Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

guitar

Disuse, Misuse, and Abuse

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Lindsay and I sat at her high kitchen table, comparing calluses. Hers, she said, had faded from disuse. “But,” she sighed, “I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”

I don’t, and was shocked to hear that Anthony, a particular six-string-slinging idol of mine, had similary forsaken his instrument for the better part of a year.

What is it about stupid me, who can’t reproduce four distinct lines of underneath harmony after a month of practice, who still can’t play the solo in “Say It Ain’t So” even with my spiffy new guitar, who has the least performance experience out of everyone who touched one of the five guitars we had with us on Sunday, that keeps me plucking and strumming away, while others with more talent have set their habits aside? Why do I care so much about something I’m not particularly good at doing? And, why don’t I have more new Trios to show for it?

In other news, my name is 796, “intuitive” edges “crushing” by 198, and “crisis” is only a hair more common than “conflict.” Not that there’s anything intuitive about any of these conflicts. All I know is, at the point tipsy is only electrolytes away from shogun blondes, we need to do something…

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I think most people enjoy attending concerts where they know all the songs. I know i do. As much as going to a concert is for experiencing art in motion, it is also a selfish pursuit: you want to hear your favorite songs, and you don’t want them fucked with. There is a certain thrill that comes with the anticipation of a crashing bridge, or the appreciation of an understated vocal ad lib.

This approach is sometimes prohibitive to hearing new music, whether it be a new band or a performer debuting new material. But, no matter how well prepared you are, there can always be an opened band or a strange tune that punches past your lack of karaoke intimacy with to make you fall hard into aural love.

I found myself at the NorthStar Bar with a motley assembly of some of the most talented people i know to see just such a stranger: Kaki King. Anthony had described her to me by email earlier in the day – “Imagine Ani DiFranco on crack … She uses her right hand on the fingerboard to tap out bass lines, and her left hand on the fingerboard to play melodies simultaneously. It’s pretty impressive.”

I’ve come to accept my mediocrity as a guitar player — i’ve been playing only two years less than both Anthony and Kaki, but i am still easily impressed by simplistic guitar pyrotechnics. I was prepared to see a few interesting tap solos and some intricate picking, and to generally have my playing be humbled.

Really, though, i was not prepared.

I’ve seen a lot of random opening bands, many of whom i’ve derisively blogged about the next day, but Kaki King is the first artist since Peter Mulvey (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Erin McKeown) to ever leave me with my eyes unblinking, my jaw hanging loose, and my fingers twitching just in contemplation of my inevitable attempt to replicate the performance before me.

Kaki is, in short, the most astounding acoustic guitar player i have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the casually arrived at alternate tunings, the tap & hammer solos, or even her simultaneous strumming & drumming on the guitar. It was her personality — quiet and simply smiling, but with a quick wit hidden beneath her swath of out-grown bangs. It was her ease — the way that after the audience’s obvious favorite song of the night she remarked to the effect of “That isn’t really finished yet; sometimes i just play the songs live and let them go in the directions they want to.” The way that, as opposed to how people joke about it with me, i really could not tell when her casual tuning and fretting ending and her songs began because at any point her hands were on her guitar the performance was underway.

Kaki has some MP3s on her site for your perusal, and while they will not replicate the awe that i was in on Tuesday night, i think they still speak adequately for themselves. And, please keep in mind that i typically range from indifferent-to-resistant when it comes to instrumental music, so Kaki must be pretty damned good.

Must be? Hell… she is.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140300363101718/

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Victory! Sweet, sweet, blueberry victory!

In other news: last night i played guitar for what has become a routine four hours, breaking only for the penultimate episode of Buffy and white pizza courtesy of Ross’s new credit card. This morning the skin on my fingers is rind-like and impervious to pain.

You could say that i’ve become a little obsessed with my practice regimen, ostensibly because i’m playing at a backyard festival this weekend and have vowed in public earshot to blow away all of the other performers. Really, though, it’s because i don’t know if i actually can. The recently revealed running order of the event finds me sandwiched between a duo of golden-throated music majors and a terrific a cappella group that i arrange for, with the entire day both book-ended and dotted by talented multi-instrumentalists and Philly pub performers. And in the middle is little old me.

At this late stage drilling finger exercises until i feel as though i’m going to vomit if i have to stretch my pinky to the seventh fret again probably isn’t going to do me much good, which is why i typically leave that until just before bed. The regimen begins as soon as i have stripped out of my corporate skin of shirt and tie, sometimes finding me strumming the opening chords of “Tangling” in an undershirt and low rise briefs. The run through the current iteration of my set quickly (and seemingly inevitably) descends into seething about my inability to pick complex patterns or endless fiddling with my amp tone, and rarely features more than a single complete song. Alternately, i could probably just look in a mirror and scream “you are worthless” for thirty minutes to achieve a similar effect on moral.

