Crushing Krisis

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Things to do in Philly, 11/9 edition

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It’s another week of things to do in Philly!

If you’re a fan of me and you do one thing in Philly this week, it should be this one:

Filmstar playing the Blame-a-Thon, as shot by me.

Friday, 11/12
Who: Filmstar, featuring E on vox and me on bass!
Details: The M Room, 15 W Girard Ave, 9pm, $8
Why? After almost four months of rehearsals, my official Philly debut as a bass player has arrived! Witness a set of brisk set of 80s-influenced electric rock, including a ton of new songs I loved even before I was one of the people playing them. Especially recommended if you dig The Cure, The Pretenders, James, or Elastica.

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Otherwise, here’s a handful of other awesome stuff in the city that I’ll be endeavoring to attend.

Wednesday, 11/10
Who: Shearwater w/Damien Jurado
Details: Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave, 9pm, $12
Why? Shearwater is indie rock that’s not a wreck – compelling vocals and crackling guitar arpeggios. I’ve been a casual fan for a while, but I’m sure seeing the show would make me more serious.

Saturday, 11/13
What: Philly BarCamp
Details: 211 S Broad, 8am
Why? BarCamp was one of my favorite Philly events last year – an unconference full of smart people with unique ideas. Right now it’s sold out, but you can put your name on a wait list at their website, and it’s worth the wait.

Saturday, 11/13
Who: Christie Lenee and friends
Details: Naked Chocolate, 31 S. 18th Street, 12-6pm, w/a canned food donation
Why? Do you want to see a slew of the most talented songwriters in Philadelphia for the cost of a can of food? Christee is one of my two favorite guitarists in the entire city (the other is Greg Sover), and she’s hosting a day that includes many of my favorite songwriters, including Victoria Spaeth, Ally Cat, Dante Bucci, Andrea Nardello, and more. So worth attending.

Sunday, 11/14
What: Conquer Philly Showcase
Details: World Cafe Live, 7pm, $10
Why? Conquer is a start-up by a handful of smart folks who are anything but new to the music business, and they want to help Philly artists find a platform for their talents. Conquer’s monthly showcases are part of that, and this one presents Barbara Montgomery & the Women of Jazz, Zair Baily, Jan Alba & Rust, Sandy Hall, Elizabeth Salvatico, and (one of my personal favorite artists) Cris Valkyria and the Opponents.

Monday, 11/15
What: Geekadelphia presents Scott Pilgrim v the World
Details: Trocadero, doors @ 6:30pm, move @ 8pm, $3
Why? Want to see Scott Pilgrim with an appropriately geeky crowd who’ll appreciate all of the video game references? You could do no better than the Geekadelphia crew, presenting their weekly Monday night flick at the Troc.

As always, if you know about a cool upcoming event that you can personally endorse, comment away! I’ll include it in a Things to Do post with your personal stamp of approval on it.

New Boots and “Fall from the Sky”

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Hi. This is my first NaBloPoMo default – I’m not missing a post, but I am way off the grid of my editorial calendar.

I spent all of my writing time today plugging away on my NaNoWriMo novel, which means no elucidating new post. But, hey, my book is now over 20,000 words long!

However, never let it be said that my filler posts are not awesome. So, here’s your default post.

First, these are my new Kenneth Cole boots. They are a little urban cowboy for me, but I’m excited. Part of my non-blogging time was spent leather conditioning them.

When did I turn into a guy who spends my non-blogging time leather conditioning boots?

In other news, here’s the further development of one of my favorite Filmstar tunes, “Fall from the Sky.” We have a few bobbles on it, but this is pretty damn close to what it’s supposed to sound like.

We’re playing The M Room this Friday night. I may post a few more of my recent favorites.

How Eric Smith rocked my world.

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Story time.

A few weeks ago Britt Miller, my partner in all things FAME, posted a link to the first segment of Eric Smith‘s “podiobook” – a podcasted audiobook version of his forthcoming novel Textual Healing with Britt contributing a special voice-acting appearance.

Eric Smith was one of those people that everyone I know knew, but I did not. Still, I occasionally followed his adventures on Twitter, which is what one does these days when you don’t know someone everyone else knows and you want to know why they all knew him already.

