Archives for November 2009

Daily Demo: Kick Me

November 3, 2009 by krisis

Song #238: Kick Me (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Never before recorded.

Not all Fridays are not of the TGI variety. Some of them leave you bruised and battered, wondering if you can really make it through another week – or even through the weekend.

That was the sort of Friday that spawned the chorus of “Kick Me” this spring – a day of intellectual punishment resulting in that arpeggiated major-chord melody spinning in my brain on my walk home. I sat on the bed with Elise in the afternoon sun and worked out the chords on my guitar. They seem simple now, but at the time they made no sense!

All I had for a week or two was the chorus, until one night I was waiting on the bus at 18th and Market. No bus was evident, but urban hipsters kept whipping by on road bikes with their skinny jeans and iPod earbuds. Probably listening to something obscure, I thought. Or, jazz.

In my head blossomed the phrase “You’ve got your skinny jeans, and your Love Supreme, you left me dying on the vine while you were out on the scene.”

The rest came quickly, but in bits and pieces. Somewhere there is still an extra verse of castoff lyrics floating around that I cut while sitting at the piano. I knew it was done when I tweeted the “#1 vulture in line for my body” verse, because it sounded so right once I wrote it down.

“Kick Me” was so thoroughly composed for piano that it took me months to learn the chords on guitar, especially around the key change. I’m still much more comfortable playing it on piano.

Daily Demo: Crashing

November 2, 2009 by krisis

Song #77: Crashing (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Last recorded for Blogathon 2002.

10 years ago this weekend I went to my first college party, still very much a purposefully-naive, dewy-eyed teen.

I came home having had my first vodka cranberry and my first inklings of adult romance, drifting to sleep wrapped in the blissful denouement of each.

The following Monday morning was a decidedly dreary day, and I found myself locked out my dorm room in my pajamas. Instead of heading to French 103 I sat down in our common room – five stories from the ground with a two-story windowed wall staring out into Center City Philadelphia.

I pulled out a pad and wrote “Crashing.”

Later that day, having been let back into my room, I recorded its first rough demo and transferred the lyrics to the first page of the crisp new book I bought for my collegiate songs. Up until then I wasn’t sure how I would know it was time to start using it, but I suddenly did.

“Crashing” made frequent appearances at parties and late night hangouts throughout my Freshmen year, resulting in the first complements on my voice I had ever heard. They came as a great shock to me, as they still do. Later that autumn I recorded it for my first full length demo, Other Plans – shakily, in the middle of the night, trying not to wake up my mother in the process.

As a dreary fall turned to winter I moved on to add other songs to my slim gray book – many of which I still play to this day. Yet, it was “Crashing” I would play between classes as I sat at the dinged, old upright piano in the theatre green room. I would hypnotize myself with the rolling two chord verse, learning how to play piano in increments (and maybe a little bit about what the song really meant, as well).

It took the entire intervening decade to learn how to play piano well enough to demo it that way, and it seems apropos that it wound up recorded just as shakily and late as its original demos were, respectively.

What I Tweeted, 2009-11-01 Edition

November 1, 2009 by krisis

My best and most-interesting tweets of the last week.

Quotes of the week:

I've come to realize that the reason I must acquire so much new music is so that I can continue to make bitchin' mix tapes. #

#reasonsIlovemyjob = My entire main client group likes all of: Kelly Clarkson, Rufus Wainwright, Lady Gaga, and Sia. And more! <3 you all. #

@amanda_nan Apparently you have much to learn about me if you think anything ranks "more appealing" over an activity involving Madonna. ;) in reply to amanda_nan #

Can the insane people just back away from their communications devices today? I feel like I'm in a Web 2.0-enhanced zombie flick. #

I think I am making a Twitter list called "So-Called Experts Who Are Really Just Follow Junkies That Will Never Read My Tweets AKA Jerkwads" #

Pics or it didn't happen @PhillyWeekly NOT A JOKE: A-Rod has self-portrait of himself as a centaur above his bed http://bit.ly/2WebML #

@deestbie My hairdresser encouraged me to do some facial hair: so far it seems to contextualize my music better, in that I don't look 15. in reply to deestbie #

Last night I learned @Amanda_nan gets a text EVERY TIME I tweet. That's BFF-level commitment; not even my wife would subject herself to that #

Highlighted topics/conversations: U2’s YouTube Webcast, Open Mic @ The Fire / National Mechanics, Webcast Fail / Phillies Game 1 Live Tweet, and Twitter lists as B.S. detectors. Plus various Halloween and recording fun.

You should follow me on Twitter so you can read my tweet action as it happens.

Our Battlestar Galactica Halloween as Baltar & Head Six

November 1, 2009 by krisis

Last night E and I dressed up as Head Six and Dr. Gaius Baltar, respectively, from the cult Sci-Fi hit Battlestar Galactica.

E is not in Six’s standard spaghetti-strap dress, but Six can be spotted in this style at least once in the series.

Also, note the spot-on bracelet and ring, which E made herself.

My costume was much more subtle, as I was effectively E’s accessory for the night. I simply grew some scruff and slicked back my hair. For fun, I carried two corner-cut Vice-Presidential memos (as we were ostensibly circa seasons one and two – post appointment to VP, but pre swearing-in as president).

One memo was the results of tests with the Cylon Detector. The other was a draft of Gaius’s inaugural speech, complete with parenthetical asides to Head Six (presumably floating over his shoulder in devilish fashion as he wrote it). Writing in the Dr. Baltar voice was very fun.

Out of two parties four people knew who we were. The best comment we received was by far:

I’m not sure who you are, but you both look really sexy. You should introduce yourself as, “Hi, I’m sexy.”

Oh, and SyFy – né Sci-Fi – the purveyors of the show we paid homage to, thought we were “Awesome!”

‘Nuff said.

And you are…?

November 1, 2009 by krisis

There is a chance you are arriving here for the first time, launched from Twitter or NaBloPoMo.

If that’s the case, hi. I have an extensive series of bios linked off in that other direction. Oh, and for my first NaBloPoMo I spent the entire month re-telling my personal origin story, so be sure to read that too.

That said, I know we are all couch potatoes on the great lazyweb, so you aren’t likely to hustle around clicking those things. As such, allow me to summarize the current state of me:

I live in Philadelphia and am relatively newly wed to my partner of nearly eight years.

We both work in marketing – me in communications development, she in design. We are also both musicians – she the lead singer of Filmstar, me as a solo singer-songwriter as well as and a member of Arcati Crisis.

We’re also relatively voracious consumers of music, especially within Philadelphia, which boasts an astounding and thoroughly-talented local scene.

In addition to my major three loves (wife, comm, music), it turns out I’m also pretty passionate about non-profit development. I probably wouldn’t have told you that before this year, because it is the first time it has been so patently obvious. I helped to throw a music festival and a 24-hour streaming benefit concert, both of which raised funds for respective non-profits, and both of which nearly intellectually slayed me in the process.

Inclusive of prior iterations of the festival and my wedding I spent every free moment planning an event from March of 2007 to this past month.

Right now I’m trying to be pretty passionate about me. It’s hard – for someone who spends a lot of time working in the public eye and promoting others I have an awfully hard time shining the spotlight on myself. It something I have to improve on to avoid doing a disservice to my songs.

Oh, hey, and to my blog, which has run the longest out of any native Philly weblog – I’m currently blogging into my tenth year of inane, self-centered rambling.

We’ll see how that goes.