Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

guitar

Illuminated Pickups, et cetera

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(1) Elise bought me a gift certificate for a pickup replacement on my primary electric guitar as a birthday gift, which is perfect timing, as Gina and I were already plotting on evolving Arcati Crisis into the electric realm over the course of the next few months.

My guitar is an Epiphone copy of a Gibson 335, and after several years of playing it and digesting online reviews it would seem that the only non-esoteric detail separating my guitar from the equivalent Gibson is the style/tone of the pickups (and also the nut).

My original birthday gift plan was to outfit my guitar exactly like a brand-new 335 – with two Gibson 57 Classic humbuckers. However, at Arcati Crisis’s Tin Angel gig I got into a conversation with our friend Chris about the possibility of buying two different types of pickups so my neck tone is differentiated from bridge.

And, um, I am not quite rock enough to know anything else about this life-altering decision.

I spent a few days researching my various indie-rock heroes, but none of them has a distinct enough setup for me to emulate. Also, I can’t turn up anything on the guitar rig of Garbage ax-slinger Duke Erickson (he being ostensibly the reason I bought this particular guitar in the first place). However, I did locate the eminently informative Guitar Player Gear Guide blog.

Do any of you wonderful people know anything about this? I have to drop my guitar off at the store on Saturday if I have any hope of getting it back before the next Arcati Crisis gig.

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(2) I want a WordPress plugin that will insert illustrated initial letters into my posts, both automatically and on-demand. Bonus points if they are illuminated.

I know enough PHP to be a minor threat when it comes to WordPress, but this particular concept is out of my realm because it involves live rejiggering of text as its being called out of the ether of my database.

Anyone?

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(3a) After an inexplicable one week delay the new PJ Harvey disc, White Chalk, came out yesterday. It’s been billed as PJ’s piano album, but that only tells a fraction of the story. It’s really more like her indie, piano-based, acoustic, English-Appalachian folk record. Sort of. Full review forthcoming.

(3b) Also inexplicable: Bruce Springsteen‘s lead single (“Radio Nowhere“) is one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard in months, and the production is all tight and sparkly and curiously “Since U Been Gone” sounding.

A quick sample spin through the rest of his newly released Magic yields similar results on at least three others songs, leading me to (for the first time ever) want to buy a Bruce Springsteen CD in a bad way. But, then I’m like, dude, you so do not like Bruce in any way, shape, or form. In my youth he was relegated to my mother’s forbidden trinity of vocal idiosyncrasies – Bruce, Bob, and Neil.

Even having disposed of a few of those systematically programmed prejudices (e.g., I do not ridiculously eschew middle Beatles) I can’t seem to succumb to the Magic of Asbury Park’s favorite son. I even tried paying for a copy with Elise’s credit card to try to alleviate some of the hard-coded guilt, but I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it.

Maybe if i just buy it track by track from iTunes I can avoid any imperative towards self-immolation my mother may have embedded in my unconscious psyche in my infancy through a series of flash cards.

(3c) OMG, I forgot to mention the best part of last week’s happy (six) hour(s): Melon is going to go to the Kelly Clarkson concert with me. Oh yessss.

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(End Note) Not only does me + Gina = awesome rock stars, but as of a few minutes ago I completed the first draft of a standard notation transcription of one of our songs, complete with guitar tabs and harmony.

I cannot express to you the undue amount of excitement this is causing me, a major sheet music fetishist.

Sheet music! Of our song! Necessary because we forgot how to play it!

(Or, more accurately, because we recorded it in one night for SongFight, so it never really existed as a song that we could play together in a physical space (though I believe we once attempted it at a Lyndzapalooza).)

Alright, enough chatter.

Shoot The Stars

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I am not a habitual taxi-taker. In fact, I’m the opposite – usually walking home with my guitar at 1 a.m. after playing at Lindsay’s bar of choice.

Every so often the need arises. Like a few weeks ago, heading home from work sick.

Months ago I meant to write about one driver in specific. He was the old, whiskey-soaked sort of driver you see in movies and not in actual taxis much anymore.

“I used to drive in Atlantic City,” he confided, “until one night I picked up this fare, and I knew something wasn’t right.

