Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 12

the gift of me

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Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

Alright, how do I do this without being insufferably both maudlin and self-congratulatory.

Fuck it, it’s my birthday.

Over the summer I received a phone call. I was sure it was a prank or mistake. From what I could make out from the rapid-fire message, someone wanted to interview me for a magazine.

As it happened, I was jumping through a lot of life’s other hoops that week, so I didn’t return the call. But then I got another call. This was a real person, and yes she was looking for Peter the musician. She wanted to do a brief profile on me for a local indie music mag called Jump Philly – yes, a physical magazine, not just a blog.

Now, I’ve been featured in media before. Probably the best mention was during one of the Blogathons, when I was quoted on MSNBC. But that time and all of those other times I was being mentioned in relation to something I was helping to produce.

Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

This time I was being mentioned for producing myself – in particular, my songs for Eric Smith‘s novel.

I had an amazing, hilarious conversation with my interviewer Lauren over sushi on South Street. I coached myself on staying on-message before-hand, but it was no use: get me in front of someone who keeps asking me questions about music and see how well I stay “on-message.” I wind up telling anecdotes about Jem.

(Lauren immediately inquired with glee, “That was on the record, right? Because I am totally using that.”)

The one message I managed to hammer was spelled Dee Aye Why. Every answer dovetailed back to how I did something myself. Taught myself guitar. Got the keys to Drexel’s recording studio with just one term of classes. Self-recorded every song of mine ever released.

The issue came out around Labor Day. Before I could see it, someone at a wedding told me they had picked it up and seen a picture of me. Me!

The photos were taken some weeks after the sushi. Eric, Lauren, and I chased good light all over South Street with photog Ashley Hall until we found our spot.

She snapped away. I coached myself on staying on-message. With my body-language, I mean. I notoriously hate just about every photo of myself taken by anyone except for E and, apparently, MikeyIl. Everyone catches me in these gawky moments between moments. And I don’t like to smile with teeth, because it makes me look silly.

To say I was awaiting the issue with trepidation would be an understatement. There was so much message to be off! I’d probably come off sounding like an ass and looking like Goofy.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. And, let’s not misconstrue me here – I am not bragging about being phenomenally on-message in my interview and photo calll.

Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

No. First, I was in the hands of professionals who cared about getting my story right.

And, second, my life as a whole is what I want it to be, so what is there to get wrong? Lauren talked about my many musical endeavors, all true. Ashley shot a trim and – dare I say – slightly muscular looking version of me beside the ever dashing Eric Smith.

I had nothing to object to, and I have nothing to object to today. As far as I am concerned, thirty is a signpost on a road of awesome goals achieved and dreams realized. It means I’m old enough to call out petty bullshit for what it is, and for people to know to take me seriously even when I am proposing the most outlandish thing.

That’s a far cry from turning twenty, ten years ago, when I blogged: “The world is the container of a finite amount of possibilities both big and small, and i don’t think any chain of events will ever make me truly happy even if you substitute in all of the right jobs and friends and lovers where there are just empty spaces right now.”

Tell that to the guy in these photos.

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

#MusicMonday: “Electric Twist” – A Fine Frenzy

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That I’ve been playing the syncopated backbone of this song all weekend from a newly purchased sheet music book is all the proof in the world that cover art can make a difference in selling a record.

I was forever hearing A Fine Frenzy’s name on the wind, but never a song. I assumed she was one of the bevy of artists sampled by Grey’s Anatomy or similar. I gave her a rote 30-second preview, and that combined with the little girl image on the cover of her One Cell In the Sea promised a pleasant-but-simpering cross between Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor. Since I can barely get through an entire treacly disc from either without heaving up my most recent meal, I decided to take a pass.

(Before all of your Ingrid and Regina lovers get up in arms, I own many five-star songs from both artists, but they’re just a little too cutesy for me in 12-track format.)

When I spotted the cover of Frenzy’s followup, A Bomb in a Birdcage, I was intrigued. I recognized the name, but the black and white cover image looked more sultry than sugary.

Always willing to have an excuse to pick up a new album, I employed my tried-and-true method of sampling Track 3. (If your third track isn’t good, there isn’t much hope for your LP.)

“Electric Twist” is a five-star song. Its circular stutter of power chords are fuzzy and rich like fudge, while artist Alison Sudol’s voice goes from kittenish whisper to impossibly pure high coo. The primal, hip-thrusting rhythm eventually gives way to a satisfying sprint of straight-forward dance rock on the 1s and 3s.

I love acousticish indie rock that manages to be dance music, because that’s kind of music I want to make. The song had it’s hook deep into me before I even had a chance to hit “replay.”

“Electric Twist” was my doorway into Bomb in a Birdcage, a fantastic album that’s strong from front to back. Even E adopted it into her daily playlists, a sure sign of a deep disc with some obvious delights.

Moral?

Maybe you think it should be “don’t judge an LP by it’s cover,” but that’s the whole point of selling an aural experience with a visual one. Album titles and cover images are what get consumers to sample sounds – it was true fifty years ago in a record shop and it’s true today on the internet.

I’d say the moral is: keep the promise your cover makes, and make it a good one. The best album covers are like a perfect still frame from a mega-mix music video of your album.

Case and point: I’m pretty sure A Fine Frenzy is doing the electric twist on that cover.

you’ll get older too

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This morning I drove the farthest I’ve driven by myself to go to a viewing by myself for the first time.

I don’t know how to do these things. Well, the driving, I suppose I remedially know how to do that. But a viewing? I don’t know.

I dressed how I thought I should dress and wore a white shirt, which I never wear, and I smiled wanly and kept my hands clasped. As the line neared the family I wondered, am I supposed to cry? I felt the valve of tears loosen behind my eyes. I had cried at work when I found out, just for a moment. Then it was too late, and I was crying, and what do you say when you’re the one crying about someone you’ve never met before and the family is hugging you? I don’t know. It’s sad for everyone there, but you’re all there together.

I guess that’s the point.

Now I am seated in bro’s college apartment, talking about the best daytime mixed drinks and the hour it is most appropriate to begin drinking them.

I always think of bro as my slightly-younger peer, but his roommates seem impossibly young. Were Erika and Lindsay this young when we moved in together? I don’t know. Maybe because we were all only children we all grew up as tiny adults, so when we moved in together we were adults, only smaller.

Now I am seated at their kitchen table and I am that old guy, with his laptop and his car keys, whisking bro away for a day of family time.

But I know this context. It feels familiar. I could day drink with them all day. Or, at least, I have. I don’t know if I could any more.

The girls are making apple sauce at the counter. We’re headed outside. Guitar shopping. Another context where I never know who I am.

I wish there were more rules, but then I remember I don’t like rules. I’ll just be me. That should work.

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.)