Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Archives for November 2008

a world outside the sphere

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With my valiant effort to get online last night and blog despite missing some sibling-to-be hanging out time I’ve now made it past the halfway hump of NaBloPoMo, where I was left stranded last year.

It’s interesting how this month of writing is shaping up, compared to the first year in 2006. Then I had a whole month of stories plotted out to tell. This year the posts have been more of slowly unspooling chain of thoughts, with each day linking to the previous one (either obviously, or just in its inspiration).

Much like last year, running the event through the Ning network has made it more of a personal challenge than a team effort – even with a social network at its center NaBloPoMo feels impersonal, and lacks the amazing community of 2006. No one seems to be making a point of reading everyone else (as I legendarily accomplished the first year).

In light of that, it’s taken a concerted effort to connect with other participants. Every morning I read a few fresh blogs on the network, and leave comments if I can muster anything to say between tooth-brushing and shirt-choosing. It’s lead me to befriend a few new bloggers, though nowhere near the volume I did in 2006 (who still makes up a healthy chunk of my feed subscriptions).

One blog I’ve become immediately devoted to is Paradise Preoccupied, home to an American expat mother of grown children who has remade her life (and her family) in the island nation of Seychelles. I first tuned in to blogger Sandra when she made a post about the semi-autobiographical novel she was writing based on her time as a band-aid in the 70s. Since then we’ve been keeping up daily – the first new daily read I’ve had in a long while.

Wreke Havoc is devoting each day to a Blatantly Bad 70s song. We’re not talking about mildly terrible 70s songs that you’re slightly nostalgic for and occasionally enjoy listening to in the car. No. These are insidiously terrible, and you will cringe as you listen to every one (all while enjoying the accompanying essays).

Another two I’ve been keeping tabs on: there is no vodka in this kool-aid is a perfect blend of nice and nasty, and Jinx (who shares a moniker with my favorite G.I Joe) is one of the rare few bloggers posting original music online. From her I cribbed Interes.tingness, which syndicates all of Flickr’s most amazing new photos in real time (just like LJ Aqua, but with pictures instead of real-time streams of Russian emoness).

I’ve also picked up two non-BloPoMo linkers: my theatre friend Sharon’s delicious natural cooking blog, and Dragonballyee, the personal blog of half of Messy and Picky, a Philly food blog.

It bears mentioning that some of my 2006 buddies are still around and actively linking to me, including You’re Doing It Wrong (my cross-country OCD blog-soul mate), Debbie Millman (inscrutably cool brand executive who I’m still hoping to grow up to be), Snippy (who I think still plans to make out with me if we ever meet in person?), my dear Mit Moi (who seems to have an anecdotal response to ANYTHING I say or post), and One Blonde’s Ambition (who used to have Augustana’s “Boston” autoplaying on her page for so long that I was eventually forced to buy it when she took it off her layout).

That’s all I’ve got in me this exhausted evening; with the two-plus hour commute by train each way trips to New Jersey completely wind me. I’ll be skipping my typical T-Give journey in an attempt to right my month and get a few more Trios done.

(PS: If you are currently reading/linking me and you assume I know and am just ignoring you, you are quite possibly wrong. I keep an eye on my inbound links and trackbacks, but I’m not as vigilant as I was in the olden days, so please stop by and leave a comment just in case. (Of the above, I had no idea Sharon had a blog, and I had completely lost track of Blonde’s Ambition when she changed urls.))

A Year In The Life

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Elise and I spent today in New Jersey for the same weekend and reason that caused me to quit NaBloPoMo last year – my brother-to-be’s fall play.

He’s come a long way in a year. Last year was his first time acting on stage; this year he had the final bow in a challenging, thought-provoking play, The Rimers of Eldritch.

Out in the audience Elise and had come a long way too. Last year when we were here it was most people’s first time seeing her engagement ring, and they were bristling with wedding questions that we hardly had answers to, let alone opinions. Today, our planning nearing completion, we traveled to New Hope to continue shopping for my wedding band.

I’m nervous about the band. I haven’t worn jewelry for a long time, not since I was younger when I bore a perfunctory cross from my grandparents. One day it fell off somewhere between home and school, never to be seen again. My mother bought me another for graduation, and I recoiled from the box. I didn’t want another cross; I had never worn it as a cross. I wore it as my grandparents.

Since then I haven’t worn anything.

I’m nervous about the band, and excited too, because I’ll be wearing Elise. We didn’t settle on a final ring today (in fact, I backslid on my prior decision), but while we were shopping I prevailed upon Elise to buy me a plain practice ring – just a small, comfortable, stainless steel band. I’ve had it on since one, on the ring finger on my right since Elise insisted I couldn’t wear my practice band on my actual finger.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m typically very conscious of my hands, of what I’m doing with them and if they are safe. Already I’m constantly fiddling – turning it, changing it from one finger to another, sliding it back and forth across my knuckle. My fingers don’t close the same way, and I rest my adjacent knuckles against it when I hold my guitar pick (it actually improves my form).

