Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

iPod

Erratic

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Nine years of guitar playing and i still can’t manage to get through one frigging bar of 2/4 while trying to write a song.

This may indicate that i am writing new songs. I know that the hoopla celebration about this sort of thing has waned since i don’t accompany such announcements with audio any more. I’m trying to rectify that situation.

Seriously.

It’s just that as the years go by my standards get higher, and when i can’t strum a bar of frigging 2/4 correctly once in a half hour of recording i tend to give up where i would have previously just posted my weird aborted measure of 3.5/4 (i know, i know, that’s 2/4 then 3/8, shut up) and winced.

Nevermind how getting better at singing is like cutting infinity in half, and for every improvement i make my goal of being “good” seems to be persistently unreachable.

I think this will be a rare post that doesn’t involve creative editing or a contrived story about my life.

I sent my iPod back to Apple, certain that it was really broken and that i would receive a refurbed iPod and promptly sell it in its still-sealed mailer and then buy a fancy new iPod. Imagine my surprise when Apple sent me an email this morning to inform me that nothing was wrong with my unit. Sure. I didn’t troubleshoot for five hours until all the iPod did was the scary hard-disk death rattle over and over again and then bring it to an Apple store who TOLD ME to send it in for repair. Not at all. I am going to throw a major seven at some poor unsuspecting tech guy if they try to charge me for servicing a non-faulty unit, or some other such idiocy.

Also, i still don’t have the tracking number for my new guitar, which is a little frustrating since upon its arrival i only have a 24-hour window to decide whether or not i’d like to keep it. Plus, i am a hugely spoiled brat and want my now guitar asap. (and a squir-rel)

Finally, not since SongFight & SomeSongs have i become so immediately obsessed with a website as i am with Threadless. It’s like Songfight but with stuff to buy. Users submit t-shirt concepts, members vote for the concepts on a scale of 0-5 with a special “i’d buy it” button for emphasis, and roughly every week the webmasters choose what is presumably the highest score shirt with the most “buy it” clicks and make it into an honest to goodness t-shit.

Prepare to become addicted to both rating designs (some of which are so amazing that you want to bribe someone to produce them) and window shopping (with a few exceptions the designs they choose are awesome).

Alright, obviously i’m not recording any gems at this hour (which you won’t fully understand until you hear the notes i hit in chest voice on the new ones). To sleep.

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My iPod, almost completely out of battery power, didn’t seem as if it would want to scroll very far to find an album for my morning commute on Wednesday. I obliged by only descending as far as Ani DiFranco.

As the trolley whisked through its underground tunnel, I marveled that an Ani Difranco album came out on Tuesday. It’s the first one that I haven’t bought on (or before) its day of release. In fact, I used to pride myself on being able to recite Ms. DiFranco’s release dates as if their were birthday’s of favorite cousins, or political revolutions.

As Ani releases an album nearly every year, it’s easy for me to associate every one with a certain bit of my life, as many people as there are songs strewn across her dozens of discs. Standing there on the trolley a line caught my ears, a line I’ve heard so many times before: I owe my life to the people that I love.

It’s a strange concept to me who, by any account, is at least halfway centered on myself. I measure my life in personal milestones and, in Ani’s case, in albums, but rarely by other people. But, as those songs passed by I thought of some of those other people. How Ayelet put an Ani song on a mix tape before I even know who Ani was. How freshman year I sat on Alison’s floor and traded Ani concert stories as we carefully cut out the tray-art of my demo cd. How sitting in Lindsay’s room (really Laurel’s) and singing “Falling is Like This” I realized that I had met someone of a completely like mind.

All of those people, just by invoking Ani DiFranco albums. If Ani’s music has partially made my life, then what about the people who brought me an appreciation for those songs? The people that are unavoidably invoked every time one of them is played.

I am happy to say that I’ve spoken to all of the people in that paragraph since Wednesday, but what about everyone else? What about the ones I associate with Tori, or with the Beatles? I am so eager to cloak myself in a fluency of all things musical that I seem to have forgotten the importance of what allows that music to be meaningful to me.

So, here’s a new initiative. Every time I hear a song for the next week, and it reminds me of someone, or someplace, I am writing their name down. At the end of the week, I’m starting at the top of the list, and talking to one of them every day. Will I have their phone number? Their email address? Will I even know where they live, or if they’re alive? Who knows. But, if an iPod can allow me to appreciate music in a whole new way, maybe it can help me appreciate people again, too.

