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college

In Memoriam, Dante Bucci

August 25, 2014 by krisis

On Sunday I went on my first hike.

I’ve walked through a forest before, even along a trail when we visited Muir Woods in California last year, but this was the first time I needed to prepare in advance of our journey. What would I wear? How would I stay hydrated? How would I know where I was going?

The internet could have told me, but I have friends who hold that knowledge and were able to share with me directly. My well-travelled friend Jessica coached me on what to wear. My sister-in-law Jenny helped me find the right CamelBack for my battered L.L. Bean bookbag. My dear friend Jack took charge of our little group of hikers to make sure we took the right trail.

The hike went well. We spoke, sweated, laughed, and sang until we reached the top of the mountain and it’s Pinnacle Rock.

An outtake from Dante's press kit shoot with E.

An outtake from Dante’s press kit shoot with E.

We were there to say one final goodbye to our mutual friend, Dante Bucci, who had passed away the week prior due to a tragic and random accident in his home. That mountaintop was one of his favorite places – and where he recorded a video that thrust him into the spotlight as one of the world’s foremost players of the Hang drum.

Dante was in the first play I acted in on the main stage at Drexel. The Man Who Came to Dinner has 29 listed cast members, of whom Gina and I were two. Neither of us had any idea of how much impact some of them would go on to have on our lives, while others would quickly recede. Two were members of my wedding party – three, if you count Gina. One would become my co-worker and good friend. Another, my first kiss.

It took some time to understand what Dante would become to me. I still don’t know if I can articulate it. I remember so clearly how he had to emerge repeatedly from a pair of pocket doors to deliver these brief, exasperated lines, and how the doors would get stuck and eventually Dante’s exasperation and the character’s exasperation were indistinguishable, which made it even funnier.

That lack of distinction between Dante and the part he played was his hallmark. He was not merely an actor, a singer, a musician, or a human being. Dante embodied his art from the first note to the last. He was a work of art himself.

Dante acted. He joined Drexel’s male acappella group 8 To The Bar midway through a season, lending his astounding vocal percussion to their songs. He sang in choir and in a select Madrigal group, whose intricate, interwoven melodies first escaped my comprehension and later delighted me to no end. He was the first drummer I ever recorded, playing the talking drum on the demo of “Amphibious” with Gina for Blogathon. When he was E’s roommate he focused on guitar, playing and replaying songs until he got them right – down to the last little riff. Shortly after, he was on congas when he invited me to join my first band, a rough-at-the-edges covers act with our friends Justin and Geoff. That fall he cut the first drums on any of my original songs for a hi-fi recording of “Icy Cold” for my old podcast Trio.

Dante was always growing and refining. He could play any instrument he picked up in a mere moment. (One of my proudest memories is producing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on a cello slightly faster than Dante could manage when we were both introduced to the instrument.) As we moved up and on from college his tastes in instruments became more electric. Didgeridoo (of which he constructed his own). Nose flute. Theremin. Hang drum.

The Hang drum had something none of the other instruments had. It was more restrictive – it could not play a full chromatic scale, and Dante could not bend or slide notes as he could on so many other instruments. Yet, the Hang is otherworldly. It’s a drum that sings. It’s meditative but insistent.

It was a perfect match for a musician who was as much music as he was man, so it made perfect sense that it was the instrument of his sudden explosion of popularity on YouTube and in the Philadelphia music scene. I watched many times as Dante and his Hang brought a chattering room to awed silence, the air filled only with his melody.

Despite preparing me for my hike, in the preceding week no one could explain to me how to grieve for a friend who was so dear, so talented, and so essential to to the world and to my own life’s story. When E and I first learned the news I couldn’t breathe, my mouth frozen in a silent scream, hands clutched to my heart as if to make sure it would keep beating. I didn’t know how I would walk into his viewing and speak to his family, let alone go on living and listening to his beautiful music without breaking down. I gamely asked our friend Tony the next day, a doctor of Psychology, just in case there was an easy solution that experienced grievers would know about.

He said, “There’s no right thing to say or do. Just be there, and hold people close.”

