Tori Amos

Crushing Comics S01E061 – Comic Book Tattoo + The Music of Tori Amos

January 17, 2018 by krisis

Today brings a rare book that I could identify in its wrapping simply by picking it up thanks to its peculiar shape and heft. Comic Book Tattoo is an anthology of stories based on the songs of singer/songwriter Tori Amos, including work from comics stars like Colleen Doran and Jonathan Hickman. That makes this a sort of hybrid episode that’s half Crushing Comics and half a journey through Tori’s massive discography.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 61 features the hardcover slipcased edition of Comic Book Tattoo: Tales Inspired by Tori Amos.

35-for-35: 1992 – “Tear In Your Hand” by Tori Amos

November 11, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug] tori-amos-little-earthquakes-alt-cover-photo I stopped seeing Tori Amos live because of “Tear In Your Hand.”

It is one of my favorite songs of all time.

It is one of my favorite songs of all time, and after seeing Tori Amos five times she had played it at every show. When the next tour rolled around, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her and breaking the streak.

(Of course, that was probably her best tour since 1998. And she did play “Tear In Your Hand” in Philly. Oh, well.)

I cannot entirely explain my fascination with “Tear In Your Hand.” It’s not the most memorable song on Little Earthquakes, by far. Yet, it has a hypnotic quality to its constantly circling chords that draws you in and than keeps you spiraling.

Tori redraws the same piano figure again and again – a B suspended fourth to major to suspended second that then puts the fourth in bass for the same figure and returns back to the top – as she rambles through a stream-of-consciousness that starts when all the world just stops and rambles through reading Sandman comic books, liking the same ice cream as a serial killer, and how that other girl might just be another side of herself.

I think the entire song exists in that stopped-world moment. He says he doesn’t want to stay together anymore, and as she takes a deep breath he touches a hand to her cheek to wipe away the first tear and when he does her life just flashes before her eyes in an instant, like a forever dream sent from Morpheus himself.

tori-amos-denim-chair-1991 Meanwhile, the arrangement is a beautiful puzzle of pieces tugging at your ear drums. The sighing backing vocals are pulled right from “Crazy For You,” while a chugging woody bass sound hints at indie rockers like R.E.M., and the increasingly intricate tangle of guitars begins to obscure the initial piano line – plus, the headbanging bridge, one of the hardest rocking moment on Little Earthquakes.

She knows him better now than she used to, and she knows it never could have been – even if that other woman is just the pieces of herself she hadn’t yet revealed. And so it’s time to say goodbye.

I don’t think it’s a marvelous song, especially without Steve Caton’s beautiful guitar arrangement. Yet, there’s something undeniable about its unspooling narrative that became synonymous with seeing Tori Amos live, and I’m half afraid she’ll skip and half afraid she’ll do it and that fragile magic will be gone.

Here’s a 2005 live version from VH1 – perhaps its only major TV broadcast: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1992 – “Tear In Your Hand” by Tori Amos

30 for 30 Project, 1992: “Precious Things” – Tori Amos

September 20, 2011 by krisis

Tori Amos has a new album out today, Night of Hunters, released just a few months shy of the twentieth anniversary of her seminal solo debut, Little Earthquakes.

I spent this morning tweeting my reaction to the new album, a classically set song cycle heavy on mythological themes. The music is bold and haunting, but the lyrics are largely obscure and off-putting.

Little Earthquakes was practically its opposite, all about clever wordplay even when the piano was reduced to music box simplicity, quoting the same lines again and again, or utter silence, on “Me and a Gun.”

(Watch me cover “Precious Things” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

I remember Tori’s debut tickling at the fringes of my consciousness that year, maybe on MTV. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1992: “Precious Things” – Tori Amos

I’m a dreamer (but I’m no Paul McCartney)

May 19, 2010 by krisis

Last night I dreamed a song. It was not the first time.

I used to brag in grade school that I could memorize my bible verses by osmosis. I’d just practice them before bed and then sleep with the bible open next to my pillow.

I was joking, of course. It was just the good luck of a procrastinator whose talent for memorization outstripped his clear distaste of repeating maxims from centuries old dead guys.

Well, it turned out that I wasn’t entirely joking. My subconscious studying continued into college, as I would compose French essays in my head while asleep and then jot them down in the morning before class.

Ultimately, the brain – or, at least, my brain – has a lot of extra wiring that our (my) conscious thought can get in the way of. Resting opens those circuits, and when it came to bible verses and French homework it was installing a new stick of RAM into my biological computer.

I don’t recall when I first started dreaming songs. I know the first success was “Standing” which came in so powerfully that it literally woke me up! It also surprised the hell out of me, because the genesis of it occurred entirely while I was asleep. I didn’t have the basic lyrics or a melody worked out, resting next to my head like my erstwhile bible. Like asexual production or spontaneous combustion, “Standing” wrote itself.

