Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

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I have a secret favorite band.

They’re not only a secret because I never talk about them publicly. They’re also a secret because I don’t know a damn thing about them. I don’t know who they are, what they look like, why they’re a band, what their politics are, or when they’re putting their next album out. I’ve never seen them on tour and never watched a video of them. I don’t even know if they play live!

Turin Bakes - Underdog Save Me Single Artwork

All I know is I love every song they have ever released.

It is highly unusual for me to fall madly in love with something and not want to hoover up every single facet of its existence. You’ve seen the name of this site, right? That’s what the “Crushing” part has always been about – what I’m crushing on, and what’s crushing me. When I have something crushing, I want perfect 100% knowledge of its complete breadth and depth.

Except this one band.

Turin Brakes.

I don’t know anything about them, but I can tell you exactly how I found out about them.

Their song “Underdog (Save Me)” was on the Q Magazine’s “Q Best of 2001” sampler CD that came with their end of year issue that December. I almost certainly bought it at an airport magazine stand en route to stay at my grandmother’s condo in Florida for the holidays. That was pre-iTunes, so I probably listened to it once or twice on my CD Walkman and then shelved it’s paper sleeve alongside the rest of my compilation CDs and promptly forgot it existed.

Then, in 2003, iTunes came to Windows and I spent a month converting my massive CD collection to MP3, including that Q sampler on November 8th, 2003. And then I didn’t listen to it for another year, until I bought my first iPod for my solo trip to California to hang out with Laura and Sara.

Clearly I was working my way through a playlist of unheard songs while on my trip, because several other tunes from that sampler have their first (and only) plays in that period. And then, the very day I returned to Philly, I added two Turin Brakes records to my collection. I might’ve even bought them at the historic Amoeba Music in Los Angeles!

Why? What was so special about “Underdog (Save Me)” that made me so eager to hear more of this band?

I can tell exactly why: they were the first new band I ever heard that entirely reminded me of myself. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

Trio Season 6 – Suite #6: Instants

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This Trio almost wound up being titled “Primer” because of the following three quotes:

On being primed:
If you’ve ever read an interview with a songwriter … you’ll hear a repeated theme: that you have to constantly be writing, and constantly be revising and playing. It seems sortof counter-intuitive, because at some point you’ve written a certain amount of material, and you feel like you should be playing or rehearsing that material. But … when you have a new idea it’s much more easy to capture that idea.

It’s funny that you can apply any kind of science to songwriting. You spend a lot of years as a songwriter thinking it’s just lightning that strikes you, but there are things you can do to make yourself more of a lightning rod.

All This Time
When the chorus came in my head I literally walked to the piano and played the entire song in one go and wrote the lyrics. It all happened in 30 minutes. … Effectively the whole song came at once. It was because I was primed. That’s the challenge, you know? You have to be working on songs to have other songs that work.

Will It Ever Come?
Much like “All This Time,” it came at this point that I was very primed, in the summer of 2000. I wrote a lot of what are still my favorite songs at that time … songs that I really still play very frequently. And this one was kindof in the middle, and it just got ignored. It was at the very beginning of Crushing Krisis and I blogged the lyrics. [Ed note: Literally; I wrote them out in nine minutes in the Blogger window. They were my 81st post.]

The next year when I went into the recording studio … I can honestly say I don’t know that ever played it before. And we did it in one take.

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Lyrics and chords for “Time Is Running Out” are behind the cut. [Read more…] about Trio Season 6 – Suite #6: Instants

Trio Season 6 – Suite #3: A Confidence Game

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Trio: Season Six, Suite #3: A Confidence Game
Unengaged, Tangling, Wonder

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Unengaged
It wasn’t the lack of confidence in doing that thing, but the lack of confidence that came in the wake of that – like, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?” … It’s also about [lack of] confidence in performing it: I wrote that melody almost just as an exercise in getting it up into falsetto over and over again. I didn’t ever think I was going to perform it that way. … If it’s your song, and you wrote it that way, then there must be a reason it’s in falsetto.

Tangling
It was the anchor of this set … Somebody moves out of your life for some period … and you think, “wow, we’re so connected.” And then they get back and you don’t feel that connection immediately. And you wonder – was that connection so tenuous that it dissipated with the distance? … People change over a period of time, and you have to take some time to retune that connection.

Wonder
I think anyone can identify with that walking down the street – or, in the case of this song, in a train station – and you see somebody, and in your mind you have a whole fantasy about them in a split second … and then they get on the train. Or, maybe that’s just me?


Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

I Might Explode (someday, soon)

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Everyone here has apologized for the rain. Waiters, even. As if i came all this way just to turn up my nose on Los Angeles just because it is soggy.

I have been tempted to write about it, but every attempt to pre-compose in my head has made it all seem so minimal. That’s why i have been taking pictures – better to show the moments that have made me want to write than fail to capture them later.

Returning from the airport, we turned up a street that offered a perfect, scenic view of the Hollywood sign, framed by a nearly doubled rainbow. Somehow, in all of my planning, i had forgotten that i would come face to face with this formidable national landmark. The moment was to rare to interrupt by taking a picture; i had arrived.

I don’t know what i actually expected from Los Angeles. I suppose a clue is that for the entirety of my first day i kept singing “Why You’d Want To Live Here” in my head. I expected the air to be dirty, the people to be surly, and the buildings to be tall.

Apparently, i’m not in that bit of LA. That’s the bit you don’t want to visit. I am in the bit roughly three miles south of Sunset & Vine. Every house looks different from the next; there are no cookie-cutter row homes. For two days we were down the 405 at the Manse where SL nannies. It was, of course, the nicest house i had ever been in; my favorite part was that the two story living room had a second living room that overlooked it from the top of the stairs. I just loved the idea of a house with an interior balcony.

It seems that my adventures to this point have been few, but i am a vacationer more than a tourist, so for me it is about being somewhere, not doing or seeing something. Aside from discovering my thirsty lust for Tanqueray Cosmos, so far i have shopped at The Grove, eaten sushi, walked through Ventura Beach, jammed on the mansion’s baby grand piano, had fresh avocado omelets, and went to Amoeba Music.

I am on my own now, in Laurel’s house; SL back with her children, and Laurel off to Costa Rica for vacation. On Saturday we made three small excursions to help me understand the lay of the land; no number streets here. On one i went to Amoeba music, which i adored and cost me more than it should have. On another we wound up on that same block, but by a different route, standing on Michael Jackson’s star. I was left with a rather imposing book of street maps and a small compass to aid me in subsequent adventures (which, as some of you know, is just the way i like it). All that’s left is to decide whether i brave it on foot, chance having Laurel’s bike stolen, or laze my way there via buses and cabs.

Finally: the entire time, from arrival at PHL last week, I have been reading Harry Potter books. I found them unimpressive up until five, which was the powerhouse i had been anticipating the entire time. Funny how popular mythologies are so similar; Rowling’s scenes are so similar to ones i penned in my never-finished pubescent novel, from the Hogwarts Express to encounters with the ArchVillain. Yet, i have been sitting here since i finished, wondering: Where is my opus?

I think the answer is that i’ve had a few already, and there still may be some to come.