Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

demos

30 for 30 Project, 1992: “Precious Things” – Tori Amos

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Tori Amos has a new album out today, Night of Hunters, released just a few months shy of the twentieth anniversary of her seminal solo debut, Little Earthquakes.

I spent this morning tweeting my reaction to the new album, a classically set song cycle heavy on mythological themes. The music is bold and haunting, but the lyrics are largely obscure and off-putting.

Little Earthquakes was practically its opposite, all about clever wordplay even when the piano was reduced to music box simplicity, quoting the same lines again and again, or utter silence, on “Me and a Gun.”

(Watch me cover “Precious Things” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

I remember Tori’s debut tickling at the fringes of my consciousness that year, maybe on MTV. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1992: “Precious Things” – Tori Amos

30 for 30 Project, 1991: “Losing My Religion” – R.E.M.

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You can read a lot of different meanings into “Losing My Religion,” but to me it has always been a song about the status quo, and how some people are better at changing than others.

I’ve never been good at change. Not in the short term, anyway.

In 1991 I had the opportunity to leave my small, private, religious school to attend a magnet-school program at Masterman, which was (and is still) the best public school in the state. I wanted to stay. Why attend a magnet school with other smart kids? The MG program I used to go to was lame. Wouldn’t this simply be all lame, all day? Yet, clearly I needed to leave – my grades were dipping as I grew increasingly bored with my classes.

In 1991 my interest in music waned. I was much more interested in reading. This might have been because records began to be phased out in favor of CDs. I remember the last vinyl LP we bought was Madonna’s Like a Prayer in 1989. We didn’t have a CD player in our house until 1994. I didn’t want one; I didn’t want to have to buy my cassettes all over again. Yet, clearly I fell behind – when I look at the hot singles and albums from the intervening four years, much of it is unknown to me.

I’ve never liked losing my religion, but eventually I learn how to move on.


(Watch me cover “Losing My Religion” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

(1991 was one of the trickier years for me to choose because of my LP-to-CD gap. It was always going to be this or “I Touch Myself.” I would not be surprised if you hear Arcati Crisis covering this tune now that I know how to play it. I never realized it was so simple! I memorized all the changes in about twenty minutes; this was my first play through the song.)

30 for 30 Project, 1990: “Vogue” – Madonna

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Look around, everywhere you turn is heartache. It’s everywhere that you go.

Last night I was idly surfing the web as I waited for today’s video to upload. I noticed a New York Times article titled, “In Suburb, Battle Goes Public on Bullying of Gay Students.”

You try everything you can to escape the pain of life that you know.

The article was about Anoka, the largest school district in Minnesota, which has a pervasive bullying problem that focuses on students that are perceived to be gay or lesbian, or come from LGBT homes.

(Apropos of nothing (or everything) the district is partially situated in Representative Bachmann’s Congressional district.)

Several students and their families have brought a lawsuit against the district, in part charging that, “district staff members, when they witnessed or heard reports of antigay harassment, tended to ‘ignore, minimize, dismiss, or in some instances, to blame the victim for the other students’ abusive behavior.”

When all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today…

The Anoka School District has seen eight suicides in the past two years. At least two of the students were gay, and possibly half of them had been known subjects of LGBT-focused bullying.

I know a place where you can get away: it’s called a dance floor, and here’s what it’s for.

Now the parents, families, and friends of these children will have their young image suspended forever in time, ageless and smiling, a pose that can never be unstruck.

Come on, vogue.

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All you need is your own imagination – so use it that’s what it’s for.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to confess that I have plans for Madonna’s catalog for beyond this 30 for 30 Project, which is why I’ve been studiously avoiding her hits thus far. However, when it came to 1990 my list kept coming back to “Vogue.”

I tried to choose another song for 1990. I really did. Fans on Twitter suggested “Nothing Compares 2 U.” I spent a day trying to cover it, but I simply hate the song. I’m unable to let go of my eight-year-old’s obsession with the fact that it was ensconced at number one for five weeks while the more deserving “Vogue” waited patiently for its spot at the top.

Go inside for your finest inspiration. Your dreams will open the door.

I decided that if I was going to let Madonna into this project, I couldn’t try for perfection. My cover had to be something else entirely. In the spirit of the Material Girl, I turned it into a deliberately silly game of dress-up, donning some of my still-surviving (and surprisingly fitting) glam clothes from high school and doing a bit of dancing.

If I had read the article a day or two ago you might be watching a very different version of “Vogue” in this post. Something nearer to “Nothing Compares” – a dirge-like ballad that merges sorrow and joy.

Maybe I’ll still record it that way. For now, you get this ridiculousness. I hope you enjoy it.


(Watch me cover “Vogue” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

It makes no difference if you’re black or white, if you’re a boy or a girl.

Take a long look at what I’m wearing in the video. That’s what I wore to high school, daily.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is a 14-year-old boy named Kyle Rooker, who is perceived by bullies as being gay because he wears glittering accessories and belts out Lady Gaga tunes in his school’s halls. He’s been subjected to humiliating bullying that the school has done little to stop. Beyond that, teachers are under strict orders not to teach or speak on gay rights, history, or acceptance – thanks to a large Christian influence on the district’s policies.

If the music’s pumping, it will give you new life.

In my born again Christian grade school I was a tiny stick-figure of a boy who hated playing sports and carried around a cassette tape case full of Madonna. It wasn’t the reason I was mercilessly teased and bullied, but I’m sure it wasn’t helping.

In middle school all the other boys said I walked with a switch and teased me because of how I cross my legs. It was the first time I ever heard the word “gay” slung as an insult. I changed the way I walked, but kept crossing my legs.

You’re a superstar.

