it this far with a pretty solid 16-song set. However, 2008 is already bringing more advanced trials – like booking our own gigs, and adding additional members to the ensemble.

We’re two unusual people, and we make an unusual pair of singer-songwriters. We sing an unusual collection of tunes ranging from unrequited longing to ruminations on the apocalypse, from vitriolic blasts to paeans to a semi-fictional communist outpost in Idaho. Neither of us knows a damn thing about what we’re doing, and we’re having a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

If there was an instruction book I’m not sure I’d read any of it.

(if you’re reading this on a feed, visit CK to hear the audio)
(also, be our friend)

Wait (Live @ Rehearsal) [4:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Trio Season 6 – Suite #2: Transparency

Friday, November 30, 2007

Trio: Season Six, Suite #2: Transparency
Deadweight, Save Your Day, Secret Queen

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Re: Transparency
All three of these songs are about the same thing: a person that wouldn’t ordinarily impact me so much that I would write a song about them, and having one moment of unusual insight into that person – where I really saw through all of their opacity and outside intentions to what they were really about at their core.

Deadweight
At the time, actually, I thought it was just a throw-away. I had written another lyric on a page in my notebook … and I wrote ["Deadweight"] on the upside down of that page. … Now I have to turn the poetry notebook upside down every time I go back to check something.

Save Your Day
One of my readers sent me an email [to say that] she listened to it and just cried … because it was describing her. … You don’t think I’m going to write a song describing somebody’s life. Those songs suck. But, if you are just writing something true people find themselves in that.

Secret Queen
Oh, that secret queen. I’ve got some opinions about her. One day I just thought to myself, With all of that negative energy, you could just be the biggest black hole in my galaxy. And then “Secret Queen” arrived.

Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

Suite 2: Transparency [16:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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More Than I Am; Less Like Me

Friday, November 9, 2007

Around this time in last year’s NaBloPoMo Gina and I were just convening for our yearly holiday revue rehearsals, which wound up evolving into full-time Arcati Crisis.

Back then we would break off a set early if our mixing was bad or we biffed a harmony, and we didn’t like playing with other people because it threw off our very precarious musical balance.

Tonight we played three songs with a backing band in front of a modest crowd, rocking two of them quite adequately, and soldiering through a third one despite highly audible technical issues arising from our back line.

Our mixing was middling; no harmony was biffed.

After our set we mingled with various artists up in the (awesome) balcony-level green room, and witnessed a stunning percussion jam lead by our dear friend Dante Bucci and including our new favorite tabla player on the entire planet, Natasha.

Whilst we were relaxing between sets we struck up a conversation with the other performers. I’m always a little fearful of these backstage relationships, because I find them impossible to maintain with tact and grace if I decide that the performer is not up to par (and I’m afraid they’ll have the same issue with me).

One woman in particular was very charming, and we spoke to her at length about our history, how long we’ve known each other and have been playing together, and how satisfying it is to finally be a real band playing music together.

When we asked her about herself she mostly demurred, saying that she had given up writing songs for a while but recently fell back into it. That just made me all the more anxious about the prospects of carrying on a conversation afterward she played, but I put it aside; we were talking to a such a perceptive and personable fellow musician, and I should enjoy that completely apart from her actual musicianship.

As it turns out, she was amazing. Her songs were campy in an intentional, hilarious, genuine way, and her piano playing and singing were both unassailable and sometimes remarkable. Later she complained about a flubbed chord, and Gina and I remarked truthfully that we wouldn’t have ever known had she not told us.

(I need to remember that the same usually holds true for us.)

Nancy Huebner. Keep your ear out.

The moral of those dual stories is one and the same.

If you have something in your life that you’ve always wanted to do – something that you love (or think you would love doing) but never thought you would be good at – do it.

Stop asking questions. Don’t ask questions. Don’t doubt. Equip yourself with knowledge and enthusiasm, work at it until the work becomes effortless and fun, and then have fun doing it in the absence of the approval of anyone other than yourself.

Eventually it won’t matter if your harmony gets biffed or your chord gets flubbed every once and a while, because what you’re doing will be about a lot more than harmony and chords.

It’ll be about happiness.

Noncommittal (rehearsal): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Punk (rehearsal): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In Pursuit of Bliss, pt. 1 – Permission

Friday, November 2, 2007

I tore open the basement door and was met with darkness and the mews of sequestered pets. He was definitely was not in the basement.

