Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

music

The Dots, They’ve Been Connected

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I’ve known Leigh Marble, or at least known of Leigh Marble, as long as i’ve played guitar.

Literally. The night i came home with that crappy Ashland i headed directly to Leigh’s AniTab’s, which still exists at the same url to this day, almost nine years later. The first song i played on my first guitar was “Dilate.”

Two years later and i was a pro at figuring out my own arrangements of Ani DiFranco songs, and a contributor (and argumentative corrector) of Leigh’s tabs. At the time he was splitting a 7″ record with Erin McKeown.

Five years ago this week I saw and heard Erin McKeown for the first time in 2001, on a split bill with Peter Mulvey, and it was from that perspective that i first connected the dots between my favorite inspiration (Peter) and my first (Ani), through Leigh.

Leigh’s self-recorded his first full-length CD, Peep in 2003. He gives an elucidating account of the recording process, as well as samples of his songs. Each one i’ve heard is a fresh idea laid over an innovative arrangement, none betraying his Ani affiliation than “Bucket Seat” does mine. I’m buying a copy; you ought to buy one too. (Also, Erin has a free four-song session up at the spectacularly neat Daytrotter, and an album of standards on the way.)

I think the connection is that we’re all doing it ourselves. And, nine years later, i just submitted the 101st tab to AniTabs.

Alert! Alert! iPod Full!

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Well, it’s been coming for over a year now as i’ve been selectively paring down my less desirable tracks by unchecking them but – after a brief All of MP3 shopping spree this afternoon* – my 40gig iPod is one album away from being full.

One album!

Of course there are easily another fifty albums in iTunes that i might never willingly listen to again, so those could be safely unchecked. The issue is that i literally have to take one album off for every one i add. And, given my typical monthly purchase volume (two-five digital albums in a slow month) the attrition is going to get ugly by this time next year.**

So:


Do i try to sell my b&w click wheel 40gig iPod and multiple accessories for $200ish, plunging the capital into the purchase of a 60gig? The extra space would last me through more than 215 more albums.


Or, do i wait until Apple releases another generation of iPods (presumably later this year), suck up the purchase price and just hand off my b&w to a deserving friend?

Or, do i just suck it up and not carry my entire music collection around with me every day?

* I was in the mood for some atmospheric music, and thus bought Sia – Colour The Small One; Medeski, Martin & Wood – Best of Blue Note Years; Mandalay – Instinct; Frou Frou – Details; Emiliana Torrini – Love In The Time of Science (excellent!); and a goth-band tribute to Tori Amos.

** No comment on the implications this has on my hard drive space; i really can’t even contemplate that right now. Now that i have a new acoustic guitar an external hard drive is probably #3 on my big ticket item purchase list.

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.

Unless I Am Talking To Liz Phair

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I may have become slightly obsessed with Sasha Frere-Jones during the Performance to Production panel at the New Yorker festival as he dispensed his incredibly biting witin the form of sentences shrinking upon themselves with self-deprication.

(this is too giggle-inducing not to include: Sasha refers to panel-member Ric Ocasek as Ric “My First Album Is Better Than Yours, Unless I Am Talking To Liz Phair” Ocasek)

Apparently i was supposed to be in love with him already (said H), but i barely even knew New York media people even existed before i started reading Gawker so i can hardly be blamed. Having now idly investigated his writing for a month i’m even more charmed by him – he writes incredibly informed, typically obsessed odes that make every artist sound like his erstwhile favorite, and he sometimes avoids a review altogether in the interest of making his point.

Sasha has a very interesting picture-fueled scattershot blog that yields many interesting links, including a piece by a rejected queer eye and S/Fj’s lovely straightforward interview with Fiona Apple (whose album i have managed to hate less by not listening to the last five tracks).

Funny how straightforward interviews are always better than feature magazine articles.

Not In Love

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Here’s some news: Fiona Apple shit all over her wonderful unreleased Extraordinary Machine so that she could have something banal and common.

Yes, it’s true. If you don’t believe me, go listen to a clip of the OFFICIAL version of Not In Love here. I can’t hold up a Jon Brion UNRELEASED clip of Not In Love because Sony has sued them all off of the internet so you would have to resort to Torrent if you’d like to hear one, but what you have to understand is that there was this gorgeous little cello riff in the background that sortof spat back at the little piano rumble, and she sounded so playful, and little violins swooped in so that this bed of strings caught her every phrase. And there was NONE of this SISSY cymbal ride crap, no drums were required, and NO GUITARS either, for that matter. Not on this song, and not anywhere on the album, and its lack was a beautiful refreshing thing – like drinking beautiful clean water from a very deep well. But, what has Fiona given us? Nasty, ugly, terrible ELECTRIC guitar spread like a thick coating of shit all over her tremendously large chorus chords, guitar so nasty, ugly and terrible that you CANNOT HEAR how the bottom notes are clanging against themselves slightly out of tune because that’s how pianos get way down there when you play big chords hard.

She erased the charm from the most charming song i’ve heard in months. For reasons i cannot discern Fiona HERSELF, not SONY, not any other evil CONGLOMERATE of people, but FIONA threw out Jon Brion’s gorgeous arrangement in exchange for an exercise in utter banality. I listen to a beautiful song almost every day for four months and she wrecks it.

I’m not in love, because I can’t stop falling out. If this is what the other eleven tracks hold in store, I honestly hope Fiona’s re-recorded Extraordinary Machine tanks like a record has never tanked before. It would be her just reward; she looked the goddamned gift horse in the mouth. NO ONE gets two amazing versions of the same album. Look at Let It Be. Perfection is not meant to be fucked with. I will personally distribute Jon Brion versions to EVERY PERSON I KNOW if that’s what it takes. No one should have to pay money for her silly retool of a so tangible, so personal, so charmingly different original when they could have that instead.

Do you want one?