I have held many people very closely over the past ten days. Some of them repeatedly.

I felt happy and alive at the top of the mountain despite the mournful purpose of our journey. I hiked to the top with friends who I used to see every day at rehearsal and impromptu parties, who now I see every few months or years. We clambered from rock to rock, laughing and watching hawks and vultures circle in the distance. When the rest of our company joined us, including Dante’s family, the mood grew more somber. We gathered around a high rock jutting out into the sky with nothing surrounding it. Lindsay sang “Blackbird” with Dante’s friend John to begin our ceremony with her daughter seated on her lap, smiling. After others spoke and read, Anthony (yet another face from The Man Who) held up his iPhone above his head.

From the speakers wafted Dante’s voice, now gone from this world, singing Paul McCartney’s “Junk.”

I attended the record release show where Dante debuted the song to an audience. I cried there, silently smiling. I used to stand next to Dante in choir to steal his notes, and later in our acappella group Progeny. I knew the perfection of his voice, how it was just one more instrument to bend to his will. (No, not “bend” – Dante never bent, just coaxed.) I never thought of him as a bass or a baritone, but instead a complex machine like that cello – one who could resonate low and deeply only to then sigh so high and delicately.

“Junk” has all of those parts of Dante’s voice. When E and I left his show with his album Kinesthesia in-hand, I turned to her and said, “That is the song I’ve always wanted to hear Dante sing.” I couldn’t stop playing it. I played it for anyone who came to our house – mostly my mother, who kindly said after the second time, “Yes, you’ve played that before – it’s beautiful.”

At Pinnacle, Sunday.

At Pinnacle, Sunday.

All this past week I couldn’t play the song. On the morning we learned the news, I was crying desperately on the floor with E and EV6 squeezed between us and said, “I want to hear him sing so badly, but I’m afraid to hear him, because then I’ll know I can never really hear him again.” E held me close and said, “We already can’t hear him again, but you can listen to him whenever you want.”

Dante gave us songs, and he gave me so many memories – many of which are documented here. He was the best possible friend no matter how close you were or how often you saw him, always supporting, laughing, and dispensing hugs. He and Lindsay brought me to New Hope for the first time. We held music festivals at his family’s house from 2004 through 2008, and in 2005 he agreed to join me for a solo set. I practiced for it so much that I completely wore through all of my calluses, but I would just keep playing – how could I not take advantage of time to play with Dante? Later he would play drums with Arcati Crisis for a Winter Mixer show, and again at a little coffee shop where my father saw me play for the first time.

When his Hang music grew in popularity, his was the first press kit I ever put together, revising repeatedly to try to express the truth of his music in inadequate words. In 2010, he got me booked for my first solo set at the Tin Angel on a bill he was headlining. I don’t think he ever missed an Arcati Crisis show in Philadelphia proper, always hugging and congratulating me as I stepped off the stage.

I did the same for him twice this year, at two record releases – one for his solo album, and another for a thrilling project he undertook with Angela Sheik, who made it a point to have Dante play as many instruments as he was able on stage at each show. Those two shows were a delightful greatest hits of Dante, all those things E used to hear through the wall or that he would excitedly introduce me to in his parents’ basement. This was the true Dante I loved, the human work of art on display for all the world to see.

When Anthony played “Junk” at the top of the mountain, for a moment I was transported back to my first moment of grief, breathless and terrified, clutching my chest. Then the song reached the point between the verses where Dante simply moans the melody in delicate harmony with the strings.

I could breathe, then. I looked up into the beautiful sky from atop the mountain – Dante’s mountain – with nothing between the clouds and I except the air and the waves of sound carrying Dante’s voice away into the distance.

I cried there, silently smiling up into the sunlight.

Dante gave me that moment, too.

Filed Under: college, memories, people, stories, Year 14

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

January 4, 2010 by krisis

Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.


(watch in HD on YouTube and download the mp3.)

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Filed Under: betterment, college, demos, memories, performance, self-critique, songwriting, stories, video Tagged With: cold

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.

