Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

What do you mean you don’t like Wham!?

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I spent the night at home last night – E was out rehearsing with the band while Gina and I commandeered the living room for Arcati Crisis rehearsal.

We’ve been so consumed with our open micage this fall that we’ve forgotten a bit about how much we like to just be in a room playing music with each other. An hour – a whole hour – practicing our acoustic duet of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” In what other living room in America can you hear that?

We’re the house band at the Shubin Theate holiday revue next weekend, as we’ve been since 2003, amidst opera and flamenco and one-act plays. I tried to convince Gina to learn a Christmas song, but we reached an impasse after she declined “Christmas Song,” she wanted “Father Christmas” but neither of us really know it, and I wanted “Last Christmas” and we discovered her secret prejudice against Wham.

HELLO, SECRET PREJUDICE AGAINST WHAM? Seriously, we’ve been friends for half our lives and I didn’t know about this? Wham is like the best super-cheap jug of wine ever – cloying, a little too syrupy, but only a guilty pleasure after you realize you drank the entire thing all in one sitting and bought a second.

Apparently she just likes “Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)” as a novelty. No “Careless Whisper,” and no “Last Christmas.”

So, yeah, no Christmas songs from Arcati Crisis, per our usual MO. We’ll play our newest stuff and unleash “Total Eclipse,” as well as probably “Falling Slowly” – which makes me nervous as hell. We’ve never done a song before where I have to just stand still and sing well.

You’ll get a preview of it next week. And if you’re in Philly and will die without attending the holiday revue, let me know via comments.

Monday @ Downey’s Open Mic

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I have been on an open mic tour this fall, in an effort to get my music out of our living room and into the ears of people other than Elise.

It’s not that I don’t like performing. I love performing. It makes me realize why I torture myself with all this practice. I just don’t like leaving the house. Or traveling to where I’ll be performing. Or staying there past midnight.

Otherwise, yes, I love performing.

A wonderful thing about Philadelphia at this point in time is that there are open mics within walking distance of just about anyone, which at least eases the traveling aspect. Last night E and I headed out to Downey’s on front and South – a mere mile away – for a rare combo open mic: me solo, and she as an acoustic half of Filmstar along with Glenn.

I was in better mood or voice or whatever than usual. “Regenerate” felt real and true. I love starting, singing “In a room full of strangers that were once known to me,” and wondering if I am in that room of strangers, or if I am telling a new and different room a story about them.

The beauty of playing “Regenerate” first is that if I make it through I feel relatively invincible; I tore through the rest of my set in short order (including my still relatively new cover of “Poker Face).

Elise and Glenn acquitted themselves well, with E playing guitar in front of people for the first time since 2003. And we heard our visiting songwriting friend Rob Lytle, as well as my increasing dear friend Cris Valkyria with her otherworldly first soprano siren.

It’s a good morning to be awake and alive, I think.

Live @ rehearsal no more?

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Today Gina and I had a scheduled Arcati Crisis rehearsal labeled “Brown Bag” on our calendars, which is our not-so-covert code-word for working on a new Live @ Rehearsal CD. We haven’t released one in over a year.

We held a brief rehearsal off-mic to tune up our cover songs, and then headed into my home studio for the official proceedings.

Despite being well-rehearsed and in good voice, something felt off about it to me. I frowned over my mic at Gina after our third take.

“I don’t think this works anymore.”

She looked up from her guitar. “Hmmm?”

“This. Live @ Rehearsal. I don’t think it works anymore.”

“What do you mean? That was a pretty good take.”

“That’s my point. They’re all good takes. We could record every rehearsal this way, and have an endless amount of songs for people to hear and download. But, I don’t know if we can improve any more. I think our performances are pretty consistent, and we’re not doing anything new…”

“Unless we’re drumming with Chaz.”

“Right, unless we’re drumming. And I don’t think I can mix better without isolating us and putting up multiple mics for each guitar.”

Gina contemplated for a moment.

“You’re right. And I suppose the point of the CDs is that they were better than we’d be live, but that’s not really the case anymore.”

“Right.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah.”

We kept rehearsing on mic, which turned up a few random gems. The mixing limitations are real, though – I can’t set up for our duets with the same level of quality control I do for my solo takes. That means further Live @ Rehearsals would never live up to the increased fidelity of my recent CK demos.

Does this mean we’re finally due for a ::gasp:: proper album? I’m not sure. But, it definitely marks the end of the second phase of our evolution of a duo. The first phase was simply learning songs and forging a sound. The second phase was becoming consistent and fine-tuning our identity.

What might phase three entail?

Daily Demo: Crazy for You (Madonna cover w/lyrics & chords)

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Cover: Crazy for You (live demo)
Last recorded fall 2002.

There are no Madonna songs released before 1990 that I don’t like. Well, except “The Gambler,” but I don’t think I heard that until I graduated college.

In the 80s there were no iTunes downloads or mix CDs, and the Vision Quest soundtrack that originated “The Gambler” and “Crazy For You” was pretty frigging obscure. While sister soundtrack single “Into the Groove” made an appearance on You Can Dance, “Crazy For You” was a 45-only delight for me.

Until The Immaculate Collection.

Sure, I had all the other songs already (yes, including “Vogue,” it’s on I’m Breathless)(and, no, not “Rescue Me,” but that wasn’t such a big revelation), but suddenly I had “Crazy For You” at my fingertips – on a tape!

Oh, the pleasures of a simpler time – when songs were actually obscure.

As Madonna covers go, “Crazy For You” was always high on my list of tricky songs to achieve along with “Lucky Star” and “Vogue” – it’s boring as a series of half-barres in standard, and it’s impossible to accurately play the intro riff inside of the chords that way.

For the guitar nerds out there, keep reading for chords and instructions on how to play my alternate tuning arrangement.

(In other news, the backing vocals from this are the same as the ones in Tori’s “Tear In Your Hand.”)

[Read more…] about Daily Demo: Crazy for You (Madonna cover w/lyrics & chords)

Daily Demo: Kick Me

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Song #238: Kick Me (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Never before recorded.

Not all Fridays are not of the TGI variety. Some of them leave you bruised and battered, wondering if you can really make it through another week – or even through the weekend.

That was the sort of Friday that spawned the chorus of “Kick Me” this spring – a day of intellectual punishment resulting in that arpeggiated major-chord melody spinning in my brain on my walk home. I sat on the bed with Elise in the afternoon sun and worked out the chords on my guitar. They seem simple now, but at the time they made no sense!

All I had for a week or two was the chorus, until one night I was waiting on the bus at 18th and Market. No bus was evident, but urban hipsters kept whipping by on road bikes with their skinny jeans and iPod earbuds. Probably listening to something obscure, I thought. Or, jazz.

In my head blossomed the phrase “You’ve got your skinny jeans, and your Love Supreme, you left me dying on the vine while you were out on the scene.”

The rest came quickly, but in bits and pieces. Somewhere there is still an extra verse of castoff lyrics floating around that I cut while sitting at the piano. I knew it was done when I tweeted the “#1 vulture in line for my body” verse, because it sounded so right once I wrote it down.

“Kick Me” was so thoroughly composed for piano that it took me months to learn the chords on guitar, especially around the key change. I’m still much more comfortable playing it on piano.