Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

Couldn’t Stop, Couldn’t Keep It

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Under some amount of compulsion from my need to be picked for my office building’s talent show, earlier this week I recorded a quick take of my well-received cover of “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

And, proving that the easiest way to defeat my procrastination is through convenience, i used the same recording setup/settings to record a neat little multi-track version of “Couldn’t Keep It.” Not technically perfect but, despite that, it’s very close to being the definitive version of a song i’ve been hearing in my head nonstop for the last year.

And So It Goes

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Well, i survived a small portion of the bike ride only to be sent packing by the boys and their quick pace and constant pedalling.

Many interesting events occured in the intervening week, the least of which was a tonight’s very positive open mic outing at The Sidecar (and the most of which i can’t really go into. yet). Their open mic is the first Sunday of every month, and they have a fun house combo that churns out funky fill-in music and some outrageous covers. If you’re in town on Monday you can see the sequel, my debut at XPN World Cafe’s Philly Rising open mic. I seem to have re-discovered my confidence, but i’m still a little nervous about doing my own songs. We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, i must link to the utterly fantastic Skyline Online, an engaging architecture blog penned by Inquirer critic Inga Saffron. Also, a re-plug for the sidebar-linked The BM Rant, who i really need to engineer a run-in with at a Philly show, eventually.

At least in this instance of an absentee-week from blogging i can truly claim that i was busy ;)

and when inspiration finally hits you it barely even breaks your fall

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I’ve heard – from people who both teach and live their songwriting – that you have to keep the muscles limber. Just like an athelete who runs a meaningless mile around and around his block, you have to keep the words flowing all the time so that you’re ready to catch the next best thought you have in a butterfly net of carefully trained artistic reflexes.

It sounds like a wonderful idea, except i don’t like writing throwaway songs. I’m certainly capable of it, but i find it a little offensive – all that creative output and effort for something that just takes up space on my list of titles – i don’t want to hear or play it again, let alone pass it off to an unsuspecting audience.

I like to think instead that the more rarified that pen-to-pad impulse becomes, the more remarkable the results. Why wade through daily crap when you can have a monthly gem.

The monthly gem, as it turns out, seems to be a myth when you are a well-fed gainfully employed yuppy. Because, you are complacently waiting for inspiration to hit you, but inspiration typically needs a life event to set it into motion, and you might not be having so much of those, perhaps?

Back to those limber muscles, the value of which i am coming to understand. The trick, you see, is to refuse to write something to be thrownaway. Don’t just write aimless words. Pick a topic with legs. I’ve decided that, for lack of other inspiration, i will write a song about everyone i know. Some of the songs might suck, and they might not even correspond to people who suck. At least Elise will get a break from being the topic. Gina somehow got (apparently) the catchiest song i have written, ever. One of my least favorite people ever got sortof a funky love song. Neither seem to be a coincidence. And, this shit just keeps happening.

Now I’ve got a pile of maybe songs, some about people who really shouldn’t be told they are the topic/target because songs are so much better when they’re a little scandalous so i find i keep telling the truth in them (note to self: stop titling with people’s names). None, though, none with tight enough screws to hold the weight of me and my guitar. So, i am not declaring them done. Simple, no? Every night i come back to the gaggle to polish – write a better line where i can, restart the progression in a different tuning where it might work better. Maybe i can get one to graduate to being a real song, someday.

Working on the new lyrics MYSQL backend i now know fo sho that i have 200 songs (yes, with the help of technology we’ve finally eeked it up from 144). That averages out to 25 a year, but really it’s more like 32 a year for a while, and only a handful this last year and a half. But now i have all these half-formed things circling like little audio-vultures, picking my brain for better ideas.

I bear no promises of audio samples or lyric sneak peeks. Yet. You just have to trust me on this one.

Out From Under My Skin

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If you’re up for a quick chuckle at my expense, have a read of an interview with me from Freshman year where i dish about my songwriting and the deeeeep meaning of my songs.

Actually, in re-reading that i realize that i’ve forgotten where some of those songs came from, originally. They’ve had so many other meanings ascribed to them over the years that their original intent sometimes gets a little lost.

I love that i have so much of my old website archived; my first soundclips were uploaded in 1998. It’s amazing how far i’ve come in just eight years! I don’t know if the then-me would even recognize the songs the way i sing them now.

(An interesting side-note, i have “Under My Skin” as my 84th song on the old site’s discography, but in my spreadsheet it’s 59th. Where did those other 25 songs go???)

Whatever you do, don’t listen to any Real Audio clips. If you think i have my moments of bad singing now…. well, you’ll see for yourself ;)