He hadn’t been in the kitchen, or upstairs in his bedroom, or in his office, or in the garage, so I was positive he would be in the basement.

I shut the door carefully so Elise wouldn’t hear the noise, noticing with a certain detachment that my hands were shaking.

Time was running out.

I haven’t felt stage fright in a while – physically felt it like an affliction, or a holy ghost moving within me.

Now it’s just a spare butterfly in my stomach, or a certain anxiousness – probably because these days my on-stage appearances involve strumming and squawking my own songs rather than reciting 115 pages of memorized dialog. Yet, even in my theatrical days my slight stage fright was nothing debilitating. It was more a survival instinct than performance anxiety; it kept me aware, kept me from being complacent.

Or, maybe I’m just a natural performer, and I’ve never really understood what stage fright really is.

Until that Sunday.

Back in the kitchen now, with Elise a scant wall away in the bathroom. Even washing her face or futzing with her contacts wouldn’t keep her in there much longer. I had another minute, maybe two. Desperate, I looked out of the window.

There he was. Walking the dog.

I don’t think I’ve ever moved so quickly in my entire life. Out of the kitchen, into the hallway, and out into the pitch black garage, stealthily shutting each door behind me as I went.

A sole trace of light radiated from around the edges of the outside door. In the relative blackness I nearly tumbled over a box. Or a car. Or some sort of inert garage gremlin, for all I knew at the time. I was completely fixated on the outline of the door, which he hadn’t shut completely. I should have noticed it the first time I peered into the garage.

Heart racing, I grasped the doorknob.

Despite my near-OCD about consistency and personal habits I don’t believe in carrying on a tradition for traditions sake. Just because everyone does something a certain way – have always done something a certain way – doesn’t mean I plan to adhere. In fact, it probably means that I plan not to, especially if the tradition is religious or patriarchal in any way.

Yet, even with that inherent rebelliousness, there are a few traditions I just can’t bear to break. Am I actually polite on some deeply-repressed psychological plane? On some even deeper level do I buy into a few traditions just so my rejection of others is more profound.

Or, are some traditions that way for a reason?

I burst out of the door and into the daylight of the driveway, breathless.

From across the street Elise’s father looked up from a cell phone call to regard me quizzically, the dog hunched in the grass by his feet.

As I met his gaze my entire body shook uncontrollably. The physical, rational part of me was having a grand mal seizure. Somewhere beneath that a combination of instinct and basic motor functions took over.

I started to walk down the driveway.

It was over before I knew it. Like being stuck by a needle, or surging down a rollercoaster. Or getting on stage. All the anxiety in the anticipation, and none of in the act.

My recollection of the actual event is vague. Did I speak with confidence, or was I shaking like a leaf (and possibly dry heaving) the entire time. I would say that we could ask Elise’s father, but I’m sure he had his own collection of involuntary reactions to contend with at the time.

Five minutes later we walked back into the house together to find Elise seated in the kitchen, reading her book. She raised an eyebrow at our entrance, to which I replied, “I didn’t want him to have to walk the dog alone.”

She went back to her book, apparently unconcerned, unaware of the mad hunt that had lead me outside or the motivation behind it.

I resisted the urge to shoot a look back to her father, but couldn’t risk giving my mission away.

I had permission. We were getting engaged.

Also filed in Engagement, NaBloPoMo | | Comments (8)

We interrupt this interruption in service…

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Over the past five and three-quarter years of blogging you’ve all become acquainted with Elise.

I always used to joke that my paucity of girlfriends was due to the fact that I’d only date girls more intelligent (and talented) than me, and Elise certainly fits that bill.

She not only fits that bill, but she’s also gorgeous, hilarious, and perfectly equipped to at once complement and endure all of my flaws.

Well, as of last Friday night at about 6 p.m. that gorgeous, brilliant, hilarious, talented, perfect-for-me girlfriend of mine is now my fiancée.

Our engagement was totally unique and unbelievably flawless. And, if you want to hear about it, you’re going to have to tune in next month, because you had better believe I’m saving all that awesomely schmaltzy writing for NaBloPoMo.

As for blogging before then? I’m otherwise engaged.

Also filed in Engagement, elise | | Comments (6)

How Radiohead is trying to rehab a rapidly melting industry (but they won’t go, go, go).