If that sounds weird and implausible to you… well, it is, but I’m not the only weird and implausible songwriter out there. Allow me to present exhibit A, Sir. Paul McCartney, describing the genesis of “Yesterday“:

“I woke up with a lovely tune in my head,” Paul McCartney recalled to his biographer, Barry Miles. “I thought, ‘That’s great. I wonder what that is?'” He got up that morning in May 1965, went to the piano, and began playing the melody that would become “Yesterday.” At first, lacking lyrics, he improvised with ” Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs.” While he really liked the tune, he had some reservations: “Because I’d dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I’d written it.” – Betsy Querna, US News

There you go. It’s not totally unprecedented, because a Beatle did it, too.

Dream songs don’t always write themselves. Sometimes a dream person writes them for me. In one instance, Madonna sang me a song while playing it on an acoustic guitar, claiming it was a cover by REM or Wilco. I woke up really wanting to hear the song, but searching it’s lyrics and melody yielded nothing. Or, in the words of Sir Paul:

So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, ‘No, it’s lovely, and I’m sure it’s all yours.’ It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim; stuck a little sign on it and said, ‘Okay, it’s mine!’ It had no words. I used to call it ‘Scrambled Eggs’. – Paul in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

Of course, Paul didn’t have Madonna singing the song to him in his sleep claiming it was a cover! For a precedent on that, I turn to my resident loon muse, Tori Amos, talking about her ballad “Hey Jupiter” from Boys for Pele on VH1 Storytellers:

Let’s see, I was lying in bed. Um, strange things happened to you on tour, Like strange Englishman start sitting at the end of your bed – apparitions of dead guys. And they start singing songs to you. And this guy was definitely dead, and he was definitely singing to me. So I’m confused about the copyright laws. I’m not sure if I need to call his ex-wife and give him part of the song or not. But why should I do that! She’s rich, she’s not nice. So … I kept the copyright, and the song’s mine.

Thus, I didn’t have to credit my imagined Madonna (or anyone else) for the tune, and so the yet-to-be-recorded “Message” became mine.

I’m not sure about last night’s song, yet. It didn’t come with lyrics like “Standing” or “Message,” possibly because in my dream I was distracted by the effort of walking on stilts while I was singing it. However, it did provide a full, two-handed piano arrangement. I literally woke up, walked to the keyboard, and played the song without much pause.

I wonder, what is it I have to put into my brain to have it pop out songs like tiny ping pong balls from a lotto machine? Can it be predicted? Is it something I ingested yesterday? I’m pretty sure I’m not ingesting some of the things Paul and Tori have ingested…

Or, are Paul and Tori and I just wired that way?

Is one of your favorite singer-songwriters also a songdreamer? Please point me towards their story!

xii. Pandora’s Aquarium

May 5, 2009 by krisis

“I feel as if I’ve been able to try on many different archetypes. So much so that it feels like a Pandora’s box of archetypes sometimes. But not all of them figure in to my personal myths.” (Piece by Piece)

Pandora’s Aquarium was the first song to come after the bloodletting ended and the water cycle began, yet we discover it at the end of our journey.

It is in apposition to Spark. It’s about knowing how to float above a pool of things so frightening you cannot name them. Pandora’s aquarium.

The Lord of the Flies is the embodiment of those terrifying things, and he was diagnosed as sound. A paradox of sound. Just the ringing in your ears.

So don’t be afraid. We’ll all float on. Okay?

The moral is she hasn’t found her spark. But she has learned some things. She is not Persephone, that’s for sure – no fertile queen, but also done living in the underworld.

She has discarded her archetypes for just a moment, splayed carefully, face pressed against the surface. She is just going to float for a while. And the whole world can line up with complaints, but the only danger is that she loses the ability to open her mouth. To taste. To speak.

To breathe.

And we’ll all float on.

Okay?

Alright.

(lyrics)(references)

xi. Playboy Mommy

May 5, 2009 by krisis

“This was a very dark time for me. I kept seeing all these children that had been separated from their mother. They seemed to be coming through the door with the songs ushering them in. I saw the songs shadowed by these children, and it appeared to me as this hotel with this choir ushering themselves in and out through doorless entrances.” (A Piano booklet)

Only now is she ready to admit some things about herself.

She was burnt out. A husk. Drinking anything to drown the flames – wine, men, blood. She drank it all in until she lost her spark. Almost brave, almost pregnant. Almost in love.

It doesn’t matter that this isn’t about Tori – that she was the perfect, precious, pristine, pre-natal-vitamin-taking willing vessel. Of course she wasn’t a playboy mommy.

The point is, she might as well have been, because she still feels the same blame. She could have just as well been a showgirl. She doesn’t know why she can’t hold the spark.

It doesn’t matter how many hosanna’s you sing; god sometimes just don’t come through.

She doesn’t know that it’s just protein deficiency, that Duncan can give her a shot in the leg ever day and she will be right as rain, that her spark returns in the future. She’s crying over church bells. She does not know about the protein yet, so she is making up another fairytale.

Anything.

(lyrics)(arranged for guitar)(references)