“Sure enough, at the first red light we hit he held a gun to the back of my head and told me to hand back all of my cash.

“I was sure he was going to kill me,” he said, as I stared at the back of his head, riveted. “But, he just waited until I had handed it all back to him, and then he just opened the door and got out.

“So I stopped driving in Atlantic City.”

As the numbers on Washington ave slid every-lower we talked about guns and people, and which is the real killer. We talked about how life is valuable.

When he left me on my step I half imagined that I would turn to find his cab nowhere in sight, as if he was some gossamer coachman emerged from the night just for that conversation.

This Thursday night on the way home from our band rehearsal my driver was Russian, and not sure how to get to my house from the Kimmel Center. Another recent transplant, perhaps?

After I pointed him in the right direction, he began to speak – unselfconsciously, not in a making conversation sort of way.

“My good friend from home played jee-tar,” he told me, turning onto Broad. “His mother, his father, both are deaf, and I think he not hear so well. But, he could play the jee-tar so well. His hands move so quick on… what do you say? The long part. For me it is [?].”

“The neck.”

“Yes, the neck. His hands move so quick on the neck. My friend’s jee-tar, made from before revolution.”

(I inwardly winced, remembering the t-shirt I had almost worn, but didn’t, knowing for certain that Gina would wear it instead (and she did).)

I found myself telling him how I like to play acoustic because I like to feel the music through my body, because you never need an amplifier that way.

“This week, the stars,” he said as we turned onto Washington. “How do you say? You have a saying.”

“Falling stars?”

“Yes, yes, but when they fall…”

“Shower?”

“Yes. A shower of stars this week.”

I told him about the time I laid in the middle of a football field in nowheresville, tucked into my sleeping bag, watching the stars fall. He corrected me, “not stars, Leonids.”

“You have to get out of the city,” I implored him. “They aren’t the same with the lights. You need to find somewhere where it’s really night.”

The ride seemed long for the conversation, but the fare was inexplicably cheap. Maybe he doesn’t know how to work the meter yet, i thought.

“Good luck with your show,” he said after i left him his tip.

“Good luck with your stars,” I told him.

This one I’m sure was real.

Success to the successful… oh, nevermind.

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Well, it took nine years, but i officially have learned my second guitar solo. I can even play it along with the record (with mild ad-lib).

Of course, now that it’s all learned i just watched a video of it being played and part of it is in a different position. Fucking Hal Leonard and their Authentic Transcriptions can kiss my authentic transcriptionist ass, i knew their tab was too easy to be true.

I swear, if i ever get popular enough to warrant a sheet music book it’s going to have full standard notation of all music and vocals, complete guitar tab, and piano arrangements for every song – all approved by me. I’ll arrange it all myself if i have to. You know, just like the Dresden Dolls book (which is amazing).

Or, For Short: I Play Guitar

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In the midst of a lengthy conversation over dinner and several bottles of wine I got into a bit of a chat about guitar playing with our friend Geoff.

Being a relative folky (though, i think that’s a bit of a misnomer), i don’t typically venture into those sorts of discussion. Any non-rocker has surely been put in that position – one side of the conversation is about sick speed riffs and crazy gear, leaving you and your acoustic by the wayside.

Over the years I’ve learned to hold my own in those conversations – especially after my lengthy hunt for a perfect acoustic. It doesn’t matter, because Geoff is mostly of the jam-band persuasion – i don’t know that i’ve ever seen him play an electric guitar. So, in this instance i was actually fairly evenly matched (though that’s also a misnomer, since Geoff was a guitar wiz when i was just learning to read sheet music).

In any event, i was whinging about how i need to wear my wrist braces more often because all of my recent keyboard practice is making my hands and wrists a touch sore for guitar playing – a bad sign in the short term and the long term. Geoff, rightfully skeptical of my sometimes exaggerated conversational gambits, asked, “Well, just how much do you play guitar?”

I was stymied. Last summer i know it wasn’t very much because i was counting the hours. That was before i met my beautiful Breedlove, which i truly never get tired of playing. Since i received it this May i feel like i’ve hardly put it down.

I ventured a guess: “If i play at all, i play for two or three hours at a time.”