Monday, October 1, 2007

(1) One of the major benefits of Radiohead’s release strategy for the forthcoming In Rainbows hit me squarely on my walk to the subway this morning: no leaks.

The release of each of Radiohead’s last three albums has been an event. Not just a manufactured Kanye v. 50 affair, but an honest-to-goodness critical and popular bomb dropped on the record buying public. And, no thanks to their savvy fans, each record tends to leak ahead of the disc release.

I never had the impression that Radiohead minded leakage, per se, with Johnny Greenwood saying the following about a two-month early leak of Hail to the Thief

Shame it’s not a package with the artwork and all, but there you go. I feel bemused, though, not annoyed. I’m glad people like it, most of all. It’s a little earlier than we’d expected, but there it is. (WP)

You can read between the lines there to understand a few things about Radiohead. They value albums as an experience. They enjoy designing the collateral that accompanies them. And, as illustrated by their never-ending iTunes holdout, they aren’t crazy about badly encoded versions of their work.

All three factors lead to a band that’s “bemused” by leaks rather than “annoyed” – they think it’s quaint that anyone is making an effort to obtain an early version of an incomplete product.

By offering a pay-what-you-will download of In Rainbows two months ahead of the physical release the band gets to leak on their own terms. They can independently master their disc and shuttle it straight to their service provider for upload, with no studio interns to smuggle a pre-master or label reps to swipe a final copy.

Furthermore, fans get the music on Radiohead’s terms – not some nth generation digital-to-analog-to-digital transfer encoded to an MP3, but a direct-from-source version engineered to the band’s specifications.

It is, in a sense, the best possible leak.

(2a) The Radiohead situation got my awesome co-worker Chris and I talking about the current rapidly-failing state of the music industry.

Record companies sit on what for decades seemed to be an inexhaustible resource – audience-facing intellectual property in the form of sound recordings and publishing rights, and artist-facing deep pockets that control access to big producers and hype machines. However, those resources were inexhaustible only because the means of distribution and production were highly controlled.

As a nominal example, take Fleetwood Mac. Much to my teenaged consternation, for over a decade there was no single greatest hits CD on which you could purchase a particular trio of their biggest classic rock hits, namely “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” and “Go Your Own Way.” Yes, their single disc hits package leaves off “Landslide.”

Why? Who knows, but it’s as good of an illustration as any of the record companies and their inexhaustible resource of intellectual property, which remained valuable due to scarcity. Scarcity driven by selectively signing bands and selectively releasing their work, by holding on to publishing and sound recording rights, and through cross-promotions and radio payola, to name just a few of the channels metered with a heavy hand by labels.

At the crux of the matter is a business paradigm that’s all sewn up in old media. Record companies still want to act as a broker of music between and artist and their fans, and their preferred method of business is still retail transactions – physical or virtual.

For all the talk of the threat of file-sharing and the relative oligopoly of the digital music market, it’s the business model that’s sucking the life out of the music business. Unless you’re Radiohead (or Ani DiFranco) putting together a gestalt album package, what does album intrinsically mean? Why sell albums? Why sell? Why not let listeners subscribe to an artist like a magazine that doles out singles instead of issues?

Because that system doesn’t really require middleman, does it?

(2b) Recently the tables have turned on the record industry and its previously inexaustible seat of power.

iTunes is returning the business to it’s single-oriented 45 days, killing per-track margins. Its a la carte nature combined with p2p makes it harder than ever for companies to reap extra album sales by repackaging the same release or through judicious exclusion of key tracks.

Meanwhile, songwriting artists are wising up and shopping to smaller labels and imprints to get more out of their publishing rights or make deals to own their own masters, and label power over FM radio is being eroded by satellite, internet streams, and the almighty iPod.

Suddenly that seemingly never-ending glacier of resources is melting at the labels’ feet while marquee names like Madonna take their business elsewhere because their major moneymaker is no longer their records but their overall brand. Artists major and minor are increasingly make their living from merchandise, publishing, and live shows, painting labels quite plainly as outmoded loan sharks hoping to advance money and support in exchange for the brand and intellectual property. And, the artists are finally – rightfully – balking at the concept.

They no longer need labels – labels need them.

(3) Of course, record labels know they are about to be sitting in a lukewarm puddle resources, and they’re taking every action to prevent their leverage from melting.

