Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders

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My fascination with the Pretenders began with a television commercial.

I’m sure you remember it. Barbie and G.I. Joe racing around in a toy Corvette to the vamped drum intro of “Message of Love.” It was an awesome commercial. My mother is ace at identifying older tunes tapped for commercials, and in the pre “just Google it” age it was her who told me the song was by The Pretenders.

I knew of this group and their bang-èd singer Chrissie Hynde, but had never bothered to pick up any of their LPs until after the commercial. As is my way, I decided I’d rather get to know The Pretenders album-by-album than via greatest hits, and bought all three of their first LPs on New Years Eve 1999.

To my surprise, I actually knew a lot of the songs. Seemingly all of them – even the non-singles. It was like they were already tattooed on my brain. But the one that really resonated – which, of course, I had heard a hundred times before – was “Back on the Chain Gang.”

There was something about the simplicity of that first line, “I saw a picture of you.” All it took was a single wistful glance at that forgotten photograph to hijack the narrator’s world and sent her crashing into the sepia-tinged realm of memory, where she rages against and eventually resigns herself to her lot in life as a broken-hearted survivor. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders

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

The 30 for 30 Project

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When I hatched one of my typically insane musical project ideas – to record 30 songs from the 30 years of my life for my 30th birthday (maybe in the 30 days of September?) – I was working from the assumption it would stay an idea due to my perfectionism. The concept would be safely tucked away as an iTunes playlist with all of the other covers projects that I’d never started.

"Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie was the number one record in America the day I was born. While I won't say that I'll NEVER cover it, you definitely won't be hearing it later today as my pick from 1981.

Then, August happened. I kept posting every day, and really enjoying it. I finally found a blogging rhythm, eleven years into my experiment. I thought, maybe the idea isn’t so crazy after all. Maybe I should do it.

The issue is that I haven’t recorded any new solo music since we moved into the house last June. I have hatched half a dozen cool projects in my head, but I haven’t launched a single one.

This seems paradoxical. I have a studio now. Space to set up and stay set up without having to drape suit jackets over my microphone poles and check email from within a lattice of quarter-inch cables.

I mean that literally. At the old house my studio was my office was my dressing room. It was common to find a discarded microphone atop a pile of wireframe sketches and freshly laundered underwear. Gear shared a walk-in closet with board games and old copies of Rolling Stone. Switching to a different guitar meant risking sending up a tinker-tape parade of brightly colored Monopoly money in my hallway if I moved a box the wrong way.

And you know what? It didn’t stop me. I recorded two seasons of Trio, four Arcati Crisis Live @ Rehearsals, and over a dozen solo demos that became my Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1. Now I have an entire attic committed solely to recording, and the well has suddenly run dry.

Actually, the well is quite wet. I have the best intentions. The new wrinkle is that with space to set up a perfect signal chain the issue is no longer my willingness, but my perfection. Everything has to be perfect. Perfectly planned, perfectly rehearsed, perfectly executed.

The Rolling Stones' 18th American LP, Tattoo You, held the top album spot when I was born. I won't be playing "Start Me Up" at any point in this project.

Perfect makes things hard. Bobbling that one chord change? Delay it. Tickle in my throat? Cancel it.

30 for 30 is different. I am not promising perfection. I am not promising that I’m going to get it done in 30 days. I am not promising you will know all the songs. I am not promising polished studio cuts. I am not promising all of the covers will be perfectly played.

And, I am certainly not representing it as a collection of my favorite, most-cherished songs.

No. All of that leads to perfectionism paralysis.

What I am promising is a single take video play-through of a song from every year from 1981 to 2010, with some commentary along the way. No cherished favorites. No multi-track demos. No perfection.

Just me and the music.

30 for 30 starts later today, in 1981.

Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

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As if the Philly Geek Awards weren’t enough excitement for one weekend, I woke up on Saturday morning to face the daunting task of setting up our dining room as a drumming room for recording Filmstar.

After shopping around to some fantastic local studios last fall we realized we weren’t quite ready to drop major cash on pro recording for our first EP. To make studio time worthwhile you need to be playing solid takes of songs, know what you want them to sound like, and understand what you want to add.

Our first pass at that preparation was the Live @ Rehearsal style recording sessions for The Desperate Times EP last winter. For that session we recorded the band live with scratch vocals, going back to recut lead and backing vocals (plus acoustic guitar) on top of our full band takes.

I outdid my prior bests in mixing the EP, but I was flummoxed by the limitations of our recording process. Particularly, it was impossible to stitch together the best parts of multiple takes because we hadn’t recorded to a click track.

Thus, the mission for our new double A-side single: record perfectly in-tempo, click-tracked drums, as many times as we could withstand. [Read more…] about Drum Engineering w/Filmstar

all points of the compass

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Yesterday I took one of those personality type assessments that you frequently take at work, and for once I thought it told me something useful.

The assessment suggested our personalities are divided between four predominant focuses – clearing obstacles in the present, having a vision of the future state, caring about people and their skills, and collecting and analyzing data.

Some people were clearly one thing. I was sitting next to a warrior, who only cared about crossing things off his list, and across from a nurturer, who only cared about the people around her.

Unsurprisingly, I do not have a singular focus.

However, I was the only person in a room of two dozen who was primarily focused on the next steps. I’m a planner. I want to know how present actions will be reflected in the future.

I wasn’t only that. Right behind it was my path-clearing tendency – I consider what we can do now to get to those next steps, as well as my analysis-OCD –  gathering information and data to get to those next steps.

You’ll notice a missing element: people. It turns out, in this particular rubric I’m supposedly not too concerned with others.

If there was any doubt in my mind about the validity of that assessment, you don’t have to look much farther than Arcati Crisis rehearsal. I’m always pushing to learn more songs so we can play longer sets, record video to add to our web content, add more harmony to make our songs more complex, or any number of other things that will transform us. I am fixated on the future state.

I want to get those things done, and I have my data to support why we’re doing them (in the form of song binders, spreadsheets, rehearsal videos, etc).

What I don’t do is ask, “Are you having fun?” It just doesn’t come into the equation for me. I’m having fun if the song sounded good. When the songs don’t sound good I’m not having fun. If that happened all the time I wouldn’t show up. I assume that about everyone else.  And – whether they share my dogmatic future-focus or not – it’s true.

This week, the songs sounded great. I think we were all pretty happy.

It’s not that I don’t care about others. It’s that I assume that being on a team indicates interest, and the best thing I can do to keep you interested is to always be moving towards the next step in our evolution – which means doing great work in the present.

For being a band-leader, I think my personality fits me to a tee.