Geoff clearly thought i was exaggerating, if ever so slightly. Not a surprise, since we had just been talking about my many hours of keyboard rehearsal, and before that about our nightly Netflix habit. On those two accounts i seemed quite sure, so my estimate must be high?

The whole point of this ramble is that i’ve been paying attention since our dinner, and i actually play that much or more. It’s usually one of the first things i do when i get home, and one of the last before bed if i don’t fall asleep watching a movie. It’s probably what i do the most other than sleep and work. This weekend i very nearly put in ten hours.

You’d think that with all that time logged that i would be able to shred with the best of them, but i spend all that time alone, and most of it singing – not an environment to unlead my inner speed demon. And, if maybe i’m now playing more than i ever have before, i’m finally feeling the impact.

The other night at the keyboard i mused that songs always seem to take forever when you’re learning them – a mid-tempo five-minute version of a pop song can seem like an eternity when you’re the one suffering under its weight. I feel like that at the piano all the time, but i can’t remember the last time i felt that way playing guitar, other than maybe while trying to slowly count out the timing of a ridiculous solo.

The short of that incredibly long story? Well, for one, i wasn’t lying to Geoff. More to the point, this whole train of thought made me realize that i finally feel confident when saying “i play guitar” – no disclaimers, no exceptions. Ironic that this came almost half-a-decade after the first time i felt confident saying that i was a singer, since sometimes that’s doubtful, but i’ve arrived, nonetheless.

Happy Birthday To This

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With less than a month until my twenty-fifth birthday I am left pondering – am I ready to be an adult yet?

The conclusion would seem to be foregone. I’ve certainly been paying my own way for years now; I have a steady job (actually, a new one, as of Monday). I live in a beautiful house. I’m in a long-term relationship. I own plenty of adultish toys I could never before afford.

In short, I would seem to have attained some sort of stablity. A steady state. Does that make me an adult? How do I measure my adultness? How can i quantify it.

The answer to that quarter-life birthday riddle lies in this day, also a birthday – the birthday of this blog. At this moment I have been blogging continuously under a single title for six years, now entering my seventh.

That has nothing to do with being an adult. But, my blog tells me all sorts of things about the person i used to be, in contrast to who i am now. It tells me about slogging away at a coffee shop for CD money. It tells me about living in dorms rooms and ghetto apartments. It tells me about uncertain crushes and the blossoming of a more permanent romance.

It reminds me of when I only owned one ugly, thick-necked, out-of-tune guitar.

Obviously i’ve seen some progress. And, if you’ve stuck around long enough, you’ve seen it too. You’ve also seen the evolution of my writing – both in what I finding inspiring, and how I get my message across.

This year you’ve seen some new things – two out-of-state, out-of-comfort-zone adventures that I documented via my camera phone. You’ve also been left out of a few details, like my joy in seeing friends and co-workers experience the thrills of marriage and childbirth, my re-emergence at local open mics, and my excitement over my new position at work. I just don’t have the will – or the time – to report it all.

And, the nature of the internet has fundamentally changed. No one wants to wander out a domain blog when they can stay in the safety of LiveJournal or MySpace to read about their friends. And, with that centralization comes the dawning realization that all of this is in fact permanently archived (duh), leaving everyone frantic to carefully cover their electronic trails so future dates or bosses can’t find out every dirty little secret.

Has that changed me? I can’t really say. I’ve always tried to blog what’s important to me, even if only to remember something that might otherwise drift out of my memory. So, while other blogs are created and deleted, while other bloggers become LJ-checkers and MySpace addicts, me and this digital mirror still remain.

I wish I had time every day to devote to this. I wish i had tricked out special features and new songs for you every day. But, i wish that every year. No matter what i wish for, what i already have is what this means to me, and what you mean to me for still caring about it. And, if you need to go away for a while – to your MySpace or your real life – that’s okay. I’ll still be here, still growing. If it weren’t for this, i might not realize just how adult i’ve become; if i don’t keep it up, how will i ever know how far i have left to go?

Thank you for watching (and sometimes listening) as i’ve inevitably and inexorably grown up. And, happy birthday to this.