Amy Winehouse was withheld from the American market for years after her strong debut with Frank, including several months after her blockbuster sophomore effort Back to Black dropped in the UK to massive acclaim.

Why wait? Universal Island wanted to drum up a perfect storm of stateside media coverage for their critical darling, and they wanted to ride a huge post-Grammies wave of attention on other UK imports who recently followed the same strategy: Gnarls Barkley, KT Tunstall, and Corinne Bailey Rae.

Amy shipped a big hit – score for Universal. However, it was just a single disc, and Amy hasn’t been anywhere near a studio for follow-up due to her whirlwind US promotional efforts. Six months later she’s canceled her first major headline tour for a stint in rehab, and is being haunted by bad press wherein her family is urging listeners not to buy her record until she cleans up her act. Universal Island is now pushing out Frank to American soils, but there’s no telling if she’ll be good for a follow-up hit.

None of that is the label’s fault, per se. What is their fault is letting the business artificially lead the music – trying to manufacture a hit with art that was already in the world by keeping Winehouse bottled up in the UK when she was fierce and ready to tour behind a fresh disc.

America got her second-hand, and it shows.

(Epilogue) Radiohead is engaging in the antithesis of the Winehouse strategy – they’re letting the music drive the business, and it makes an astounding amount of sense. Release digital the second the disc gets out of mastering to hit rabid fans and major tastemakers. Then drop a special package for the die-hards and collectors. Finally, after drumming up a holistic, naturally occurring storm of interest, release a more traditional version of the disc for retailers to shill to the masses.

Not only does it make sense, in that order no one feels slighted by buying all three releases – no one is getting teased out by eighteen extra-special limited edition versions of the disc, it just runs a natural course: leak, premium, normal.

Kudos to Radiohead for breaking free not only of their label, but of the industry paradigm. I hope everyone votes early and often with their wallets handy.

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September In Review

Monday, October 1, 2007

I blogged every day in September, which is pretty remarkable considering that in seven years of blogging the only other month I posted every day was last November, during NaBloPoMo … and then my honor was at stake!

September’s major feature was a retrospective series of my favorite recordings from Trio Seasons 1-4. Each of the sixteen songs I featured was remastered from their prior Real Audio format and presented as 192kbs mp3s. In the process, I also uploaded remastered mp3 versions of the entirety of Trio Season 1. Further remastered seasons will follow in the coming months.

My Trio flashback only accounted for half of my posts, so what else did I spend every day blogging about? Eloquent cab drivers. Why a link is often not enough. Imagining myself as Britney’s image consultant. An epiphany. Why I don’t like Heroes. A brand new version of “Standing“. My birthday, and the path to Arcati Crisis’s debut at the Tin Angel. Six consecutive happy hours. Other stuff, too.

I also read and linked to a slew of great blogs, including perennial favorites like Coolfer, Kottke, Largehearted Boy, Make You Go Hmm, and Scott Andrew; more recent fixations including Confessions of a Pioneer Woman, Debbi Millman, Ethicurean, Fresh Arrival, Harvard Avenue, MLarson, Schnozzfest, Telescreen, What If No One’s Watching, and You’re Doing It Wrong; and new finds such as Akkam’s Razor, A Brief Message, Communication Nation, A Girl About Philly, Shorpy, Smogr, Some Velvet Blog, Unclutterer, and The Yellow Stereo.

As always, I appreciate your attentive eyes and ears; I hope you plan to stick with me through October.

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The Arrival of Arcati Crisis

Sunday, September 23, 2007

My birthday celebration began officially on Thursday night when I stepped on stage beside Gina as Arcati Crisis, before several dozen of my friends, and in front of a three-piece backing band, and commenced the first moment in my life where I truly felt like a rock star.

Flash back to a year ago – the beginning of my quarter-life danger/opportunity.

I knew – had known for months – that I wanted to get out to play more often. It was one of the reasons I had quit my promising run with our semi-pro acappella group after six months of arduous rehearsals. Yet, after two months of constantly playing around the house and a tepid run at World Cafe Live’s Monday open mic, I was stuck playing a single bar once a month.

I needed something a little more artist-oriented – where I wouldn’t be fiercely battling for attention over and over again with the same damn Madonna cover.

