Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

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 ;)

Silent Peer Pressure (Count The Most (demo))

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Fine, have a song. But, know that i wrote it less than 72 hours ago, and that it took two mics, two takes, one completely made up lyric transition, a heap of compression, a helping of reverb, a well-placed fade out (over my well-meaning but not well-tempered 20-beat Eb (look out, American Idol)), and carefully deployed doppler (i dare you to locate it) to make me even vaguely pleased enough to post this.

Count The Most (demo)

Erratic

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Nine years of guitar playing and i still can’t manage to get through one frigging bar of 2/4 while trying to write a song.

This may indicate that i am writing new songs. I know that the hoopla celebration about this sort of thing has waned since i don’t accompany such announcements with audio any more. I’m trying to rectify that situation.

Seriously.

It’s just that as the years go by my standards get higher, and when i can’t strum a bar of frigging 2/4 correctly once in a half hour of recording i tend to give up where i would have previously just posted my weird aborted measure of 3.5/4 (i know, i know, that’s 2/4 then 3/8, shut up) and winced.

Nevermind how getting better at singing is like cutting infinity in half, and for every improvement i make my goal of being “good” seems to be persistently unreachable.

I think this will be a rare post that doesn’t involve creative editing or a contrived story about my life.

I sent my iPod back to Apple, certain that it was really broken and that i would receive a refurbed iPod and promptly sell it in its still-sealed mailer and then buy a fancy new iPod. Imagine my surprise when Apple sent me an email this morning to inform me that nothing was wrong with my unit. Sure. I didn’t troubleshoot for five hours until all the iPod did was the scary hard-disk death rattle over and over again and then bring it to an Apple store who TOLD ME to send it in for repair. Not at all. I am going to throw a major seven at some poor unsuspecting tech guy if they try to charge me for servicing a non-faulty unit, or some other such idiocy.

Also, i still don’t have the tracking number for my new guitar, which is a little frustrating since upon its arrival i only have a 24-hour window to decide whether or not i’d like to keep it. Plus, i am a hugely spoiled brat and want my now guitar asap. (and a squir-rel)

Finally, not since SongFight & SomeSongs have i become so immediately obsessed with a website as i am with Threadless. It’s like Songfight but with stuff to buy. Users submit t-shirt concepts, members vote for the concepts on a scale of 0-5 with a special “i’d buy it” button for emphasis, and roughly every week the webmasters choose what is presumably the highest score shirt with the most “buy it” clicks and make it into an honest to goodness t-shit.

Prepare to become addicted to both rating designs (some of which are so amazing that you want to bribe someone to produce them) and window shopping (with a few exceptions the designs they choose are awesome).

Alright, obviously i’m not recording any gems at this hour (which you won’t fully understand until you hear the notes i hit in chest voice on the new ones). To sleep.