Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for April 2006

The Dots, They’ve Been Connected

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I’ve known Leigh Marble, or at least known of Leigh Marble, as long as i’ve played guitar.

Literally. The night i came home with that crappy Ashland i headed directly to Leigh’s AniTab’s, which still exists at the same url to this day, almost nine years later. The first song i played on my first guitar was “Dilate.”

Two years later and i was a pro at figuring out my own arrangements of Ani DiFranco songs, and a contributor (and argumentative corrector) of Leigh’s tabs. At the time he was splitting a 7″ record with Erin McKeown.

Five years ago this week I saw and heard Erin McKeown for the first time in 2001, on a split bill with Peter Mulvey, and it was from that perspective that i first connected the dots between my favorite inspiration (Peter) and my first (Ani), through Leigh.

Leigh’s self-recorded his first full-length CD, Peep in 2003. He gives an elucidating account of the recording process, as well as samples of his songs. Each one i’ve heard is a fresh idea laid over an innovative arrangement, none betraying his Ani affiliation than “Bucket Seat” does mine. I’m buying a copy; you ought to buy one too. (Also, Erin has a free four-song session up at the spectacularly neat Daytrotter, and an album of standards on the way.)

I think the connection is that we’re all doing it ourselves. And, nine years later, i just submitted the 101st tab to AniTabs.

Alert! Alert! iPod Full!

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Well, it’s been coming for over a year now as i’ve been selectively paring down my less desirable tracks by unchecking them but – after a brief All of MP3 shopping spree this afternoon* – my 40gig iPod is one album away from being full.

One album!

Of course there are easily another fifty albums in iTunes that i might never willingly listen to again, so those could be safely unchecked. The issue is that i literally have to take one album off for every one i add. And, given my typical monthly purchase volume (two-five digital albums in a slow month) the attrition is going to get ugly by this time next year.**

So:


Do i try to sell my b&w click wheel 40gig iPod and multiple accessories for $200ish, plunging the capital into the purchase of a 60gig? The extra space would last me through more than 215 more albums.


Or, do i wait until Apple releases another generation of iPods (presumably later this year), suck up the purchase price and just hand off my b&w to a deserving friend?

Or, do i just suck it up and not carry my entire music collection around with me every day?

* I was in the mood for some atmospheric music, and thus bought Sia – Colour The Small One; Medeski, Martin & Wood – Best of Blue Note Years; Mandalay – Instinct; Frou Frou – Details; Emiliana Torrini – Love In The Time of Science (excellent!); and a goth-band tribute to Tori Amos.

** No comment on the implications this has on my hard drive space; i really can’t even contemplate that right now. Now that i have a new acoustic guitar an external hard drive is probably #3 on my big ticket item purchase list.

Welcome to My Obsolescence

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Meg at CK’s parent-by-proxy blog Meish links to an article about the creators of the recently mentioned Threadless, and how they’re upkeeping their technical skills with new drink-mixing site Extra Tasty.

Extra Tasty is pretty cool – it does everything i had been trying to implement for Tipsy Flicks. Perhaps i can just use their site for the drink mixing, thus taking a huge backend-burden off of myself. Of course, how would that be upkeeping my technical skills?

Silent Peer Pressure (Count The Most (demo))

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Fine, have a song. But, know that i wrote it less than 72 hours ago, and that it took two mics, two takes, one completely made up lyric transition, a heap of compression, a helping of reverb, a well-placed fade out (over my well-meaning but not well-tempered 20-beat Eb (look out, American Idol)), and carefully deployed doppler (i dare you to locate it) to make me even vaguely pleased enough to post this.

Count The Most (demo)