Out of the blue, I recalled Penni Gould – a woman I knew in passing from years of playing the Shubin Theatre holiday revue. At the 2004 show she mentioned that she was starting up a monthly performance salon for local theatre artists? Was it still around?

Not only was it still around, but after a brief email exchange I found myself invited to their next soundcheck for an audition. I played one rocker and one ballad, and just like that I was booked for a debut in December.

Meanwhile, Gina and I just had commenced rehearsing for our annual appearance at the Holiday Revue. This year we were effectively co-headlining with a three-song set, for which we were hardly prepared.

As a result, we resolved to do something highly unusual for us: rehearse. More than a week before our performance. And, more than once.

For the first couple of meetings we just played around, trying to figure out what we sounded like after a year-and-a-half apart. By our third rehearsal we realized that two of our biggest past challenges had transformed into major opportunities.

First, Gina was more consistent and aggressive than ever on her guitar parts, making it easy to scale up to more complex arrangements.

Even more significant, my acappella experience had taught me how to hold my own against other vocals, and as a result I no longer had to struggle to sing harmony with Gina. Not only could Gina sing more harmony with me, but for the first time I could sing harmony on her songs as well!

We wound up with more than a trio of songs – we discovered a formula, both for our sound and for motivating ourselves to rehearse. After a nearly flawless performance at the revue I floated my typical annual question to Gina – any chance you want to keep rehearsing in the new year?

Shockingly – though somehow not surprisingly – she said yes.

Now travel forward to May. Gina and I had just made our official redebut as Arcati Crisis at the 5th Annual Lyndzapalooza, and a few weeks later I found myself scheduled for another Melange performance.

Amusingly, over the past six months my tables had been turned: coming off of rehearsing with Gina as Arcati Crisis my own material was flabby and out of shape, especially in light of what looked to be a strong lineup at Melange.

Past that self-consciousness, Lindsay emailed me about a curious new development – Melange listed a future date at the Tin Angel, one of my favorite venues. Would I be playing there?

My only answer was a sinking feeling in my stomach that I wasn’t prepared to make a strong showing that night at Melange … certainly not strong enough to merit a coveted spot at the Tin.

A bit worried (okay: panicked), I sent Gina a pleading email: was there any chance she’d come up to sing harmony with me on one song, so I didn’t feel so nude?

As the day progressed we continued to exchange emails and the plans became more elaborate, until finally we agreed to just appear as Arcati Crisis. And we did, rocking an unusual combination of her bouncy “Fisher Price” and my elaborately maudlin “Counts the Most.”

Afterwards, Penni told us she would see if she could squeeze us in to the yet-to-be-announced second Tin Angel gig.

Now just a month ago, Gina and I are in a third floor apartment across from the Kimmel Center playing with a drummer and a bassist for the first time. Beforehand we absconded into the stairwell, working hushedly on our harmonies and debating on what we should tell the drummer to do.

The point wound up being moot. Tom, our drummer, was fantastic – picking up on exactly what we wanted without us even having to say so. All of our songs transformed into the better selves we had imagined all along, none more than Gina’s “What’ll I Say” – now less languid folk and more acoustic jam.

Suddenly our little duo had been expanded to an honest rock band that would be making its debut on September 20th.

Now we just needed an audience.

Thursday night, and Gina and I are backstage in one of two dressing rooms at the Tin Angel, having spent the past hour hand-labeling the Live @ Rehearsal, Vol. 1 discs I took the day off from work to mix and produce.

The walls of our room are covered with sharpie marker signatures from the many bands that had appeared there. Chris Smither loomed just above my head, and Erin McKeown high behind my chair. After much searching I failed to spot Peter Mulvey, but we discovered our acquaintance Mutlu near the ceiling and upside down.

Enough people had been seated that there was a bit of a hum drifting back to the room, and I delighted that this wasn’t theatre and that it was okay for me to sneek out for a peek.

The peek snuck the breath right out of me; the vast majority of the audience were our family and friends. Both of our parents, and our partners. Former roommates and theatre compatriots. Co-workers and random friends.

Most performances are a blur, but I can still hear this one in super slow motion. It makes the mistakes all the more painful than usual, but it also magnifies the successes.

A flipped pronoun on “Standing” pales against the best bridge vocal I’ve ever done. Skipping a progression on “What’ll I Say” to untangle my quarter inch tiny in the face of belting out my harmony at the close. And, starting “Wait” with a too hard pick hardly mattering when compared to our hilarious ad-libbed inflections and gestures on the final verse, tossing our lines back and forth to each other while the rhythm section carried the song.