Filed Under: college, demos, identity, memories, self-critique, stories, theatre, Year 10 Tagged With: rain

New demos for a new album(!)

June 1, 2009 by krisis

Sometime before autumn arrives I will begin to record my first full-length, multi-tracked, studio album since 2001’s Relief.

Wow. I knew that was true, but it’s pretty monumental to see it in print.

In 2001 I had 117 songs to choose from and two weeks of studio time to record and mix in Drexel’s tiny, single-room, analog recording studio. (They’ve vastly improved their resources since then.)

In 2009 I have 241 songs to choose from and an unlimited amount of studio time to record and mix in my own tiny, single-room, digital recording studio. (I’ve also vastly improved my resources since then.)

Of my 241 songs, 30 of them are in fierce competition for 13ish spots on the album. There’s also the other 211 songs, many of which are long overdue a fresh recording even though I’m not considering them for the album (and, maybe I would consider them if I had a fresh recording to listen to).

So, I’m planning to record live, single-take demos for each of my 30 top picks for the album, accompanying each one with a B-side from the other 211 songs. I’m sure I’ll toss a few covers in as well.

If I record a demo every day this month I’ll be ready to record my album by July! And, although that sounds implausible to me (and you) at the moment, CK reminds me that on three separate occasions I recorded 24 songs in less than a single week, and once I actually recorded 30 songs in a single month.

No matter how long it takes, it’ll be a chance for me (and you) to hear 60 of my songs in crisp, multi-tracked audio – and that should be enough new stuff to hold us over through however interminably long it takes me to record an actual album in my present state of dotage.

Filed Under: college, recording, relief

Arranging “I Do Not Hook Up” for acappella (and, i don’t. anymore. or ever, really.)

April 10, 2009 by krisis

E and I got the word last week that the Drexel Treblemakers were putting out a last call for arrangements for this year’s repertoire, which meant several all-nighters between the two of us.

The TMs are a contemporary acappella group, which E used to sing-for and music-direct when she was at Drexel. “Contemporary acappella” means that they recreate modern pop hits with just their voices.

As an example, here’s perhaps their best arrangement of all time, of the Beatles “Eleanor Rigby”:

When I say “arrangement,” I mean just that – an arrangement of notes that make up the composite song that comes out of the group. Acappella songs don’t happen out of thin air. Unless you’re in a group of the finest doo-wop singers around (each equipped with pitch-perfect ear and all egalitarian when it comes to choosing what instrument to sing) it takes some specifics to turn a pop song into an all vocal jam.

It’s the job of an arrangement to replicate the song for voices in the form of sheet music. As an arranger, you might take the approach of transcribing each specific instrument individually for voice, or you might prefer to address the overall tonality of the song instead. Either way, it’s hard work – especially if you’re doing it by ear rather than from print music for the song.

“By ear” means you sit down and pluck out every note that’s being made in the song, transcribing its pitch, rhythm, and dynamics, until you’ve got an entire song. An average 100-bar rock song in 4/4 with six voice parts offers circa 3000 notes to transcribe.

It’s even harder when arranging for an all-female group, because you have less dynamic range to work with. With a bisexual group you have men to sing the lowest of the lows – you can duplicate a guitar easily, and cover most bass parts (or create the illusion of them by maintaining the divide between the lowest note and the next highest note).

Even an all-guy group has a massive range – as a baritone I can reliable produce soprano Ds and higher, which means a group of 12 of me would only be half-an-octave shy of the highs of a girl group … but with an entire extra octave on the bottom (and that assumes all girl-groups will be able to sing down to a Baritone D, which most cannot. TMs has always been special in that regard).

Female groups have a reduced range, which makes it harder to arrange well for them. Thrashy rock songs rely on a lot of low Ds and Es, and most girl groups don’t have them. And, girl groups largely wuss out when it comes to vocal percussion.

Luckily, the TMs have never had those two problems, and have stretched to crazy lengths to accommodate my arrangements. I had my good buddy Sara singing low C#s on “Stay,” and our maid of honor Amanda doing sub-woofer rattling kick drums on “I Think I’m Paranoid.”

