Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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I am going to let you in on something i just found out tonight, in the hopes that you put the information to good use sometime in the future.

When you are invited to play an “acoustic night” at a college bar, you actually are not being asked to come and play acoustic music. The request is much nearer to: “Please come and provide a soundtrack for this crowd of drunk wanna-be frat guys and their not-quite pretty girl friends. Be advised that these men do not like the sound of an acoustic guitar unless it involves the sweet strains of Mr. Dave Matthews, and that they like listening to the songs of chick singers less than they like toothy blowjobs. Do not seek to entertain their girlfriends, as they will be too busy trying to look vaguely pretty and acting as though they are interested in talking to their increasingly intoxicated boyfriends. In light of these facts, we’re really asking you to come and play a half hour of cover songs that drunk guys know the approximate words to, and if you were planning to play originals they should be in the style of the esteemed Mr. Matthews or Bob Marley, may his soul rest in ganja-filled peace. And, no, they are not kidding when they yell ‘Freebird’ or ‘Stairway'”

“Splinter” and “No Second Chance” fell totally flat despite the fact that they are both very electric modern-rock affairs even when stripped down to one guitar. After half-hearted clapping for the latter song i deadpanned “don’t let me interupt your drinking experience; I am here to augment your drunkeness,” which didn’t even raise a chuckle from the audience but thankfully ended their patronizing clapping. In one last attempt to catch anyone’s attention i played “Under My Skin,” but at this point no one was vaguely listening to me with half an ear, so i decided to just have fun and ignore everyone for the rest of the set. “Up & Down” came out better than it has before despite messing with the timing a little, “Trouble With Poets” was nearly perfect,” “Lost” was nice to hear high up but definitely loses all of its viciousness, “Never Say Goodbye” came and went without much fanfare, and i was asked to play one more song while the next band got set up so i played a very very mean version of “Hold on Me” rather than what i was asked to play.

Yes, that means i subjected one poor unsuspecting audience to the terrible trio of breaking up (Spl, U&D, HoM), but i didn’t even mind. I can certainly keep playing “acoustic nights” to firm up my on-stage bravery in the face of tepid apathy, but if i want to get any kind of reaction at all i suppose i have to actually find some people who like folk music. Imagine that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3974565/

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lazy summer heat is slowly seeping into my pores because it always distributes evenly to where things are cool because that’s how science works. i am listless with heat, waking up abruptly from crucial points in my technicolor-bright dreams to glittering sun bathing my entire bed in gilded rays. last night there were three story double homes with bay windows in the third floor bedroom and i remember hugging someone very tightly to me and something strange lurking in the basement that i knew all about as a narrator but nothing about as a character. and then i was flying, weaving inbetween buildings and up and over and out into sky and that’s about as much as i recall about that.

today i really do have work to do, but the page was looking sort of lonely. read that last post, if you haven’t already. but, anyway i just realized today that i haven’t played “under my skin” since i played it for rabi or at the bar and i think i somehow got past it or something and that scares me, because that song was all about everything. have you been paying much attention to the new songs? they’re conspiring against me and my album and i think they might have kidnapped “relief” because i haven’t heard anything from it for a while. i think “splinter” is in charge of the whole conspiracy even though it doesn’t show up too much, because it’s very jealous about not getting on the album and it knows that gina really likes it and oh god now i’m talking about my songs like they’re people just like tori amos does but i always just explain that away with the fact that she did too many low-quality l.a. drugs in the 80’s but i’ve never even been to nebraska so i’m obviously just crazy to begin with.

the songs are sortof like people though. after you play something enough you begin to develop a relationship with it; some days you dress it up special and some days it barely rolls out of bed and some days it just doesn’t want to have it’s picture taken and it’s holding its hands up in front of its face and complaining. the scary thing is that the new songs are doing this now, as they’re written. that last one flaunted its independence right at me saying “you can’t end me unless i want to be ended, so keep on writing” and i did and it takes up way more pages in my little grey book than any of the other songs do but now that it made me write it all down it doesn’t really seem to want to be played, which confuses me to no end. i don’t think i really realized that all of my songs are relationship songs until gina pointed it, and now i seem to be able to write everything else but it’s like hitting a new note for the first time because i can’t tell if they’re strong or if they just seem very nice because i’ve never heard them before.

if you were wondering, this is just how my head is working lately. i wrote a 2300 word email last night without even really intending to. it’s like when i open up my head things just come pouring out until it’s empty again. but, anyway, this post is just a post for the sake of being here in this little box, so i again defer to the intelligence of the last post and wish you all have a nice day.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3950354/

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Since i’ve been crushing heavily on Erin McKeown’s music lately, i just thought i’d log a little link to a prominent website about her at Imperfectly (which, incidentally, used to host the best Ani DiFranco web site on the internet). Erin fascinates me, because listening to her albums i can hardly imagine that these songs just come to her … it’s seems much more than she deliberately chooses a way for a song to sound and them molds it into the exact shape that she wants. However, no matter how she does it the results are completely arresting on record, even more so live.

Erin just graduated from Brown University last week with a degree in EthnoMusicology (she had to fly in from a UK tour with Peter Mulvey for the ceremonies), and she is touring the American folk-festival circuit this summer. I consider this success… whether or not she ever meant to be a rock star or a folk hero doesn’t really matter; what matters is that she has adoring audiences in each city she heads into, and that she heads out of every one with new fans (myself included).

