Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

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I must admit that my legs hurt a touch, but Rabi can just neglect to find that out until she reads this post. It is worth it, to blithely walk around New york, hopping sidewalks and diagonally jaywalking as if i actually know where to go. We’re now at the Prince Street Apple store, which looks more like some sort of overly lit nightclub whose status as a computer seller is only given away by all the computers sitting around. I am on the kind that looks like the Pixar lamp, but rabi cannot figure out how to make the digital camera that’s strapped to it work, so you’ll just have to take my word for it

Funny how i can find people to be so vastly different only five hours from where i grew up. Just goes to show, you don’t have to be from a tiny place to be a small town boy.

More, later.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106168283586810413/

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And, by the way, i wore cargo pants to Kaki King. And, and, rather than doing it myself i made Ross order my cosmopolitan. I have to say, there’s nothing quite like making your muscle-y blond football-player sized male friend walk up to a female bartender to order a cosmo (especially when they come in dainty little glasses). I don’t know what was better… the look on her face when she heard his order, or the look on his when he saw the look on hers.

But, i digress…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140302352548944/

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I think most people enjoy attending concerts where they know all the songs. I know i do. As much as going to a concert is for experiencing art in motion, it is also a selfish pursuit: you want to hear your favorite songs, and you don’t want them fucked with. There is a certain thrill that comes with the anticipation of a crashing bridge, or the appreciation of an understated vocal ad lib.

This approach is sometimes prohibitive to hearing new music, whether it be a new band or a performer debuting new material. But, no matter how well prepared you are, there can always be an opened band or a strange tune that punches past your lack of karaoke intimacy with to make you fall hard into aural love.

I found myself at the NorthStar Bar with a motley assembly of some of the most talented people i know to see just such a stranger: Kaki King. Anthony had described her to me by email earlier in the day – “Imagine Ani DiFranco on crack … She uses her right hand on the fingerboard to tap out bass lines, and her left hand on the fingerboard to play melodies simultaneously. It’s pretty impressive.”

I’ve come to accept my mediocrity as a guitar player — i’ve been playing only two years less than both Anthony and Kaki, but i am still easily impressed by simplistic guitar pyrotechnics. I was prepared to see a few interesting tap solos and some intricate picking, and to generally have my playing be humbled.

Really, though, i was not prepared.

I’ve seen a lot of random opening bands, many of whom i’ve derisively blogged about the next day, but Kaki King is the first artist since Peter Mulvey (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erin McKeown) to ever leave me with my eyes unblinking, my jaw hanging loose, and my fingers twitching just in contemplation of my inevitable attempt to replicate the performance before me.

Kaki is, in short, the most astounding acoustic guitar player i have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the casually arrived at alternate tunings, the tap & hammer solos, or even her simultaneous strumming & drumming on the guitar. It was her personality — quiet and simply smiling, but with a quick wit hidden beneath her swath of out-grown bangs. It was her ease — the way that after the audience’s obvious favorite song of the night she remarked to the effect of “That isn’t really finished yet; sometimes i just play the songs live and let them go in the directions they want to.” The way that, as opposed to how people joke about it with me, i really could not tell when her casual tuning and fretting ending and her songs began because at any point her hands were on her guitar the performance was underway.

Kaki has some MP3s on her site for your perusal, and while they will not replicate the awe that i was in on Tuesday night, i think they still speak adequately for themselves. And, please keep in mind that i typically range from indifferent-to-resistant when it comes to instrumental music, so Kaki must be pretty damned good.

Must be? Hell… she is.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140300363101718/

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On Monday Aim invited me to join her at a Radiohead concert. The concept of it nearly rolled my eyes back into my head; an arena of young urban hipsters as or more obsessed with their band as I am with Tori Amos, all with overt political or stylistic agendas, all of whom would undoubtably frown at me for having bought the new Michelle Branch album.

It sounded like a challenge, not to mention a good time.

Poured into my tightest blue jeans and snuggest brown t-shirt, as we walked to our seats i scanned the crowd of trendy young men and realized that i have resorted to co-opting a slightly queer style of dress and carriage because it just works for me … i am small-framed and relatively slim and no longer trying desperately to attract strange women wherever i go. If pressed i could not explain it; it’s just my need to feel wanted, i suppose. I’m not sure what stops me from showing up in cargo pants and a stained flannel shirt. Maybe it’s that i spent the 90’s wearing that, or maybe it’s that i like to approximate an accurate interior self-image so that i feel as though i actually stand out in a crowd as me.

Ultimately, all eyes were on the stage and none on my inanely logoed tee or my inordinately tight ass-hugging pants. I have rarely seen such a polite audience held in rapt attention at such a huge rock show. I am not good with Radiohead’s titles – ever since hearing Kid A their albums pass by me like symphonies – but some songs still stuck out just by virtue of how they were achieved. A hypnotic electronic piano version of “Like Spinning Plates,” a spastic and brittle “Idioteque,” chiming xylophone and the faint singing of the lawn section on “No Surprises,” and “Everything In It’s Right Place” prefaced as “this is a song about the good old days.”

As it echoed back at me from Thom, and then the effects pedals on the stage, i just thought … Yes.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140294589227633/

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I couldn’t make that last post funny … really, i tried. For three days. It wasn’t gonna happen.

There’s a quote posted across from my desk: “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” Mark Twain put it well; sometimes when i try to capture my feelings onto this page it comes out long and rambly and saying, yes, exactly what i meant, but not in a way i’d expect you to want to slog through just for a few easy punchlines. So i edit, i whittle, i carve, i tweak, but this time i came out with a humorless lump of coal rather than the snarky diamond of wit i so often aim for — neither concise and well-done or rambly and gleeful.

I think what i’m trying to say is that if you could giggle, titter, or chuckle just once or twice as you read it i would feel a lot better about it. It was supposed to be funny; give me the benefit of doubt. Just this once.

Please?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106138668774033306/