Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

30for30

30 for 30 Project, 1984: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” – Wham!

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Apparently, 1984 is the point when the 80s were completely gay.

Note that from me that label is never meant as slander. Here it’s about the celebration of all things glamorous and fey being totally mainstream, and it’s the only explanation I have for Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” hitting number one in the same year as “Karma Chameleon” from Culture Club.

Hell, the number one album spot spent over half the year occupied by Thriller and Purple Rain, neither especially a symbol of restraint and masculinity. In 1984 it was totally cool to be a over-wrought, over-styled, over-the-top male vocalist.


(Watch me cover “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post.)

1984 is also a year that I have some vague musical recollections from, and I’ll tell you that in my house we are all about gay 1984. We had all four the LPs mentioned above, and songs from each are encoded on my DNA. I even had a somersaulting routine set to the prior year’s “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.” [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1984: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” – Wham!

30 for 30 Project, 1983: “Hungry Like the Wolf” – Duran Duran

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There are certain bands – significant, important bands – that I grew up completely ignorant of.

This was surely my parents’ fault. My father, as has been established, brooked with no current music. My mother was all about her Motown, disco, and glossy 80s dance pop.

There was no middle ground for New Wave or 80s rock, so I grew up assuming both were either non-existent or unspeakably terrible.

(Watch me cover “Hungry Like the Wolf” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post.)

As a result, I know some bands less as artists and more as totems of their time. Duran Duran is one such band. I’m sure I saw an occasional video on MTV growing up, but they’re largely a band I know about in retrospect as a symbol of New Wave acts that lasted long enough to constitute a small genre of 80s rock that wasn’t all about Americana. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1983: “Hungry Like the Wolf” – Duran Duran

30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders

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My fascination with the Pretenders began with a television commercial.

I’m sure you remember it. Barbie and G.I. Joe racing around in a toy Corvette to the vamped drum intro of “Message of Love.” It was an awesome commercial. My mother is ace at identifying older tunes tapped for commercials, and in the pre “just Google it” age it was her who told me the song was by The Pretenders.

I knew of this group and their bang-èd singer Chrissie Hynde, but had never bothered to pick up any of their LPs until after the commercial. As is my way, I decided I’d rather get to know The Pretenders album-by-album than via greatest hits, and bought all three of their first LPs on New Years Eve 1999.

To my surprise, I actually knew a lot of the songs. Seemingly all of them – even the non-singles. It was like they were already tattooed on my brain. But the one that really resonated – which, of course, I had heard a hundred times before – was “Back on the Chain Gang.”

There was something about the simplicity of that first line, “I saw a picture of you.” All it took was a single wistful glance at that forgotten photograph to hijack the narrator’s world and sent her crashing into the sepia-tinged realm of memory, where she rages against and eventually resigns herself to her lot in life as a broken-hearted survivor. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders

30 for 30 Project, 1981: “Physical” – Olivia Newton John

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I’ve spent my life hating Olivia Newton John’s 1981 hit “Physical” for no good reason.

I had a reason, mind you. Just not a good one.

“Physical” held the longest run at number one on the Billboard chart for the majority of my childhood. Ten weeks, as Casey Casem would remind us on his countdown any time a song strung together multiple weeks at number one.

Not just any ten weeks. Ten weeks starting the year I was born.

(Watch me cover “Physical” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit the intro post.)

I was eight or nine years old, and I hated this Olivia character. I had seen her weird Happy Days hair on the cover of the VHS of Grease. Why should her silly song with its antiquated video of prancing fat people hold the record when newer, more relevant luminaries like Michael Jackson or Madonna were clearly more deserving. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1981: “Physical” – Olivia Newton John

The 30 for 30 Project

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When I hatched one of my typically insane musical project ideas – to record 30 songs from the 30 years of my life for my 30th birthday (maybe in the 30 days of September?) – I was working from the assumption it would stay an idea due to my perfectionism. The concept would be safely tucked away as an iTunes playlist with all of the other covers projects that I’d never started.

"Endless Love" by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie was the number one record in America the day I was born. While I won't say that I'll NEVER cover it, you definitely won't be hearing it later today as my pick from 1981.

Then, August happened. I kept posting every day, and really enjoying it. I finally found a blogging rhythm, eleven years into my experiment. I thought, maybe the idea isn’t so crazy after all. Maybe I should do it.

The issue is that I haven’t recorded any new solo music since we moved into the house last June. I have hatched half a dozen cool projects in my head, but I haven’t launched a single one.

This seems paradoxical. I have a studio now. Space to set up and stay set up without having to drape suit jackets over my microphone poles and check email from within a lattice of quarter-inch cables.

I mean that literally. At the old house my studio was my office was my dressing room. It was common to find a discarded microphone atop a pile of wireframe sketches and freshly laundered underwear. Gear shared a walk-in closet with board games and old copies of Rolling Stone. Switching to a different guitar meant risking sending up a tinker-tape parade of brightly colored Monopoly money in my hallway if I moved a box the wrong way.

And you know what? It didn’t stop me. I recorded two seasons of Trio, four Arcati Crisis Live @ Rehearsals, and over a dozen solo demos that became my Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1. Now I have an entire attic committed solely to recording, and the well has suddenly run dry.

Actually, the well is quite wet. I have the best intentions. The new wrinkle is that with space to set up a perfect signal chain the issue is no longer my willingness, but my perfection. Everything has to be perfect. Perfectly planned, perfectly rehearsed, perfectly executed.

The Rolling Stones' 18th American LP, Tattoo You, held the top album spot when I was born. I won't be playing "Start Me Up" at any point in this project.

Perfect makes things hard. Bobbling that one chord change? Delay it. Tickle in my throat? Cancel it.

30 for 30 is different. I am not promising perfection. I am not promising that I’m going to get it done in 30 days. I am not promising you will know all the songs. I am not promising polished studio cuts. I am not promising all of the covers will be perfectly played.

And, I am certainly not representing it as a collection of my favorite, most-cherished songs.

No. All of that leads to perfectionism paralysis.

What I am promising is a single take video play-through of a song from every year from 1981 to 2010, with some commentary along the way. No cherished favorites. No multi-track demos. No perfection.

Just me and the music.

30 for 30 starts later today, in 1981.