Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Ani DiFranco

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Some notes on the requests. That’s the order i recorded them in, but not that they were asked for. I needed lyrics for 1-3, chords for 2-3, and lots of righteous misplaced gender angst for 4. I kept the first complete take of each song, and the only one with a significant false start was Rabi’s. I did “Outta Me” first because i’ve recorded it before and i know i can ad-lib all over the place. I thought Yucca’s would be very hard but it was simple because i spent a long time transcribing it last summer so that it would make sense on such an occasion. I was planning to do “La Isla” anyway, but had been putting off transcribing the chords. Please note that i incorporate the guitar solo into my strumming, because i care that much about solo acoustic Madonna covers (of which we’ve seen four, so far). I did invert the instrumental bit and then didn’t sing to it like Madonna does; however, i pounded on my guitar quite a bit like she did at the concert to make up for it. A year ago today i couldn’t sing “Not a Pretty Girl” and play it at the same time, and now it’s one of the easiest Ani songs for me to cover except for that it’s always using all four of my fingers and i tend to abuse my guitar a lot when i play it. Enjoy, ladies and gents.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4795716/

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I sorta learned to speak by listening to Ani DiFranco; you can hear me hem and haw and um and ahh my way through my sentences complete with lil’ folksinger giggles and breathlessly ended phrases. This isn’t an all-the-time thing, but you can certainly hear the influence whenever i forget who i am and start talking about my music. But, Ani’s not the only person who’s had an unintentional effect on my speech patterns: i pepper my campus tours with twangy southern “y’alls” and attach “ya knows” to the tails of my statements in an unmistakenly Fargo fashion. In the cases of the latter two affectations, i’m not entire sure how i picked them up, but generally anyone i listen to often has an effect on how others hear me – and the surest way to tell is to ask me to talk about music and proffer me a bemused smile as my sarcastically directed patterns take a left-hand turn and suddenly i’m saying “Well, ahh, this song… this song was, um, not the easiest song. Not the easiest song to write… but it wrote itself, i suppose.”


Oh, did i mention i picked up some loopiness from Tori?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4385675/

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In two weeks i’ve played outside for Spring Jam, in my supervisor’s office at work, for a room full of “dykes,” and in a tiny bar adjoining a good place to get wings. Each performance had its own little quirks, but tonight’s was definitely my favourite in many ways. Firstly, i had the crowd stacked in my favor with mucho peeps from the Player’s House. Secondly, i was really well rehearsed and not at all nervous. And, finally, all of my songs sounded good – even to me (which is a rare thing).


The set (a whopping hour long) follows, with minimal comments. A trio sneak-peek should be up sometime this weekend.
Other Plans (great opener, still love it),
Punk (crowds seem to pay attention to this; a shame it’s only 2 minutes long),
Deadweight (surprisingly coherent),
Ziggy Stardust (Bowie: random fun),
Relief (doesn’t seem to do much live),
Buildings and Bridges (Ani: by request!),
Under My Skin (wow, a crowd that didn’t know all the words…),
Bridge (“this is as close as i get to playing a solo”)
Dilate (Ani: huge and fun),
Give (hard to do live, but satisfying. thnx rabi.),
Crashing (broke a string; steve of The Conditions filled in while i got this ready),
Lost (quick and painless),
Like A Prayer (Madonna: not the best closer for a bar full of drunk men when you don’t know all the words, but all of the girls helped out by singing along).


My set was between a Drexel gal doing mostly covers and a massive two-hour (still going as i write) set by Justin (of dead susan fame) and Geoff. I think the owner invited me back for next week, but i’m sorta drunk on starvation so i don’t have a very clear memory of it. If i am playing next week, i need to learn some more cover songs. God help us all… g’nite.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3684916/