Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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I wholly support other net musicians without any question or hesitation, because i feel as though musicians don’t use the internet to their best advantage. Thousands of bands are satisfied with having a domain name with a shoddy site behind it and their mp3’s hosted on mp3.com. This doesn’t make you a web-savvy band, this makes you the musical equivalent of a Geocities user. The opportunities for musicians more technically and musically savvy than myself are endless, yet Trio is the only feature of its kind that i’ve ever seen on an underground or professional artist website; even finding a few spare songs from someone who writes as a hobby is highly unusual.

The gentleman logging at TweeBiscuit is not only an excellent designer and a puppetmaster addict, he’s also a musician who has his own mp3’s on his site. I won’t get a chance to take a listen until i get back to work tomorrow, but seeing as i’m currently on musical hiatus while i attempt to record the songs for 25/24 i wholly encourage you to give this fellow teenaged songwriter the listen that he deserves.

[Did someone say “flatter”? The arist in question already posted a response in which he makes me out to be the net celebrity that i’m always trying to convince you that i am. Definitely a link worth blogging about.]

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4473624/

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Meanwhile, though i had nothing interesting to say to any of you this weekend, some things transpired. First, i finished the four instrumental pieces i was recording for Bill’s show that’s opening in Washington this week, which means i have a shot at playing at the Philly Fringe Fest. They sound very good, especially “Occasionally,” which is a Melissa Etheridge song sung simply to her beating on her guitar like a drum. I wrote a very Melissa arrangement for it on guitar and it sounds lovely and i might do it for the page tomorrow night if i get bored. Also, i was on PuppetMaster constantly this weekend because Ernie and Belinda were out camping and Bertie was galavanting around Washington DC with her exgirlfriend and Marissa. So, basically, it was just me and the puppets for 48hours. It’s not just that i get off on being the sole source of archival information for two whole game-days, i love how they all actually pay attention to my snarky little commentary and interact with me. But, anyway, today we lost Pete, who was by-far my favourite contestant in all possible ways (to read and to speculate about. But, i hardly hit on him at all. We left that to tom). So, i was a busy little bee this weekend between guitar playing, and hitting on imaginary people, and drowning.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4459587/

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This weekend beat the crap out of me, and it didn’t help any that i got in tonight at 8. A lot of stuff transpired in my head but nothing made it onto here. I was walking home from the guitar store on Friday night and i passed the shell of a dragonfly dead on the ground; it was a battered exoskelton with the middles of its wings gone so it was just like a stencil of itself. I had something really profound to say about that on friday, but now i just wish i had a camera with me.

This weekend was exactly that… perceptions frozen in perfect little moments that don’t really click in recollection. Yesterday i swam for three hours straight, and i haven’t swam for more than a minute or two in over two years. It wasn’t easy, and today i’m in all sorts of aches and pains because of it, but i feel slightly more in shape now. I am out of shape. This weekend is the first time i’ve been in revealing circumstances (swim trunks) and people haven’t remarked on my thinness; in fact, they said i looked as though i had gained some weight. People think i’m joking when i say i feel heavy, but i’m not joking. I feel like some kind of parody of a supermodel always saying she needs to lose a few more pounds, but i honestly can’t stand myself at this weight. I know, i have issues.

People think i’m kidding about issues. I remember as far back as age 7 or 8 not wanting to take my shirt off at the beach because i didn’t like how i looked in just swim trunks. In middle school i got changed in the corner of the locker room because i was afraid that i was chunky enough that i looked like i had breasts (definitely not a valid concern). In high school i wore hospital scrubs in gym so that no one would see the round hairy legs that betray the rest of my build as being something other than slim or wirey. There’s a backstage picture of me from senior year where i don’t have my shirt on, and it looks like you can fit two hands around my waist or roll a marble down the center of my chest and it would stop in the puddle of my belly-button in the middle of my unreally flat stomach. I love that picture. I know that i was unhealthy and too-thin and that it made people uncomfortable, but i felt comfortable and didn’t mind showing my body off. Now i hide it… people at parties remark that i am spectacularly unglamorous latlely and laugh it off when i seriously reply that i feel too fat. And now everyone else is comfortable with my body except for me, and i don’t know which i prefer.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4459359/

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So, what are my “priority songs?” Splinter and Necessary Evil will probably get recorded once every time i’m in the studio; Atlas Girl was my number one priority but i hit it so well today that i can start dubbing backgrounds on it tomorrow. I’d really like to get a good version of Unstrung recorded (especially because i finally finished writing the last verse), but it’s technically very difficult for me to play. Otherwise, i have a pile of 20 lyrics in my guitar bag, and i just flip through them until i find the one closest to the tuning i’m stuck with. Today Burn got played because i was coming out of A Long Time Since (CADGCD to FADGCD), and i got it on my second try! Typically i hit the majority of my songs very easily if i don’t stress about them too hard, but there are always two that kill me (on the demo: Under My Skin and Other Plans). Sometimes the solution is to play them to death (i played Other Plans eight times back to back and chose the best version), and sometimes you need to reapproach the problem. Tomorrow i’ll be attempting both.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4429698/

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Studio. Ack. Some things were golden and some weren’t. Recorded: Nothing to Say (really angry!), Necessary Evil (so-so, good vocals), Splinter (twice!), Under My Skin (random), Afterglow (crap vocals, might do a dub), A Long Time Since (rewrote the lyrics so they finally made sense), Burn (shockingly wonderful), Unstrung (ugh. don’t ask), All That’s True (cute, trebly), and Atlas Girl (nailed it). Attempted songs included Hold on Me, Touch, Up&Down, very serious efforts at Almost and Typical, and a near-perfect World In My Hand on which my E string fell out of tune during the crucial last chorus. Damnit. Similarly, I almost got through Typical after nearly a half hour of tries and flubbed the ending, while on Almost i still need to decide what the guitar should sound like. I’m recording everything through my amplifier directly into the board, so the guitar has beautiful tone quality but everything sorta sounds the same. Oh well. 5 songs from today are good enough to be publishable, and Under My Skin will make a hilarious outtake becaue it’s totally incoherent. So, 1/5 done, and another studio day tomorrow! Whoo!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4429580/