Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for December 2009

Better – Arcati Crisis, Live @ Rehearsal

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I love this darn song.

When it comes to my past few songs, the typical Arcati Crisis selection process is like so:

I write a ton of songs. Sometimes dozens. We sift through them, and eventually choose one because Gina or I finally get stubborn about it. If I don’t change my mind in a month or two, then we learn that song.

“Better” was different. I wrote it knowing it was going to be an AC song before I ever played it for Gina. I wrote it with counter-point, callbacks, and open harmony all built in.

I just knew. And because I knew, it’s so very satisfying to play, to hear, and to watch. It’s not much of a stretch to say it’s my favorite one of my songs to play as a duo right now, and I’m in love with our performance here:

That’s the only way you can hear “Better” at the moment – we took a shot at recording it live, but I suspect it’s going to be one of our first fully tracked songs.

Around the big ball drop I’ll chime in with our final song, somehow appropriate for the end of the year. Then, on to solo music to ramp up to my appearance at the Tin Angel next Friday, opening for Dante Bucci!

Total Eclipse of the Heart – Arcati Crisis, Live @ Rehearsal

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Today was pretty crazy.

In short, I unexpectedly stayed home from work, and just as I was finally dragging my carcass out of bed a digital series of events began to unfold on my laptop (which had been in bed with me) that resulted in my being booked for a solo appearance at the Tin Angel – opening for my friend and esteemed musical colleague Dante Bucci.

Not how I expected to spend the day, and a lot of information to process (and songs to prepare!) in the next nine days. What will I play? Will I slip in a surprise cover?

Gina and I never used to be good at learning things in a hurry, but in 2009 we got suddenly alright at it. We surmised in an interview earlier this year that it’s because we finally figured out what we’re supposed to sound like. Now that we understand our sound, it’s much easier to build it from scratch.

On that topic, this is perhaps our seventh or eighth full run through “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which we learned in two brief sessions.

There’s still some tweaking to do, but I’m happy we captured this hilarious blast through it on video.

There are just two more songs left in our web concert; after that I’ll be presenting some solo content to take us through my appearance at the Tin Angel on January 8th!

Tuesday Tech Links

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Here’s the techier side of the links I re-remaindered out of last night’s remainders post.

Why did Duke Nukem’ Forever take forever? I’ve read some great articles on this vaporware legend (my fav example of which I cannot seem to track down), but none with a line so succinct and close-to-home as this one:

t’s a dilemma all artists confront, of course. When do you stop creating and send your work out to face the public? Plenty of Hollywood directors have delayed for months, dithering in the editing room. But in videogames, the problem is particularly acute, because the longer you delay, the more genuinely antiquated your product begins to look — and the more likely it is that you’ll need to rip things down and start again.

Substitute “pop music” for “video games” and you have the story of Chinese Democracy, or my long-promised LP. (Via Daring Fireball).

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Indie acousta-rocker Scott Andrew got tired of trying to sync his blog to MySpace, so he wrote an app for that.

I’ve been seeing little boxes from LaLa on just about every blog albums-of-the-year/decade list, proffering handy audio samples. Apparently Apple just bought the La^2, and in the process scuttled a longstanding CD swap service. This is notable because they backed out of it in (what I considered to be) an apologetic, helpful fashion. Take note, MySpace/iMeem.

Via Contentious: An E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy charts what personal info different eBook services can track. This chart should be combined with “An E-Book Buyer’s Rights” guide that talks about what privileges can be rescinded by each service. For example, if you replace your Kindle it will not reload your purchased periodicals.

(For the record, I am anti-eBook – if I wanted to read something I don’t own from a screen I’d just keep sitting in front of my laptop.)

Also via the same Contenious post: Backupify to back up your Twitter, FaceBook, and Gmail … for free. That is, sign up for it now, get a grandfathered freebie account even when the service switches over to a paid model. Quote from Backupify president: “[S]torage is cheap while customer acquisition is very expensive.”

Smart guy.

In a similar vein: Download videos from YouTube with Gazzump I come and go on the usefulness of this service. I used to want to sit on my own personal archive of everything. While I still feel that way about my audio collection, I think I’ve sacrificed video to the cloud. Still, handy.

Finally, not strictly a tech link, but: The Flag of Earth.

Under My Skin – Arcati Crisis, Live @ Rehearsal

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I don’t want to steal the thunder of the impending essay you’re due for this song in 10 days when I celebrate its tenth birthday. (Hello, this song has it’s own freaking CATEGORY on my blog.)

Suffice it to say that after you’ve been playing something for long enough you stop feeling the feeling that you originally felt and start just feeling the song, because the song embodies the original feeling, and that is beautiful state of affairs to be in as a performing songwriter.

I have been playing “Under My Skin” with Gina since shortly after its writing in January of 2000. Even with a backbone of a mere three chords it keeps getting better, even after we retire it for months or years at a time.

This is as fine a version as any, save for one flat chord and a pair of swapped words. Otherwise, divine.

(The pitter-pattering part of the outro refrain that crests around “just a kiss, and I don’t think that I miss you anymore” has always meant to invoke the Jackson 5 – even pre-dating my more recent obsession with the Jackson 5. I sometimes segue from that part straight into “Never Can Say Goodbye,” but could just as easily get to “I Want You Back” or “ABC.”)

Gina and I haven’t done a proper duo recording of “Under My Skin,” but she did overdub her newer bits of the arrangement onto a recording I love from NaBloPoMo 2006. You can download that here.

The best way to keep up with Arcati Crisis happenings is to become our fan on FaceBook, because I don’t always blog every little thing.

I know, it’s hard to believe.

Tomorrow we will play you our new cover, which will lead either to head-explosions or mocking, but probably not both.

Monday Evening Remainders

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Blogs were good this past week, so let’s get right to it, shall we?

100 Days puts a fine point on your fuzzy resolutions – can you pick ONE THING to do for 100 days in a row? Easier than a year, but harder than aiming scattershot at many different things. For Day 25 Matthew Sheret left a note for a girl whose heart he broke.

Similar is Chris Brogan’s concept of a goalbox, and advice on how to stay on target.

The intersection between that and 100 Days is something close to how I manage my yearly goals, but I like the simplicity of each – things there I can still employ.

The Ghostvillage Project populated an abandoned 1970s village with vivid artwork.

Why Up! was not one of the best films of 2009. Includes a rare (but accurate) critique on Pixar’s paucity of strong female characters. Helen Parr aside, it’s quite a boy’s club in their films.

Sugru is like sculpty or silly putty, but with the express intent of being used to augment existing objects in a permanent way (think: smoothing a rough edge, adding extra padding, filling a chip). Also cool: Gyrowheel, a training-wheels replacement that uses gyroscopic force to keep the bike upright. That would make you the coolest four-year old on the blog, guaranteed.

Why The Simpsons no longer matters. Goes beyond the currently in-vogue Simpsons-hate to talk about how the early-Simpsons experience can’t be replicated on television anymore. (via Kevin Smokler)

Kottke (and many others) posted a link to Jim Lehrer’s rules of journalism. I really ought to keep a folder of these “required reading for J-school” things in case I’m ever teaching a class in J-school (heaven forbid).