It turns out they mostly know him from running Geekadelphia, editing uwishunu, and working for Quirk Books (of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies fame). Eric’s also a professor and a music photographer who spent time touring with a number of bands.

I knew about a lot of those things separately, but didn’t know Eric connected them. I was intrigued – by Eric, by the idea of the advance podiobook, by Britt’s appearance in it, and by hearing Eric’s voice read his work – so I listened. And in the span of about an hour of my on-and-off listening to the podcast, a song popped out…


(watch the video on Facebook, where I sometimes demo sneak peeks of new tunes before releasing them anywhere else)

…so, doing what any DIY songwriter would do after midnight having just moments ago written a new song for a book by someone he knew only through his extended circle of friends, I recorded my first run-through, posted it to my Facebook page at two in the morning, and tagged Eric in it – off-handedly suggesting it was the first of a number of songs I’d write for his novel.

That resulted in Eric commenting “?!” about eight hours later, which in turn lead to an email exchanges with the extremely genial Mr. Smith, who now I suppose I finally know directly instead of just knowing of via the knowledge of other people I know. Eric sent me an advance copy of Textual Healing and I am now committed (personally, not by contract or gentleman’s agreement or anything) to write at least four songs for the soundtrack of his book.

I just finished my second tune a few minutes ago, but this time there’ll be no insta-video. The phrases are so darn long that I’ll need to do voice exercise for a few days before I can get from breath mark to breath mark on the verses.

I’m happy to finally know who Eric is, and to have his passion project inspire some passion mirrored in me. Head to his blog, Eric Smith Rocks, to catch up on the first few episodes of the podiobook, and keep your eyes and ears open here for more tunes.

PS: About ten minutes after I posted this I wrote another song. Three down! One to go!

bondage is progress

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Oh, the things I'll do for my art.

Last night E tied me to a chair in the middle of our freshly painted dining room so I could research my novel.

You see, last night I was blasting out words at an amazing pace on the El when it came time for my protagonist to be cuffed to a chair.

Despite many contortions on the El, I couldn’t figure out how far he could stretch, or if he could stand up and walk. The lack of detail was killing me. My nonstop flow of words dried to a trickle.

I hurried down our street, rereading what I had written on my laptop, only twice stumbling off of the sidewalk and into hedges. I unlocked our front door, flung it open, and announced to E:

Honey, I need to you to tie me to a folding chair and take pictures of it!

**

I’ve always been afraid that I don’t know enough to be an author.

I’m obsessive about details. I always have been. As a kid I would compare stacks GI Joe file cards to make sure their stories were consistent.

Oh the irony: Gina the chemist is writing a book and a blog, and Peter the communicator is learning chemistry.

I love getting lost in the fictional histories other authors have created, but I never thought I could create one of my own. I mean, have you watched the special features on the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition DVD? Tolkien wrote entire history books about his fictional world. He wrote a frickin’ language!

Me? I’m not well-traveled. I don’t know much about history. I haven’t taken science class since the 90s. I don’t know how anything works or how to take it apart or how to turn it into a bomb. I don’t even know the right way to describe a lot of things, like architecture or clothes.

That’s why I like writing songs. Songs have their own internal logic. Sure, they might reference something in the real world, but only for a word or two.

We learned that I would have to make an excuse for the character's feet not to be secured, because I was a deadly weapon with the folding chair tied to me.

Late in September Gina challenged me to do National Novel Writing Month. I didn’t say yes right away.  I spent all of October outlining my story and sketching the details of my characters. If I was going to join I wanted a mythology of my own.

While I outlined I hit a lot of gaps in my knowledge, but I didn’t let them stop me.  I’m smart. I can acquire knowledge. Better to start out with ideas.

A few of my characters  do things that involve some pretty intense knowledge of chemistry and physics. In my outline I glossed over the details, but now it’s time to write about them. I can’t always be asking Gina about every little detail, so to get started I bought Chemistry for Dummies.

And, last night I needed to find out how hard a character could swing a folding chair he was flexicuffed to in order to knock out another character, so I had E tie me up and take photographs of it.

Why? Because that’s what an author does.