After this inevitably crushing warm-up routine, i turn to my Bible, The Complete Beatles Scores. What better comfort could there be to my inability to play my own misbegotten songs than to learn how to play some of the best songs ever written? Last night was a medley of Let It Be‘s A-Side, none of which i can carry all on my own. Still, the practice is useful because i am trying to match a specifically scored and recorded sound rather than some elusive cipher of a rhythm that only plays inside of my head.

After a solid run at the Beatles (always including thirty minutes on the riffing of “Dig A Pony” and at least two renditions of “Blackbird“) I am ready to perform my own set, minus the sniffling and whining. Or, rather, the sniffling and whining is restrained only to lyrical appearances. This set is typically much more affirming, though as a rule “Apart” sounds like utter shit. “Under My Skin” is placed strategically dead in the middle to remind myself that, yes, i can actually (write / play / sing) with some modicum of professionalism on a consistent basis. This is necessary, as my shot at “Seams” typically breaks down shortly after the key change.

I end with “Little Love,” because for a month i had intended to start with it and so bootstrapped it up past all of the intermediate levels of (total shit / shit / lyrical Alzheimer’s / inability to cross bridge / endless descent into ad-lib and riffing / constant Simon-Cowell-ing of vocal performance) to the point where i spent an entire hour last week walking around Center City with a guitar strapped on over my shirt and tie playing it and being asked my name and if i could be heard at any local bars or pubs. It isn’t “Under My Skin,” but it allows me to ignore (or, at least atone for) the two dozen false starts of “Apart” from earlier in the evening. It allows me to believe for a second that the forty or so friends that will be enduring me for a precious half hour on Saturday will perhaps clap out of something other than obligation.

Only after that do i brutally work my pinky fingers until my stomach knots with each effort. And then, sometimes, i go to bed.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200290435/

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Such a strange feeling to be actively blogging again, reading and writing and interacting again. After two nights of messages from Rannie @ Photojunkie, the other other day i received a hello from Dave @ Acerbia. And, before i go on, need to emphasize that you really ought to click that link, if only for an example of how shwanky a blog layout can actually be, which entirely ignores the hilarious writing that you are bound to encounter. But, i digress. After having fairly meaningful conversations with them both, i am both shocked and delighted at how downright enthusiastic they are about my linking to them despite the fact that they are both nominated for Bloggies and being linked by nearly hundreds of other pages right now. That’s not what i’m here to talk about, though.

Early in our conversation Dave asked me the surprisingly succinct question, “What do all the music links have to do with crushing?” I was more than a little shocked by it, at first. Back in the day i think it would have been obvious… the sobbing and moaning about my life in the middle of the page had a direct connection to the sobbing and moaning about my life in that week’s trio … it was a direct one to one relationship. However, here in 2003 faced with that question staring at me from a gapingly white instant message window, i found myself drawing a blank.

I can’t exactly claim that music is my life, but it has always been a big part of it. I have always been a music consumer, ever since i would perform my choreographed floor exercise routine to “I’ll Tumble For You” as a child. However, it was my guitar that made it a part of my life; my ability to recreate a song anywhere and at any time via my own body. Soon that wasn’t enough for me, though, and i began writing my own songs. At first they were halting and barely melodic, relying solely on the the chords that i knew and a few that i dared to make up. Eventually, though, i had played enough songs by other people to begin to know how to get the right sounds out of myself, and that is when my songwriting truely began.

This website is obviously a living document of writing — it’s past exists in perpetuity while it’s future begins anew with each post. In its existence i have deleted only a scant handful of stray musings, and significant alterations are only ever the result of tightening my own editorial screws than any censorial hindsight. Soon after its inception, it also began a living recording of my music… flubbed starts, bad strums, and occasional shining moments … things that i remember hearing at the time more than i remember doing them.

My ability to travel back in my personal timeline via this page’s archives is magical to me — especially tracking my songs’ evolution via the song archive. Listening to the spectrum of sounds between my original conception and my current interpretation often provides a surprising peek at what my original intentions were and how i have neatly disposed of them. My choice of “World In My Hand” to open this week’s Trio was as much a nod to this as anything… this weekend i listened to its history, everything from my original by barely audible singing on its original recorded rendition to the flubbed versions from this weekend. The song itself is old, and it has barely changed… even less, perhaps, than any other song i’ve ever written. It has always been frenetic, challenging to play, and hard to remember. But, even when a song doesn’t change with time, i still do.

So, to belatedly answer Dave’s question, all the music links are an attempt to more fully record my transformation into something more than i was before. The fact that anyone ever stops by and checks in on my progress along the way is still shocking to me, and i continue to be eternally gratefully for each second spent on the task.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/390238127/

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I just picked up my old guitar, intending to idly strum something while waiting for my laundry to get clean, only to find that both my fretting and picking fingers are completely worn and i can’t seem to … well … do anything that sounds like music.


This is so cool. It’s been four years since my fingers were too pink and bruised to play a song. And, honestly, my voice doesn’t mind it so much either.

I rock. A little. I rock a little!

Rock.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75025114/