Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Trio Season 5 – Suite #9: Perspectives

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #9:
Songs on the Topic of Perspectives
Bucket Seat, A Few Bars of Goodbye, Bridge



Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its fifth season featuring my own DIY music. This season each trio of songs will have a loose topic to connect them, which I will discuss between songs.

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Re: Perspectives
I don’t anymore clearly recall what brought these words out of me. … And so, as a result, I occupy very different spaces in these songs depending on the mood I’m in when I’m performing them.

A Few Bars of Goodbye
I act vocally as the narrator, but that is not always where I am standing as I am performing that song. Sometimes I feel as though I am one of the characters, and it’s not always that I am the guy with his guitar. … sometimes I’m the woman. Sometimes I feel like I’m some inanimate aspect of the situation, like I’m his guitar, or I’m her ring, or any number of things in the room that you don’t see through the lyrics but I see very clearly when I perform it.

Bridge
It’s the oldest song of mine that I’ve played all this month, and it’s name is very indicative of the role it has served in my life – it’s bridged a lot of musical transitions for me, and it’s bridged a lot of gaps in relationships. … I’m not singing it to the same person it was originally written for.

You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

Trio: Season Five, Suite #8!

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #8:
Songs on the Topic of Friendship
Standing, Martyr, Until You Awake



Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its fifth season featuring my own DIY music. This season each trio of songs will have a loose topic to connect them, which I will discuss between songs.

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Standing
It’s about both a negative and a positive aspect of friendship … leaning. This mutual leaning society that you have with your friends. Which is a good thing – that’s what friends are for. But it’s about the event where one person stands more freely than the other. You have one leaner – one Tower of Pisa in the relationship, and one Eiffel Tower – and the back and forth that creates.

Martyr
Sometimes when you are a third party really looking at a problem that your friend is having and you’re not involved in that problem it’s hard to gauge how much of a problem it really is. You have no way of knowing. They’re your filter. You don’t have any other reality other than their reality. … We all climb on a cross every so often, and this song is about telling one of your friends to get the fuck down. … It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s that I don’t believe in your problems.

Until You Awake
I had become friends with somebody through Rabi, and that person had an unfortunate incident with her health, and they actually were into a coma. … Things were not looking good for her. … I have really been blessed in my life by not only my own good health, but the good health of everyone around me, and I didn’t know how to react to this young, vibrant person who maybe would never get to hear one of my songs. So I sat down one night and wrote “Until You Awake”

I remember that I sent it to her boyfriend and he played it for her in the hospital and shortly thereafter she woke up. … I still play it because it represents the power that ever-tenuous-connection across the internet can have over you, and over your songs.

You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

Trio: Season Five, Suite #7!

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Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – typically features original songs, but for the third in a special trio of trios I am covering some of the songs that have influenced me and my songwriting. The first two influences Trios featured childhood and teenage influences.

You can download the entire Trio, or start from a past suite of original songs:

See the rest of this post for chords to all three songs. [Read more…] about Trio: Season Five, Suite #7!

Trio: Season Five, Suite #6!

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #6:
Influences (Pt. 2 of 3) – Teenage
Dilate (Ani DiFranco)
Superhero (Garrison Starr)
Spark (Tori Amos)

Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – typically features original songs, but for the second in a special trio of trios I am covering some of the songs that have influenced me and my songwriting. The first influences trio featured songs of my childhood.

You can download the entire Trio, or start from a past suite of original songs:

See the rest of this post for chords to all three songs. [Read more…] about Trio: Season Five, Suite #6!

Don’t Play That Song (A Trio of Links)

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You were supposed to receive the second Influences Trio tonight, but it took six hours last night to get one song right, and we are leaving on our T-Day expedition to NJ in a few hours.

This exemplifies why Trio did not typically include cover songs back when it was a weekly feature (and why it started taking so damned long when it did start including cover songs): i’m a huge music fan, and in almost every case i have an obsessive fascination with the original, which leads me to go through this horrific Sophie’s Choice drama about every little flaw and if i can really give them up to the oppressive, fascist listening public.

So, rather than my still-incubating Trio, here’s a trio of quick-hit weblinks for you:

#1 Yeti Ornament from HungerSite. Dude, if we get a tree i am buying this in a hot second.

Plus, it totally jives with the holiday competition i have with my mother about buying farm animals for each other.

#2 PhotoJunkie’s “One Million Giveaway”. No, not a million dollars. PhotoJunkie is a fantastic blogger who was on the forefront of Photoblogging a few scant years ago. I think i know him from Blogathon (?). In any event, to celebrate his upcoming 1,000,000th website hit he’s giving away all sorts of stuff to anyone who comments on or links to his blog.

I should be seeing my millionth hit sometime before i turn 40, thanks for asking.

#3 Want a seasonal job in Philly? Be a newspaper scab! Our two big (collectively owned) papers are heading for strike, and they’re already fishing for temporary staff. $17-$20 an hour, 60hrs a week, minimal experience required. I say, go for it.

In closing, i feel that you should know that i am eating raw cookie-dough for dinner, and that after a content-lite day for T-Give i’ll be closing out NaBloPoMo with several more Trios and more NaBloPoMo site reviews.

Oh, right, and more blogging.

Edit: Every time i see the title of this post i hear the same thing in my head. In the interests of you hearing it too, here it is: Kelly Clarkson singing “Don’t Play That Song” from Season 1 of American Idol.