Do you think I associate you with a song? Do you have one for me? Since my comments are currently irreparably broken, why don’t you drop me a line and tell me what it is.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2005/01/110702514846232122/

Packed Like a Rat

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The only lingering symptom of my sickness is that my ears (well, in actuality, my eustachian tubes) are quite filled with the sort of head-cold detritus that helps to usher out something greater, the result being that when i speak it sounds as though my voice is coming from behind a closed door about ten feet behind me. I’m hoping this little issue will clear up on its own, as the only medical solution i’ve found so far involved putting small holes in my eardrum, which i am not in the slightest bit keen on.

Emerging from sickness makes me want to also, in parallel, emerge from mess – partially because i have a medieval belief that little fever imps tend to emerge from mess, but also because the listlessness of sickness tends to invite messiness. (Thus, if you believe in fever imps, sickness is self-perpetuating). I made a solid run at organizing my desk, which had become even more cluttered than usual with the addition of iPod implements. However, as per my usual failed routine, i have become stuck upon my computer.

The impediment is threefold. First, i never finished transferring Uprush.org to my new host at the end of November, because i was worried that I hadn’t quite backed up my hostees files perfectly. Well, now, $60 in redundant hosting later, i find that i don’t particularly care (and i did it twice, anyhow, they’re probably fine). At worst i stand to annoy two particularly good real friends and one particularly favorite net friend by bunging this up, but seeing as they have been staying for free since various points stretching back to 2000, i think they can withstand this one possible disappointment.

(Did i rationalize that well enough?)

The second impediment is that my once shiny-and-new harddrive has nearly reached a state of teeming density between my compulsive music-collecting habits and my impulsive mixing habits. I have been flirting with buying an external harddrive for several months, but after an extensive web-shopping initiative this week i have discovered that for every two good reviews you read about any of them there is at least one about permanent file loss. Seeing as i’m looking to entrust my precious music collection and my irreplaceable mixing to one of these potential-digital-life-wreckers i find i suddenly have the coldest feet possible. Advice appreciated, via email.

Finally, my bookmarks. Oh, my bookmarks. No matter how tidily i try to organize them the web is vastly greater than my organizational acumen. Not to mention the nearly hundreds of links i have flagged for blog inclusion which in fact saw no such limelight.

So yeah, the point of this post was, here comes a bunch of out-of-date linky posts. Have a nice Saturday.

All While Shivering Like A Junky

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I really don’t get sick all that often, but, boy, when i get sick do i get sick. All weekend was spent either shivering or sweating to death, with the periods in-between spent reading the first issue of my Atlantic Monthly subscription. Mmm, highbrow magazines with senses of humor.

I love reading technical descriptions of how musician’s make their music happen, but the mass media isn’t usually too keen about asking about songwriting methods, guitar tunings, and rehearsal processes. Drowned Madonna did a terrific interview with Mike McKnight, Mad’s touring technology director. Even more revealing is an early rehearsal set list.” Some interesting tidbits: “Crazy For You” down a whole step (guess she’s too good of a singer now to wail like she used to), an originally included rock version of “Love Profusion” (the Headcleanr Rock Mix released on her 2004 EP is probably one of my top ten Madonna songs of all time), and “Dress You Up” in Eb (which is, um, the key that it’s actually in). Almost makes me wish i had shelled out $300 to see the damn concert.


Also in this vein, Tori Amos’s Piece By Piece – half biography and half breakdown of her songwriting process – comes out February 8th. “In passionate and informative prose, Amos explains how her songs come to her and how she records and then performs them for audiences everywhere.”

Meanwhile, now that i own an iPod i’m much more interested in the idea of PodCasting than i was previously. Reading some descriptions of the phenomenon shows that it’s essentially just providing audio content in an RSS format so that people can aggregate it with a souped up RSS reader/stripper/downloader for future listening. I suppose i was suspecting something more revolutionary, but in blogland every invention to aid the lazy is a world event. Trio is, of course, perfect material for a venture into PodCasting, as it’s RealAudio format has become a bit of an antiquity. We shall see.

One Good Move is a quicktime video blog, which is great way for persons like myself who have quit the teevee cold turkey to hold their own at the water cooler. The movies don’t last forever, so make haste and watch Michael Moore sharing an “Over the Rainbow” duet with Phantom of the Opera starlet Emmy Rossum. Hilariously cute. Also, Ashlee Simpson being booed at the Orange Bowl, another classic clip in her quickly growing scrapbook of terrific televised moments. The Daily Show clips make me wish you could subscribe to just one cable channel (though, i suppose i’d need a television for that, eh) – anyone out there a Daily Show bittorrent fiend who can point me in the right direction?

Also, reminder to self: Gawker can be funny when i know what the hell they’re talking about.