Two months from Monday I’ll put on the real thing.

how to find great music in philadelphia

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Last night we were all gathered around the door of our show, trying to entice a small trickle of patrons from the downstairs bar to come up and enjoy the music while watching the game.

We’re a bit threatening in our overwhelming friendliness and team t-shirts, and so any time more than three of us congregated in a clump I made an effort to peel away and lurk somewhere else. Maybe if we were summer camp counselors, but at a concert the sight of eight people in matching t-shirts advancing on you can be a little disconcerting.

At one point I peeled in tandem with someone else, and we got to talking about our trickle of visitors. “We have such great music here,” they said. “Why don’t people want to come in and hear it?”

It’s certainly true that we had great music – probably the best three-songwriter bill Philly would see all month – Josh Albright, Bevin Caulfield, and Blueberry Magee and His Hot Five. And, it’s my job to be able to be able answer their question with sophisticated marketing plans and communications approaches.

Last night my answer was much simpler. “Most people just don’t know,” I explained, “that this music even exists.”

That’s not a matter of marketing or communication – it’s really education. Much in the way we live in a liberal bastion of a city and frequently underestimate the power of people’s ability to disagree with our beliefs, we have also ensconced ourselves in a local music community that puts a huge value on genre-bending and sheer-musicianship.

It’s a community that I didn’t even know existed until earlier this year, and I’ve been a musician in Philadelphia for years. I really thought I was going to walk into a bar one day with some original songs, play them, and that everyone would fall madly in love with me. And, well, maybe they will. But there are a lot of other people out there deserving of that love that I never knew existed.

This year my eyes have been opened to just how much music is in the air in Philadelphia every night of the week. So many open mics. So many amazing local artists playing shows. How on Monday one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen could play to a room of just two dozen people. How our best-bill-of-the-month was playing to a small crowd of dedicated listeners and a bar full of football fans.

I’ve been lucky to experience the thrill of playing to a full house more than once this year, but I’ve played to exponentially more empty or inattentive rooms. Nobody likes the latter. But, I’m starting to understand that you can’t just fill that void with communication – that just informs people you already talk to, or marketing – that just reaches out to people predisposed to you.

What you need to fill that void is education. People need to understand that this creative community exists, that there is diverse music to be heard, and that artists all around the city are striving for an opportunity to express themselves.

Last night’s show was not Lyndzapalooza‘s biggest success, but it might have been the best reinforcement of our mission. We exist to celebrate creative community, diverse music, and equally opportunity expression. And, that celebration extends past the people who we already talk to, and the people predisposed to like us.

The celebration is for everyone.

Make You Feel Real Blue

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A few weeks ago Lindsay, Dante Bucci, and Bill McConney were playing a tiny living-room style show in a just-off-South coffee shop called Cafe Grindstone that had an entire vegan menu and a shelf of random used textbooks to peruse.

As I put back the book that taught me that pigeons are superstitious a flyer on a lower shelf caught my eye with a familiar logo – Alexandra Day.

I picked up the flyer and scanned it. A Monday night show at Tritone on South Street – not a twenty minute walk from my house – with one of the best songwriters in Philadelphia. Doesn’t take much convincing.

Then I continued to read. She would be splitting a bill with a band whose name I didn’t recognize, who would play the entirety of Joni Mitchell’s Blue.

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Improbably, I currently name as Blue my second favorite album of all time. That puts it above albums that I played on repeat for entire days of my youth. Albums that taught me what music was.

How, then, can that one LP – that I didn’t hear a single song from until college – come to eclipse all else in my collection?

It’s the color of it. Blue is rooted in a palette of different blues, explicit and implied: midnight sky outside of a plane window on “This Flight Tonight;” the melancholy emotional blues on “All I Want” and “My Old Man;” the twinkling blue tinge of frost on “River;” and the blue tv screen light in “A Case of You.” It is music that makes me see color, every single time I hear it.

It’s also the sureness of it – the way threads of blueness and yearning to get back to California are woven through the album. The sureness of Joni’s indelible performance, and the perfection of the tracking. In my opinion it is nearly the ultimate in a singer-songwriter album, and if you are assembling an album you ought to spend some serious time listening to Blue to understand how to make its formula your own.

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I mentioned the upcoming show to as many people as would listen, but I have other promotional duties as well, and I couldn’t seem to hook anyone with the play-through of the Joni album. I wound up tired and alone Monday night, installed in the back corner of the Tritone wrapped in a jacket and scarf, sipping cranberry juice.

Alexandra came by my table, her usual whirlwind of energy and vinyl pants, but she immediately caught on that I was at an unavoidable ebb.

“This is a good bar to just sit in,” she advised. “I’ve come here many times just to sit in the corner. And, you’re really going to like the band.”