In high school I wore skin-tight vinyl and body glitter, and painted my lips pale white – all to attend calculus class. Once in high school an older kid shoved me up against a locker, trying to intimidate me. I told him to go fuck himself.

Yes, that’s what you are.

In college I started to wear tight, low-rise jeans and stylish button-up shirts. Once at a party I mentioned I had worked as a summer camp counselor, and a guy said, “I thought people like you weren’t be allowed to work with little boys.” Ross offered to kill him for me, but I declined.

You know it.

Three years ago a neighbor defaced and vandalized the front of our house because I – the “queer” – got too fresh with him.

Men sometimes harass or threaten me from passing cars if I walk a certain way. I still won’t play the open mics at some bars because I know they won’t like it when I cover Madonna.

Come on, vogue.

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Beauty’s where you find it, not just where you bump and grind it.

It has always been a fact of my life that being who I am and saying what I feel gets me teased and bullied. That’s fine. I’m strong, and I don’t have to contend with the stigma of half a nation being set against my love life like some of my friends do, so hit me with your best shot.

I don’t know what I would do in Kyle’s place. Stop being me? Ditch the sparkles and singing and try to be more of a boy?

I don’t know. I hope he’s singing “Born This Way” in his bullies’ faces at the top of his lungs.

Soul is in the musical – that’s what I feel so beautiful. Magical. Life’s a ball.

In June of 1990 my mother took me to see Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour as a reward for doing well in third grade. She was my favorite pop star.

So get out on the dancefloor.

We sat next to a pair of men who, in retrospect, were clearly a gay couple. I didn’t care. I thought it was cool that two older boys liked Madonna as much as I did. They thought it was cool an eight-year-old boy wanted to see Madonna and his mom decided to let him. Madonna closed the show with “Vogue.” All four of us were happy.

Come on, vogue.

It gets worse and then it gets better.

Let your body move to the music.

30 for 30 Project, 1989: “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” – Janet Jackson

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I sometimes forget the power of music as a collective experience.

Weirdly, I cannot tell you the main body of this story just yet – not until we get to 1993 or ’94, as that’s where it rightfully belongs.

What I can tell you is that music has always been one of my primary obsessions. When I was in grade school I brought my soft-covered 24-cassette case with me everywhere, which landed me in hot water at my religious school when the teachers saw song titles like “Love Shack” and “Like a Virgin.” I had the collection confiscated on school trips more than once.

In grade school no one really shared my obsession. The only music anyone was obsessing over was New Kids On the Block, and all the boys were distracted by their Transformers and Nintendo. No one wanted to talk about the music I liked, other than when Paula Abdul released the “Opposites Attract” video with the cartoon cat. As a result, I never listened to that late-80s music as a collective experience. The songs disappeared when my tape collection went extinct.

One of the tapes I played in the ground and then lost to time was Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, released 22 years ago next Monday. Janet had a way of being constantly eclipsed by her brother and Madonna. Songs from Rhythm Nation came out on the heels of the final singles from Bad, went head to head with songs from Like a Prayer as well as “Vogue,” and was closely followed by Dangerous.

(Watch me cover “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

Yet, moreso than the other three LPs, it’s Janet’s release that is the cohesive work of genius (and that says nothing of her memorable videos). Think of the singles from Rhythm Nation, chief among them the sheer audio joy of “Love Will Never Do (Without You),” and its negative echo “Miss You Much.” The slate is rounded out by “Rhythm Nation,” “Escapade,” “Alright, “Come Back to Me,” “Black Cat,” and “State of the World.” Yes, the album charted eight of twelve songs (it also had eight interludes).

How did I forget about these songs for over a decade? Why don’t we collectively treat this album like the inarguable classic it is?

Ever since I left my grade school, one of the major defining features of my friends is the music we have in common. I have always said when it comes to choosing my friends I don’t care about race, age, gender, sexual orientation, or even political leanings – as long as they have good taste in music.

How appropriate, then, that Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” was about a country united under a common beat.

Social Media has only amplified that instant bonding over music. Videos on Facebook walls, #MusicMonday on Twitter – people wear their obsession like a badge. Now, over twenty years later, I’m meeting the kids who were obsessed with Janet Jackson in 1988. Finally, I’m hearing “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” through the ears of others, as well as my own.

I’m finally having a collective experience with the music of the late 80s.

(“Love Will Never Do” charted in 1990-91, but it was released on Rhythm Nation in 1989 and I had it memorized well before it was out on the radio. Its primary competition for my project came from singles on Forever Your Girl and Like a Prayer. Arcati Crisis’s song from 1989 would surely be from the B-52’s Cosmic Thing.)

30 for 30 Project, 1988: “Man in the Mirror” – Michael Jackson

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Sometimes the collective unconscious speaks for you. Sometimes you speak for the collective unconscious.

Case and point: as I write this, “Black and White” started playing on the radio.

In 2009 I was set on covering some Michael Jackson songs. Gina and I had been talking about it for a while for Arcati Crisis, and I finally ordered his “Best of” sheet music book at the end of 2008 and got to work.

It turns out, I wasn’t the only one set on covering him. First, Kris Allen broke away from the pack on American Idol with an acoustic “Man in the Mirror” – my first choice of covers – in the semi-finals. A few weeks later, American Idol’s first finalist round was – yes, Michael Jackson songs.

(Watch me cover “Man in the Mirror” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

Heading into a summer free for playing open mics, I decided maybe I did want to have some MJ songs in my repertoire, Idol-be-damned. I started learning “Man on the Mirror,” per my original plan.

That week, Michael Jackson passed away.

That is how I found myself on my blog, broadcasting a video concert for a bunch of strangers, playing “Man in the Mirror” and crying. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1988: “Man in the Mirror” – Michael Jackson