Afterwards Elise and I went out for drinks, and more drinks, and karaoke, all of which I experienced through a film of joy. It might have taken ten years of preparation and a year of work, but I’ve finally transformed from wayward solo songwriter with no confidence to part of an assured and rehearsed duo that’s had a taste of a backing band and is hungry for more.

An errant Banker’s Club cosmo aside, Thursday night was the best birthday gift ever.

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Crisis = Danger & Opportunity

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Last year I approached my 25th birthday with trepidation – I’m on the younger side of my group of friends, and I’d watched each of them struggle with some variety of a quarter-life crisis. Who am I? What am I doing with myself? What am I spending all of my time and money on? The questions seemed as endless as they were answerless.

To boot, the end of my first quarter was off to an inauspicious start: I had recently quit the acappella group that was my only after-work activity. I wanted to perform my original music, but I had nowhere to play and no one to play with.

And, right on my birthday, Elise and I had a hideous fight, a rare thing for us.

I love a crisis, because it represents both danger and opportunity, so I made my quarter-life as a challenge. In a year where most twenty-somethings freaked out about lacking direction I would turn my meandering life into a pure vector, improving every aspect.

The whole endeavor sounded ridiculous last September when I conceived of it – how could I better every aspect of my life without some cataclysmic change, like winning the lottery or developing telekinesis?

As it turns out, if you want to truly alter your life you have to treat it like a weather pattern – starting with the proverbial flutter of butterfly wings and winding up on the other side of a hurricane of change.

It yielded some results I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, many of which I already touched on for CK’s birthday a month ago. I performed live in almost every month of the year. I rebooted my blog, creating something I adore more than ever. I’ve saved more money than I have in my entire life previous, but I still found a way to afford voice lessons. I’m eating healthier than I ever have before, but it’s not just a tacit attempt to jump start my anorexia. And, as evidenced by my yet-to-be-recounted Thursday night as a rock star, Gina and I are finally a band.

The list goes on and on, but it ends with the most important item: I’m happy right where I am.

Last night at dinner my mother asked me if I felt any older, and I think I surprised her by saying yes.

I feel older in the best possible way.

Also filed in adulthood, betterment | | Comments (4)

I so did not violate any confidentiality agreements by writing this post.

Monday, August 27, 2007

How to write this post and not get fired? It’ll be tricky.

You all know by now I work in communications for a major Philadelphia company, and I love it. I get paid to do things I would probably be doing at home by myself anyway, as frightening as that concept is.

What you might not know (because I haven’t mentioned it in about seven years) is that I had a childhood obsession with the Price Is Right. I loved the One Bid, I loved the Showcase Showdown.

But, I loved nothing more than I loved Plinko.

I was obsessed with the way the penny slid into the board and plunked back and forth and to and fro down the pegs before it finally wound up in a prize slot.

You might not understand how those two facts are connected to each other. Here’s a hint:

Right now, somewhere in Philadelphia, there is a fully functional Plinko board.

I can’t tell you why there is a Plinko board, or where the Plinko board is, because it’s … well, it might be a trade secret? Like, if I were to reveal the purpose and location of the Plinko board, the reason behind my termination would be “dissemination of trade secrets on the internet.” I think.

What I can reveal is that within the last month my co-workers’ “duties as assigned” meant they had to acquire said Plinko board, and that when I walked one of said co-workers to the parking lot today I came within one hot second of climbing onto the roof of her mini-van like a fucking ninja and riding that sucker through rush hour to the location of the Plinko board.

I have been promised photos, and possibly even a video demo, of the Plinko board in action. Yet, pester, plead, and outright beg as I might I could not obtain permission to play, touch, or even view the Plinko board at its secret location. And, after tomorrow, it will be gone, whisked away by the cruel whims of fate (and/or the decrepit liver-spotted claws of nigh unknown game show dieties).

However, though I may be barred from visiting the Plinko mecca, or enlisting you to help me gain entry to it by some nefarious means, I have taken away one important thing from this experience:

I now know that there is a life-sized, fully-functional Plinko board that can be delivered to the Philadelphia metro area.

And, I’m pretty sure I have a high enough credit limit to rent it for the weekend…