The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand
In a few short hours it will be the tenth anniversary of my first post on Crushing Krisis.
As you might expect, I have a lot to say about that. Before I do, I wanted to share ten of my favorite posts from this past year. (Actually, it’s 13 posts, but the pairs are pairs for a reason – not out of indecisiveness).
[Read more…] about 10 posts from Year 10 for my 10th anniversary
There’s a meme I keep seeing on Twitter to the effect of, “Telling a photographer their camera ‘takes good pictures’ is like telling a cook their oven bakes good cake.”
I will tell you, I got my back up a little about this. Sometimes your ability to do good work is truly limited by the quality of the tool of production.
I don’t know if a good cook could produce great work in my Sophomore year oven. Honestly, to this day I’m not conclusively sure the thing heated up past 200 degrees.
In my contrary angst I clicked through the meme to a delightful blog post from photographer Erin Farrell, who maybe was the patient zero of this wave of strident photogs? Erin put “takes good pictures” to the test – handing her pro camera to her amateur brother to shoot a friend’s daughter, and then shooting that same girl in the same location herself.
The results? You have to read her post to see, but the essence is that even her brother’s best shot with a heavy-hand of pro touch-up doesn’t compete with her middling shots directly out of camera.
Touché, Erin.
Then I thought about guitars. What if someone stopped me after a show and said, “your guitar plays great songs!”
I think that phrase is more illustrative of the photographer’s dilemma than the camera example, because the divisions are clearer. A guitar isn’t as smart as a camera – it has no automatic mode; it can’t focus on faces. As the songwriter, I’m the one who dreamed up the melody, wrote down the words, and decided on the arrangement and dynamics.
The guitar can’t do any of that for me. Like the photographer, it results from my skill and years of experience.
What the guitar did was give it tone. Depth. Credibility. If your favorite guitar player played your favorite song on a crappy guitar it would still be your favorite song, but it wouldn’t ring as true as their original. I am not a huge guitar snob, nor am I the best guitar player, but I categorically won’t play on other people’s guitars – my guitar is as much a part of my sound as my voice.
If an aspiring songwriter told me “your guitar plays great songs” (and they have, more or less, because I love to let other people play my guitar), I would thank them and tell them about Breedloves and why I like playing them. Because, even if my songs might be better than their song at the moment, the better tool is going to help level the playing field – and help them improve.
In short, the nicer guitar will play great songs.
That, in turn, made me think about cameras again. E is a degreed photographer, and I love her prosumer Pentax digital camera. In Paris she frequently let me shoot with it even though I also had a low-end “point and click” camera to shoot with.
Below are two photos of one of my favorite works of art, Cupid and Psyche, which lives in the Louvre. Both were taken by me with no coaching from E, though with different cameras on different days and with different light. Both are the best shot I took out of many with each of their respective camera, based on the limits thereof.
Which camera took the “great” picture? Click through for full size.
Bottom line? Some cameras take great pictures, and some guitars play great songs – but they need a certain alchemy from the taker and the player to do their magic.
I want to tell you about one of my fantasies.
(Don’t worry, it’s work safe.)
I fantasize about being a substitute person.
If you don’t know what that means, you clearly don’t watch Elizabethtown as much as E and I do. At one point, Kirsten Dunst’s Claire – a perennial second-place finisher in a life and love, muses:
60B!
You and I have a special talent, and I saw it immediately. We’re the substitute people. I’ve been the substitute person my whole life. … I like it that way. It’s a lot less pressure.
I’ve always had the fantasy of being the substitute person, but it took Claire to put words to it. Usually my fantasy goes like this:
A musician I really love – let’s say, Amanda Palmer – is in town, but they are touring without a certain band member – usually a guitarist or harmony singer. I’m at the concert, and when they start to play one of their big hits they stop and ask, “Does anyone know the [guitar/vocal/cowbell/whatever] part to this song? [I raise my hand.] You do? Come up here and try it.”
And then I get up and, of course, play the solo or sing the harmony to perfection, because I am obsessed with it. And then they ask me to sit in for another song. And another one. And then I hang out with them after the show and they fall in love with me.
Sort of like Courtney Cox in the “Dancing in the Dark” video.
I’m sure you have a similar fantasy, even if you aren’t a musician. Maybe it’s about stepping in with a sports team, or filling a hole on a big project in your office. It’s the opposite of the Actor’s Nightmare, where you’re stuck on stage with no idea what to do.
The allure of the fantasy is that we’re the substitute people. Just like a substitute teacher, no one is expecting us to do much more than fill a hole. Then, when we are amazing (or, at least, more amazing than adequate), they fall in love with us.
Having the substitute fantasy doesn’t mean you don’t like your life. I love being half of Arcati Crisis. But, every time I listen to E’s Filmstar demo record I catch myself thinking “I could walk right up and play all of those bass parts, if they needed me to.”
Well, two weeks ago life put my fantasy to the test when I wound up behind a microphone at a Filmstar rehearsal with a brand new bass hanging off my shoulder.
To make a long story short, Filmstar found themselves without a bassist, and I was called on my flippantly mentioned substitute-person fantasy of playing with the band.
I did know their songs pretty well – well enough to noodle along to their EP. Well enough to play bass on all fifteen of their songs? I didn’t necessary know every key, chord, and rhythm.
Oh, and there was the little detail of my not having played bass for seven years.
I decided that didn’t matter – I wanted to be their substitute person. E asked me to fill in on a Thursday. My new bass arrived on Friday. I arranged all the songs for myself on Sunday. I knew all fifteen of them for rehearsal on Wednesday.
We played every one.
This photo of me playing bass is nine years old, and this is as big as you're ever going to see it.
Was I awesome? No. Am I a bassist? Not by trade. But as a substitute person I was solid – I showed up able to fill the entirety of the hole in their lives, probably better than they anticipated I could.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep substituting with Filmstar, or if I’ll keep loving it. At some point a long-term substitute becomes your permanent solution, and surprising adequacy turns into lingering disappointment.
I’ve decided i don’t want to think it through that far. For the moment, I’m living my fantasy, and playing in an awesome rock band with my wife.
Sometimes we get we want in the most unexpected ways. What’s your substitute people fantasy? Have you ever got what you wanted?
A week ago I had just finished commuting home for the first time to my new house. Presently I am the merch guy for Filmstar as they split a bill with The Shondes at Tritone.
That’s the life, at the moment.
That, a seemingly unlimited amount of cardboard boxes in various states of unpack, and a steely, unflinching resolve to spend money on things like towel hooks and toilet seats. Whatever it takes.
We moved with no issue whatsoever, aside from only sleeping two hours in a 36 hour span. After all of the wacky settlement hijinks it was a bit of a letdown, where “letdown” means “totally awesome gift from serendipity.”
Things have generally been serendipitous lately, in a broad Alanis-Ironic reading of the term. I like to think it’s universe-funded payback for all the not-being-nasty I’ve done in the last year.
It’s hard. I’m nasty by nature. Or, at least, by nurture.
My high school graduation was 1/10 this big.
On Tuesday we walked into Trenton Arena, late for E’s brother’s graduation, to discover his face displayed on a jumbotron singing “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Apparently he was the only tenor confident enough to bring an appropriate amount of NJ rock to that Journey classic (by way of Glee), and so wound up singing Steve Perry lead at his own high school graduation to a half-full arena’s worth of crowd.
And now I am in an increasingly packed rock club, selling merchandise and recording video for my wife’s band while she rocks out in a rather short skirt which I heartily endorse. Later we will go back to our house, and sleep on a mattress on the floor. Tomorrow I will finish setting up my new recording studio and start playing music again.
This is the life.