Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

demos

30 for 30 Project, 1981: “Physical” – Olivia Newton John

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I’ve spent my life hating Olivia Newton John’s 1981 hit “Physical” for no good reason.

I had a reason, mind you. Just not a good one.

“Physical” held the longest run at number one on the Billboard chart for the majority of my childhood. Ten weeks, as Casey Casem would remind us on his countdown any time a song strung together multiple weeks at number one.

Not just any ten weeks. Ten weeks starting the year I was born.

(Watch me cover “Physical” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit the intro post.)

I was eight or nine years old, and I hated this Olivia character. I had seen her weird Happy Days hair on the cover of the VHS of Grease. Why should her silly song with its antiquated video of prancing fat people hold the record when newer, more relevant luminaries like Michael Jackson or Madonna were clearly more deserving. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1981: “Physical” – Olivia Newton John

Video Demo: “End With Me”

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Last night Gina and I held an epic Arcati Crisis rehearsal with our drummer Zina. We’ve worked our way up to eight drummed up tunes, and now we’re adding other special features like electric guitars and effects pedals.

We’re going to figure out this band thing, one way or another.

Meanwhile, I spent seemingly every free moment of yesterday singing the arpeggio D-F#-A-D-F#-A-D, which spans all the good bits of my singing range. However, on a weird set of vowels the top D can be a bit of a beast to get on top of, and of course I wrote myself just such a troublesome set of sounds when I penned “End With Me” shortly after posting about Eric Smith on Sunday night.

Can bad vowels stop me? Hell no. I mean, have you heard some of the audio on here from ten years ago? Not even bad singing can stop me.

Anyhow, here is a late-night first take on “End With Me,” another song from my soundtrack to Eric’s novel, Textual Healing. This tune has a slew of references to the book, including some specific lines. The recording has plenty of rough edges, but it sounds right, and I’ll take rough and right over mannered and plasticine any day of the week.

(Okay, not really, but let’s just think that for the purposes of this post.)


(Watch the video on Facebook, where I occasionally demo brand new tunes for my likers. Also, you can read the lyrics there.)

How Eric Smith rocked my world.

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Story time.

A few weeks ago Britt Miller, my partner in all things FAME, posted a link to the first segment of Eric Smith‘s “podiobook” – a podcasted audiobook version of his forthcoming novel Textual Healing with Britt contributing a special voice-acting appearance.

Eric Smith was one of those people that everyone I know knew, but I did not. Still, I occasionally followed his adventures on Twitter, which is what one does these days when you don’t know someone everyone else knows and you want to know why they all knew him already.

It turns out they mostly know him from running Geekadelphia, editing uwishunu, and working for Quirk Books (of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies fame). Eric’s also a professor and a music photographer who spent time touring with a number of bands.

I knew about a lot of those things separately, but didn’t know Eric connected them. I was intrigued – by Eric, by the idea of the advance podiobook, by Britt’s appearance in it, and by hearing Eric’s voice read his work – so I listened. And in the span of about an hour of my on-and-off listening to the podcast, a song popped out…


(watch the video on Facebook, where I sometimes demo sneak peeks of new tunes before releasing them anywhere else)

…so, doing what any DIY songwriter would do after midnight having just moments ago written a new song for a book by someone he knew only through his extended circle of friends, I recorded my first run-through, posted it to my Facebook page at two in the morning, and tagged Eric in it – off-handedly suggesting it was the first of a number of songs I’d write for his novel.

That resulted in Eric commenting “♥!” about eight hours later, which in turn lead to an email exchanges with the extremely genial Mr. Smith, who now I suppose I finally know directly instead of just knowing of via the knowledge of other people I know. Eric sent me an advance copy of Textual Healing and I am now committed (personally, not by contract or gentleman’s agreement or anything) to write at least four songs for the soundtrack of his book.

I just finished my second tune a few minutes ago, but this time there’ll be no insta-video. The phrases are so darn long that I’ll need to do voice exercise for a few days before I can get from breath mark to breath mark on the verses.

I’m happy to finally know who Eric is, and to have his passion project inspire some passion mirrored in me. Head to his blog, Eric Smith Rocks, to catch up on the first few episodes of the podiobook, and keep your eyes and ears open here for more tunes.

PS: About ten minutes after I posted this I wrote another song. Three down! One to go!

10 posts from Year 10 for my 10th anniversary

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In a few short hours it will be the tenth anniversary of my first post on Crushing Krisis.

As you might expect, I have a lot to say about that. Before I do, I wanted to share ten of my favorite posts from this past year. (Actually, it’s 13 posts, but the pairs are pairs for a reason – not out of indecisiveness).
[Read more…] about 10 posts from Year 10 for my 10th anniversary

House Concert Highlights: Madonna, Mieka, & Elise

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OMG you guys, you missed the best night ever. But don’t worry – I recorded it all for you!

Last night I supported Mieka Pauley at our first ever house concert, which was also ostensibly the CK 10th Anniversary Show. It was amazing. I had a great time playing songs I usually think are pretty hard, and Mieka was both flawless and real several feet away from my sofa.

Here’s two highlights I will treasure forever…

<a rel="nofollow" href="http://petermarinari.bandcamp.com/track/ray-of-light-live">Ray of Light (live) by Peter Marinari</a>
I cover “Ray of Light” for the first time ever, on my baritone guitar, which I had only figured out how to do about 24 hours prior.

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Mieka plays her spectacular tune “Colossal” with impromptu, unrehearsed harmony from Elise, my wife and lead singer of Filmstar.

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There’s way, way more where that came from. Also, my blog turns 10 in three days.

Did I mention that all happened IN MY LIVING ROOM.

CRAZY.

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

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Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.