Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

songwriting

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Because i am indecisive, and because i enjoy making work for myself, i have a huge database set up with all of the songs from the link at the top of this page and a tidy numerical ranking system which will average out my song-liking whims over the course of the next week to give me an idea of what deserves to be recorded. It weighs my somewhat objective view of each song’s merits against my subjective want to play them, and today these are the top ten results it produced: Up + Down, Over You, Give, Icy Cold, Unstrung, All That’s True, Splinter, Necessary Evil, Nothing To Say, Atlas Girl. That might not mean anything to you, so let me give you some background information:

Up + Down, Over You, Unstrung, Necessary Evil, and Splinter are the majority of my newest songs, and so i am overwhelmingly in love with them i and i want to record them while they’re fresh. I was having a very dry spell that was months long up until Splinter popped out of my mouth without any warning, and since then i have been actively writing and rewriting what amounts to an album of all-new material. Give is a song from my Freshman Year Demo (Other Plans) that i probably should have rerecorded for Relief this Spring. Icy Cold and Nothing To Say were the two alternate songs for Relief that i never recorded in the studio despite liking them very much. Atlas Girl is a song i wrote and played twice nearly two years ago, and then totally forgot about. When i began conceptualizing this event i found it in the back of my old poetry book and recalled its chords in less than a minute; now i am quite smitten with it. So, as of today those would be 10 songs sure to be heard during this little event, but they might not make it through the decision process, and then recording, and then mastering, and then posting. More peeks at potential songs in the weeks to come. But, for now, g’nite!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/4261869/

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As it turns out, “Splinter” was in charge of this whole new-songs conspiracy, because somehow of my 125+ song collection it benefited the most from my semester of voice lessons. The once breathy and lightweight vocals have turned into howls comparable to the ones in “Hold On Me,” and the big sustained D near the end has suddenly become a note i’m not scared of (after crescendoing on a tied whole-note D all semester in “Satin Doll” my songs suddenly aren’t as intimidating to sing). So, yes, “Splinter” was hoping to get my attention and as a reward it’s going to be played tonight. Otherwise i’m still a little undecided about my set, because it’s supposed to be a short set so i’m trying to balance new material with patentedly catchy songs so i don’t simply suck. Right now it’s looking like “No Second Chance,” “Splinter,” “tired of sex,” “Up & Down,” “the trouble with poets,” “Never Say Goodbye,” which means i’m definitely not repeating any material from my first appearance (as if anyone would notice). My hope is that if i can contrive show up four different time with four radically different sets of original material they’ll have no qualms about bringing me back even though i don’t really like to play covers.

I get the feeling “Under My Skin” is going to be very jealous… this is the first time it’s been intentionally left out, ever. Life goes on, i suppose.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3967359/

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lazy summer heat is slowly seeping into my pores because it always distributes evenly to where things are cool because that’s how science works. i am listless with heat, waking up abruptly from crucial points in my technicolor-bright dreams to glittering sun bathing my entire bed in gilded rays. last night there were three story double homes with bay windows in the third floor bedroom and i remember hugging someone very tightly to me and something strange lurking in the basement that i knew all about as a narrator but nothing about as a character. and then i was flying, weaving inbetween buildings and up and over and out into sky and that’s about as much as i recall about that.

today i really do have work to do, but the page was looking sort of lonely. read that last post, if you haven’t already. but, anyway i just realized today that i haven’t played “under my skin” since i played it for rabi or at the bar and i think i somehow got past it or something and that scares me, because that song was all about everything. have you been paying much attention to the new songs? they’re conspiring against me and my album and i think they might have kidnapped “relief” because i haven’t heard anything from it for a while. i think “splinter” is in charge of the whole conspiracy even though it doesn’t show up too much, because it’s very jealous about not getting on the album and it knows that gina really likes it and oh god now i’m talking about my songs like they’re people just like tori amos does but i always just explain that away with the fact that she did too many low-quality l.a. drugs in the 80’s but i’ve never even been to nebraska so i’m obviously just crazy to begin with.

the songs are sortof like people though. after you play something enough you begin to develop a relationship with it; some days you dress it up special and some days it barely rolls out of bed and some days it just doesn’t want to have it’s picture taken and it’s holding its hands up in front of its face and complaining. the scary thing is that the new songs are doing this now, as they’re written. that last one flaunted its independence right at me saying “you can’t end me unless i want to be ended, so keep on writing” and i did and it takes up way more pages in my little grey book than any of the other songs do but now that it made me write it all down it doesn’t really seem to want to be played, which confuses me to no end. i don’t think i really realized that all of my songs are relationship songs until gina pointed it, and now i seem to be able to write everything else but it’s like hitting a new note for the first time because i can’t tell if they’re strong or if they just seem very nice because i’ve never heard them before.

if you were wondering, this is just how my head is working lately. i wrote a 2300 word email last night without even really intending to. it’s like when i open up my head things just come pouring out until it’s empty again. but, anyway, this post is just a post for the sake of being here in this little box, so i again defer to the intelligence of the last post and wish you all have a nice day.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3950354/

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It’s a shame that my voice is being stretched to the limit on all of the choruses of Song #1 (below), because otherwise i think the vocal delivery sounds pretty ‘on.’ I haven’t got up the right momentum or distortion to get that down as a punk song, but rest assured that it’s more punk than anything else i’ve ever written. Except “Punk.” That’s definitely punker. I was a little concerned when i first started playing this song because the verses are essentially the same I-V-IV pattern as thousands of other forgettable songs, but i don’t think you really notice the simplicity as much as you do in “Under My Skin” because it isn’t nearly as repetitive. So, anyway, it seems to be growing on Izabelle and she’s the one who gets to choose what the first song on every demo is, so be afraid…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3836463/

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Song #2 (below) can’t seem to decide where it wants to go. I started writing it simply as a song in the second person that had nothing to do with “relationships” in the sense i usually write about them. Quickly, the puzzle became figuring out what the “tiny trouble” in the first verse was, and why she took the car out. By the time i got out to the bridge (notice the borrowed line from Tori while i work out what’s actually going to fit in there) i knew she was hiding something from her family and she had tried to tell her boyfriend but was hung up on (in the first chorus). The song seemed to be leaning towards her being pregnant (“nest in your heart,” “too early for children to be appreciated,” “feel the kick of that tiny answer”), but i’m not sure that’s where i was leaning. But, what do you hide from your family and get shut down by your lover about if your not pregnant? What wakes you up with the sun just so you can drive around deserted streets just waiting for something to catch you eyes. Maybe she’s dying? But, it was all in the letter, and she tore it up so she could manage to go back to sleep with the tiny pieces littering the floor around her bed. But that tiny trouble has gotten the best of her, and she can’t just sleep that off.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3835246/