Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Best albums of 2010? Help me!

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Now re-revised(!) (as of 12/6) (through 1/1/11) to include new LPs I’ve picked up and suggestions from readers.

If you’re a big music fanatic/critic, I want/need your help in populating my list of eligible Best Albums of 2010.

Amongst the 952 projects that I took on this November, I’ve begun to think about the “Best of 2010” albums list I’m going to compile next month.

Mozella's Belle Isle was retroactively my LP of the year in 2009. Do not sleep on this album, dudes. Trust me.

I haven’t done such a thing for a long time, because I haven’t bought and listened-to enough LPs in most years to issue anything like a definitive list. Last year when December rolled around I checked out all of the year-end lists and was shocked that I hadn’t even heard of most of the discs past the top few.

As a result, some of the 2009 albums I played into the ground this year I didn’t even hear until January of 2010 – namely, discs by MoZella, St. Vincent, A Fine Frenzy, and Thao with the Get Down Stay Down. I’m still finding 2009 favorites – the past few weeks I can’t turn off the K’Naan record.

This year I really think it’s going to happen, because I’ve been making a point of cruising New Release lists at least once a month for highlights. That said, I need your help in catching the LPs I’ve missed so far.

First, we have my list of eligible albums already owned or heard – numbering 78 over a hundred more than 175. I already know I have some heavy favorites in this group, as well as some clunkers. [Read more…] about Best albums of 2010? Help me!

Now I’m a bassist

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We just loaded out from my first Philly show as a member of Filmstar.

Bass was played. I did not magically forget how to do it when we got on stage, which was a great relief. I had worries that I was going to look down and suddenly discover the bass was totally alien to me, like I was holding an accordion, or something else arcane that I don’t know how to play.

Bagpipes, possibly.

It’s weird to be sitting on the bottom of the mix. With Gina everything has equal weight – guitar against guitar, vocal against vocal. Either of us can dip out for a second and things stay in motion.

With Filmstar if I stop playing there’s no bottom! The bottom falls out.

Well, after one experience with that early in the set, I learned my lesson pretty quickly.

The other strange thing was being so LOUD. I am not a loudness junky when it comes to music, so I’m not used to the way instruments and amps resonate differently at higher volumes. It kept taking my by surprise.

It was a good set. Fast, a few bumps, but nothing I’m going to hold against myself forever.

So, yeah, now I’m a bassist. Seriously, me as the rhythm section? Where do I come up with these ideas.

autodidact to the death

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I am sitting on my couch, gradually tearing my hair out, trying to figure out why various PHP MYSQL Update queries that worked in PHP4.x don’t work in PHP5.x.

Because, on the list of “things I am” in addition to being a communications professional, songwriter, blogger, novelist, and bass player, I am also an occasional software engineer.

Remember how I started the month with a post about specialization? Well, I am not especially specialized in hard-core PHP programming. I know the equivalent of a Cure2 spell in PHP. And, to continue a wobby analogy, this is a website with a lot of hit points to recover.

“Nerd” was implied on that list, right?

Video Demo: “End With Me”

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Last night Gina and I held an epic Arcati Crisis rehearsal with our drummer Zina. We’ve worked our way up to eight drummed up tunes, and now we’re adding other special features like electric guitars and effects pedals.

We’re going to figure out this band thing, one way or another.

Meanwhile, I spent seemingly every free moment of yesterday singing the arpeggio D-F#-A-D-F#-A-D, which spans all the good bits of my singing range. However, on a weird set of vowels the top D can be a bit of a beast to get on top of, and of course I wrote myself just such a troublesome set of sounds when I penned “End With Me” shortly after posting about Eric Smith on Sunday night.

Can bad vowels stop me? Hell no. I mean, have you heard some of the audio on here from ten years ago? Not even bad singing can stop me.

Anyhow, here is a late-night first take on “End With Me,” another song from my soundtrack to Eric’s novel, Textual Healing. This tune has a slew of references to the book, including some specific lines. The recording has plenty of rough edges, but it sounds right, and I’ll take rough and right over mannered and plasticine any day of the week.

(Okay, not really, but let’s just think that for the purposes of this post.)


(Watch the video on Facebook, where I occasionally demo brand new tunes for my likers. Also, you can read the lyrics there.)