The band, I learned, was Ellipsis – a local jazz trio. They assemble the second Monday of each month with as many additional players as necessary to make it through the entirety of an album. In the past two months I had missed a swing through Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” and Neil Young’s “Harvest.” And, Alexandra said the word in the room was that next month’s artist would be Bjork.

My excitement was paired with skepticism that any band could replicate the magic of Blue, especially a jazz band who I discovered in short order did not have a guitarist: piano, upright bass, drum kit, and hand percussion, plus a young jazz vocalist. Joni Mitchell’s best album without a guitar?, I mused. Is there any point?

The band set up a projector beside the stage that shone a series of images – the cover of the album, long dusty fields, empty starless nights – across their bodies and onto the wall to their right. Without much preface, they began “All I Really Want,” possibly my favorite Joni song.

My skepticism continued for a verse – the arrangement on this one was measured mimicry, and the vocalist was treading delicately around Joni’s words. Then we reached my favorite point of the song, exuberant in new love even as it plumbs its unsure depths:

All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause – life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws
Do you see – do you see – do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I hadn’t noticed, but as the verse continued I leaned farther and farther from my seat, as if I thought the song could just reach out and envelop me. By the time Samantha Rise reached that melancholy pinnacle, “we both get so blue,” my ass was barely in the chair. I was in love and wrapped in the color of her voice.

The show that followed is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed. A silkier, surer version of “My Old Man” that sent a chill through my body. The quiet menace of the quickly descending fifth in the b-section of the otherwise pretty “Little Green.” A raucous, celebratory turn through “Carey,” stripped down to it’s upright bass and percussion and then built again (here I exchanged a glance of incredulous amazement with Alex and she just laughed and turned back to watch the show). A perfect, absolutely verbatim rendition of “Blue.” A saucy, jazzy version of “California” that transformed directly into a racing, free-form take on “This Flight Tonight” complete with scatting. “River,” bare of it’s jingle bells and with a frostier pulse. A subtle, measured read on the oft-covered “Case of You,” possibly the best lost-love song ever written. And, the sometimes superfluous “Last Time I Saw Richard” transformed into a incandescent elegy for the entire album, although in its narrative it perhaps comes first – her old man gone and married to some chick who skated around on the iced over river.

At the end I was breathless and teary. I witnessed something unique and transformative, unusual and terrific. I saw all of the colors that Joni painted into the album, and so many more.

It was a show that should have played to a packed club, or even on the main stage of the Kimmel Center, and I was watching it from the back corner of what is effectively a living room with a bar and a stage along with twenty, maybe thirty fans.

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I’m inexplicably nervous to talk to other musicians, a condition that’s becoming increasingly paradoxical as I play more frequently. I am one, so shouldn’t I understand how to approach one?

Samantha – delicate and composed on the stage – was twinkling and approachable off it it. I think I heard her boasting to another fan that she could defeat him at any Mario-based game. Eventually I noticed her by herself at the bar and plunged in.

“That was so good. Blue is one of my favorite records, ever. You really did it justice.”

“Wow, thank you. It’s one of mine too!”

And so we just talked, just for a minute or two – the easy chatter of two people who love music. She shook my hand and jotted down her information on the pad I had been sketching out my next Trios on, and parted with a nod and a smile, settling in to enjoy Alexandra’s equally amazing set.

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Three days later and I still can’t get her and Ellipsis out of my head. In that last post I wondered if I still saw colors in the world, but Samantha answered that question neatly. Sometimes you just need someone to show you where to look.

Thoughts right now.

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It’s close to the wire, and I haven’t drawn up any speaking points. I was out all night at my crazy amalgam jobby/hob in assisting with Lyndzpalooza’s open mic, where I at once have to represent our organization, rock my own music, and make Arcati Crisis seem awesome and alluring with just a handful of songs.

Tonight was a success on all fronts, so I’m feeling pretty good about the state of me at the moment, not only because it’s a good state to be in, but also because I’m just able to be in it.

Having eight years of blog to read in my spare moments is a wonderful reminder of how I’ve changed over time. Even if it’s an over-reduction to claim that the atoms in your cells are refreshed every seven years, as reductions go at least it’s illustrative – an eight-years-younger you shouldn’t look like the same person. There are now some memories I have forgotten, that if it wasn’t for this blog would have disappeared from my life entirely.

I like to claim that I haven’t changed materially, but that’s just a function of that forgetfulness – maybe a willful one. Clearly I have changed. Not just the superficial ways – the lack of curl in my hair, or the newfound power in my voice. Not just my newfound ability to be in a steady state. I express my opinions differently. My confidence is more tempered, and my fear of failure more subtle. I play my worries much closer to my chest, and they’re a lot more complex than wondering who I’ll kiss next.

Reading old CK makes me afraid that in exchange for my steadiness I don’t see as many colors in the world. I used to delight in church bells and saxophones, and all the colors they brought out in the world. When is the last time I saw that color in sound?

I also used to post every fifteen minutes.

Some things are better left in the past.