Both of us used to arrange like mad for the TMs when we were in school – we arranged two-thirds of their first CD (That page has sound-clips, and The TrebleMakers on MySpace has whole songs. Listen to “I Think I’m Paranoid” on the former, and “Rhiannon” on the latter – one of the best all-female acappella arrangements I’ve ever heard (not surprisingly, by my wife)).

Since we’ve graduated we always have a glut of songs we want to do for the TMs, and this year we actually finished two – the most we’ve done since 2006. I arranged Paramore’s “That’s What You Get,” and Erocked Ingrid Michaelson’s “Die Alone. Mine was good-but-wobbly when I first heard it; E’s sounds even better than the actual version.

We both wanted to do another song had been debating between Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes” and “Breakin’ Up.” The former – a guitar rocker – was more my speed, but the latter – a sparse, funky tune – was better for E.

When we got the word that the deadline was looming E forged ahead with “Breakin’ Up,” which left me songless. The group now includes singers born after the release of Like a Prayer, so digging out an old Madonna chestnut wasn’t necessarily the best option (and that means they were only ages 6-9 when most of my favorite female modern rock was on the radio – yikes).

In a pinch, I went to the path of least resistance: Kelly Clarkson.

I love her. TMs love her. Audiences know her stuff. Easy pick.

The lead single from her new disc All I Ever Wanted is “My Life Would Suck Without You,” which is a bit of a … hrm, how shall I phrase this … piece of tripe. It’s a straight-forward DDR stomper with an unsubtle melody and absolute crap lyrics.

The next single is scheduled to be “I Do Not Hook Up,” co-penned by Kate Perry & new AI judge Kara DioGuardi. You can see that Kelly is already rocking it pretty fiercely:

The lyrics are a bit dishwatery, but the music is awesome – like KC fronting Fall Out Boy. Once I got past some of the lamer turns of phrase it was insta-love, listening to it ten times a day.

Last Thursdayish, on perhaps listen number six of the day and while contemplating if I could really arrange it for TMs due to the spread of notes in that main riff, I realized something major – the chorus is the same damn thing as “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down,” just a whole step higher. You can sing the melodies of each interchangeably.

Go ahead, try it.

Acappella groups love medleys, and I didn’t think the TMs could resist the next KC single combined with FOB’s biggest hit. My mind was made up. I walked home on Friday singing the bass notes of the song over and over, and began arranging as soon as I was in the door.

In crazy-record time – under 72 hours – I arranged the entire song by ear. That’s a big leap from the months it took my to do “Stay,” which started out as guitar tab on a cocktail napkin.

I started out sketching in as many of the bass notes as I could, skimping on rhythm unless it was important (which it is with the walks on the chorus), and then adding the vocals. I find that to be the easiest way to get started with a by-ear arrangement, as everything else has to fit between the two.

Afterward I went back to layer in the guitar riffs, heard mostly in the verses, before wrestling with chorus harmony Kelly notoriously stacks multiple harmony notes and auto-tunes them to sit tightly together, which makes it nearly impossible to pick them out. It’s more of a best guess situation, and I needed the guitars first so I’d have a litmus test for if I got the harmony wrong.

Finally, I fleshed out the interior chords of chorus and the remainder of bass rhythms, as well as brought the bridge to life. I spent the remainder of Sunday and Monday splitting instruments intro appropriate voice parts, fudging the riffs a bit where necessary to sound smoother for voice, and adding the “SWGD” medley to the bridge.

I finally gave in to sleep and needing to do other stuff, emailing the group my arrangement without all of the lyrics, syllables, and dynamics. I told them I’d go back and add them if they picked it.

TMs chose new tunes last night, and both “IDNHU w/SWGD” and “Breakin’ Up” were on their list. We’re still waiting to hear if either of our tunes made it in to the repertoire.

And that’s where I was through Monday night. Next up: open mics, impromptu press kits, twitter addictions, and impending broadway auditions.

Filed Under: acappella, college Tagged With: kelly clarkson

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