Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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2007 Song of the Day #5 – Love Me, Love Me Not

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I don’t typically let my songs incubate for very long. If I don’t finish writing a song within a few days, or don’t record it within the next month or two, chances are I won’t wind up playing it very often.

My first new song of 2007 turned that whole philosophy on its ear.

Much like “Standing,” it woke me up from sleep to jot it down. Only this one was much more stubborn – the lyrics didn’t have a consistent meter, and I could hear only a few pieces of the music. It seemed unremarkable, especially for something thar had dragged me out of bed.

It didn’t feel unremarkable, though. It felt like something real and solid. A song that said something, because I had something to say to myself.

I refused to give up on it. Every day I came home to tinker. After a few weeks the chorus made its way up the neck from open chords to the 14th fret. A month later I was still tinkering with the lyrics, and the first day of spring found me changing up the rhythms and transitions.

I’m happy to say that the song survived that whole ordeal, and I debuted it at my Melange Theatre performance last Friday. And now I am debuting it to the world at large with its first proper demo recording. It’s far from perfection, but it’s already a long way from where it began.

“Love Me, Love Me Not” is the song of the day.

Whoever’s Listening

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Two years ago this week we were just about settled in this house, and I was packing up my gear from the third annual Lyndzapalooza. I had only written two songs in the previous year, and I hadn’t played anywhere other than Lyndzapalooza in just about that long. I had no new recordings to speak of.

A year ago this week I had just finished my yearly engagement at Lyndzapalooza, and otherwise hadn’t played anywhere other than the Shubin X-Mas Revue since… well, since the last Lyndzapalooza.

However, I had also just written and demoed two new songs that seemed not to suck, and I was arranging for and singing in an a cappella group (the latter for the first time ever).

Minor changes. Little earthquakes.

This year I am not quite packed up from Lyndzapalooza. Gina and I practiced weekly for several months to prepare for our evening set, which featured harmony on every song. I’ve written several new songs, and have played a few monthly engagements at Melange Theatre. Though I haven’t recorded much lately, I tracked 30 new recordings in 30 days of November.

I’m finally re-enrolled in voice lessons, with an awesome young PhD candidate at Penn. Also, I was hired (hired!) to co-write two songs, which I just finished recording (and received payment for!).

And, just to keep myself limber, I’m throwing a dinner/concert for my mother where I’ll be playing two dozen of her favorite songs, and I’m arranging the entirety of Tori Amos’s new album for guitar.

Still not quite a rock star, yet – considering I let my musical life grind to a halt in 2005 – I’m gratifying by my acceleration back to musical relevance.

So Much To Say

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I need to re-hook-up phone posting, because at the pace of my life right now the only chance I have to sneak in a comment here is via phone. There’s been gardening, weddings, new furniture, American Idol, walking home every day, run-ins with old directors, people asking me to compose music, work photo-shoots across the damn city, and all manner of other things to distract me from blogging.

All of which would be a lot more interesting if I would write about it at length, but that would take up a commensurate amount of time.

Blahg.

Until I get my act together to make a decent post, you can hold yourselves over with my interview with Andrea Nardello, conducted for Lyndzapalooza!

Over and out.

In Which I Confess to Lazing

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If we define me by being musical and active and despising passive expenditures of time, then I think it’s safe to say that I went through a bit of an Anti-Me month in February.

Mostly due to video games.

Let me back up a step. In 2004 I gave up network television as a concept; it figuratively and literally doesn’t exist to me anymore, the latter because we haven’t had a vestige of television reception for going on three years.

Since 2004, 95% of the television I have watched (intentionally or not) has been Eagles games. And, because we don’t have reception of our own, most of my Eagles-watching is done with friends.

This season the group of friends happens to also be a group of depraved video-game maniacs, and when we decided to get together for one post-playoffs hurrah we did nothing but play video games.

I haven’t given up video games in the way that I gave up television, but they do make me wary … mostly because I spent a year and a half of my life doing nothing but playing City of Heroes. Sure, there are a handful of site updates and new songs to prove I was alive, and also I was apparently maintaining a relationship at the time, but I was also putting in 40+ hour weeks in at work and on the game.

Well, after our little party I decided that owning a video game system wouldn’t be the end of the world. It wouldn’t be connected to the internet, so it couldn’t suck me in the same degree as City of Heroes. And, much in the way we selectively view TVDs of good shows to replace our lack of television, I would only buy and play games that were compelling. It would be a social and intellectual pursuit.

Right. And then I bought We Love Katamari and a month of my life disappeared.

It’s not that I played video games for the entire month, so much as that video games were emblematic of my lack of energy for creative pursuits. Not lack of inspiration, mind you, but lack of energy.

Merrily, I was right – a non-networked PlayStation doesn’t have the kind of grip on my immortal soul as an internet world full of unique superheroes. This iteration of gaming in my life is merely a distraction, not an addiction.

But then I think – how much blogging could I have done while I was thumbing a joystick? How many songs could I have recorded? Et cetera, et cetera?

Who knows. Life doesn’t work like a metric conversion scale. Could I have recorded an awesome album, or did I simply not have anything to say creatively?

A retrospective answer is meaningless; it’s a question you and I need to ask ourselves each time we pick up a remote or a controller.

This week my answer is “you have plenty to say – start talking.”

Spring Cleansing

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Following my successful computer reinstall everything in my life has seemed primed for refreshment and renewal. After work my desktop is the place where I spend the most time – if I can be organized in both of those places, why not everywhere else?

I cleaned everything partially-hydrogenated out of my refrigerator. I collected all of my bills and financial statements into neatly organized binders. I re-organized my dress shirts into roy g biv order.

This mostly-organized better version of me is now contentedly sipping a strawberry Limoncello martini***, windows flung wide open to let in sunny spring air. Everything in my house is now clean and reset with one exception: my links folder. Let’s see what’s in there…

I know I’m a touch behind on this one, but I thought Time’s article on 300’s impact in Iran was intriguing, if only because from my perspective this wasn’t a hugely calculated studio movie, but an independent work inside of a studio system. In any event, the movie was fascinating, if not terribly great. Definitely worth seeing on a big screen.

The more I work in (and love) a corporate communications culture, the more I appreciate the awesome Ad Verbatims a blog that features such gems as, “I’m not sure what the client wants, so let’s try and do something the client will buy,” and “If I give you approval, what can I still change?” I can’t even begin to enumerate how many times I’ve heard those two phrases in the last month.

Just for reference, since I had an inordinately hard time figuring it out: K.T. Tunstall uses a Akai E2 Headrush to create loops in concert. You can buy one here, however, through assiduous and lengthy research, i discovered that instead you should consider a Boss Loop Station before ultimately buying the awesome DigiTech JamMan, which runs on flash memory.

Um, this is a great photography article. I can’t remember any other reason I would have bookmarked it. Oh, because I saw his flickr photo of Easter crucifixions. Also, his Millau Bridge photo is stunning.

Alright, I’m out of martini, so this is the last link you’ll get: The Weather Market is a competitive weather-prediction site where users try to run up the best streak of forecasting. Fun.

Oh, and, re: my martini, I used 3 parts cranberry to one part strawberry stoli to one part limoncello. Shaken and served on the rocks. Delish.