Her long journey to this point started (apparently) with being named a semi-finalist by the songwriters’ association of washington dc before ever getting to Brown, and with gigging and selling tapes around Brown’s campus. At some point those tapes found their way onto a cd called Monday Morning Cold, and from the attention she garnered from that she moved forward to create last year’s Distillation. Five years. The difference between being a high school senior and a college graduate, and Erin McKeown is living the life that i would choose for myself above all other lives. She went to the school i wanted to attend, she writes songs i envy and adore, and she tours with Peter Mulvey (he was her opening act here in Philly!), and she’s not even 25. And i’m left, as i always am, wondering how she got there.


Of course, we all know how she got there. She had a relentless vision and an amazing talent, and she didn’t keep it a secret. However, it’s hard being relentless or anything else about music while i’m working every day and trying to line up an internship for next year and fretting about classes and paying my bills. Of course, musicians come from much worse all the time, but in the void of major label interest (that is, i wouldn’t be vaguely interested) i am in awe of the Ani DiFrancos, the Peter Mulveys, and the Erin McKeowns because at some point they decided that music was what was for them and that they needed to devote all of their attention to it. I think i need to make that decision or let the matter drop; if only i spent as much time on my music as i do writing for this website.

And therein lies the conflict: as much as i need to better myself musically, the time i spend writing for and administering this site feels like a definite way to prepare my voice and my patience for the world of journalism. I feel like having a successful blog (still an aspiration of mine rather than a reality) is the equivalent of Erin McKeown’s summer folk festival tour. Even if i got to write cd reviews for a local paper with a circulation of 100,000 – how many people read past the cover story? How many people read past the albums they want to buy to the reviews they aren’t really interested in, just to hear new & different opinions? Having your own successful website means you are in touch with an audience much more focused than any group your circulated publication could ever reach. So… to give this up would be to emphasize music over my course of study, when really in my mind they are equals now.

Somewhere in there i think i came to a conclusion that i’ve been working on for the last four years; I can tell because my stomach just dropped out of the center of my body as if i’m being spun on a tilt-a-whirl. Or, perhaps it is just time for lunch. I suspect that i’ll get back to you on this one…

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One time in first grade we were taking a spelling test, and the word to spell was “kick,” and a boy named Paul raised his hand and asked “Do you mean k-i-c-k?” Of course, everyone giggled and the teacher reprimanded him and the test (and life) went on, and to this day i’m not entirely sure if Paul did it to be a smartass, or if he honestly was thinking of some other kind of kick. I just rememeber being exasperated at not getting points for correctly spelling such an easy word.

But, was i really exasperated? More and more often i find myself looking back at childhood memories that are getting more hazy and more generalized and i’m wondering how much of what i remember is just a fabrication of what i think i felt. Could i have really felt “exasperated” as a first grader? Did i really just giggle like the rest of the class, but in my recollections i make myself out as more mature and collected than i really was at the time.

The subjectiveness of memory frightens me. I don’t mind so much that the colours of everything in my head are getting less and less vivid like a patch of wallpaper that sees too much sun, but the prospect that i’m slowly changing all of my memories to the best representation of how i got how i am rather than what actually made me just isn’t right. Is this why children never believe what their parents tell them?, because their parents have taken all their childhood experiences and twisted them into trite little packages to be doled out before bed? I used to be able to eat candy and sweets endlessly as a child without pause, but now i get a stomach-ache and feel unfocused. Am i doomed to spend the rest of my life making futile efforts to keep candy from the hands of children just because now it spoils my dinner? Or, is this just growing up, and i’m not quite ready yet?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3886860/

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#17 is true. A girl kissed me aproximately 3 years, 2 months, and 2 hours after when i originally asked a girl if she’d kiss me.


Of course, i always remember wanting to kiss girls, from when i was very little. When i was five we went to Disney World, and there was one rather boring ride on a boat and i just remember that the most adorable girl was sitting across from me but i was afraid to look right at her because i felt like she would immediately know i was staring at her and i’d look like some dorky little five year old just smiling dumbly at the cutest six year old ever. So, yeah, i was setting up for romantic disaster very early on in life.


Anyhow, the girl who never kissed me was Juliana, and while i didn’t ask her to kiss me outright i would like to point out that our faces were very near to each other and it had never crossed my mind to kiss anyone ever before then in such an immediate fashion. So, while the actual question posed was whether or not she’d ever consider going on a date with me, it was only asked because the question we’re focusing on had been asked and answered in that are faces were still just near to each other. But, anyhow, we just wound up sharing lip gloss, and the rest is history.


As for my first kiss, it’s a topic i dance around constantly on this log without ever actually talking about it, because i talked about it entirely too much when it first happened. As you can easily see, i have no concept of secrets when it comes to myself so i didn’t think to keep my mouth shut about kissing someone – never thinking about if the someone would prefer me to keep my mouth just slightly less ajar than it was. I suppose it would have been better if i just continued to watch the replay of it in my head and not replay it for everyone else, but decisions are decisions and no one was hurt by any of it and life goes on (without us ever ever kissing again). So… no links to point you towards for this one, but if you’re a regular reader i’ll tie it all together for you; these three events coincide: first kiss, new years 2000, & “under my skin.”


Happy now?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3881170/