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Arcati Crisis

Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

July 11, 2022 by krisis Leave a Comment

I have a secret favorite band.

They’re not only a secret because I never talk about them publicly. They’re also a secret because I don’t know a damn thing about them. I don’t know who they are, what they look like, why they’re a band, what their politics are, or when they’re putting their next album out. I’ve never seen them on tour and never watched a video of them. I don’t even know if they play live!

Turin Bakes - Underdog Save Me Single Artwork

All I know is I love every song they have ever released.

It is highly unusual for me to fall madly in love with something and not want to hoover up every single facet of its existence. You’ve seen the name of this site, right? That’s what the “Crushing” part has always been about – what I’m crushing on, and what’s crushing me. When I have something crushing, I want perfect 100% knowledge of its complete breadth and depth.

Except this one band.

Turin Brakes.

I don’t know anything about them, but I can tell you exactly how I found out about them.

Their song “Underdog (Save Me)” was on the Q Magazine’s “Q Best of 2001” sampler CD that came with their end of year issue that December. I almost certainly bought it at an airport magazine stand en route to stay at my grandmother’s condo in Florida for the holidays. That was pre-iTunes, so I probably listened to it once or twice on my CD Walkman and then shelved it’s paper sleeve alongside the rest of my compilation CDs and promptly forgot it existed.

Then, in 2003, iTunes came to Windows and I spent a month converting my massive CD collection to MP3, including that Q sampler on November 8th, 2003. And then I didn’t listen to it for another year, until I bought my first iPod for my solo trip to California to hang out with Laura and Sara.

Clearly I was working my way through a playlist of unheard songs while on my trip, because several other tunes from that sampler have their first (and only) plays in that period. And then, the very day I returned to Philly, I added two Turin Brakes records to my collection. I might’ve even bought them at the historic Amoeba Music in Los Angeles!

Why? What was so special about “Underdog (Save Me)” that made me so eager to hear more of this band?

I can tell exactly why: they were the first new band I ever heard that entirely reminded me of myself. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Underdog (Save Me)” – Turin Brakes

Filed Under: Crushing On Tagged With: Arcati Crisis, California, florida, laurel, memories, Music Monday, Turin Brakes

Crushing Comics: The Unwrapping – End Credits

March 22, 2018 by krisis

My five-month collected editions unwrapping odyssey (which is really part of a larger eight-month packing to move around the world odyssey) has finally come to a close!

To celebrate the end of this first Crushing Comics video series, I present to you my final bookshelf – or, at least, the process of getting there. Plus, I get to do something I’ve wanted to do my entire life – create a set of scrolling end credits (complete with a soundtrack thanks to Arcati Crisis) to thank everyone who supported me as I created this series!

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Arcati Crisis, Collected Editions, Crushing Comics

Song of the Day: “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” – Sparks

November 27, 2017 by krisis

When was the last time a song you never heard before totally pierced your brain to become an automatic favorite?

I can tell you exactly when it was for me: July 1st, sitting in our friend Liz’s living room, listening to Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us.”

Research says there is a “magic age” somewhere in our 20s where our musical taste becomes more set, owing to a combination of factors ranging to hearing loss to not having as many new experiences for music to soundtrack.

While some people concern themselves with anti-aging creme and memory-extending games, I am more worried about avoiding the potential to stop liking new music. It’s terrifying to me. Even though I already have lists of thousands of favorite songs, I still want more.

Really, it’s not as though we stop appreciating songs entirely at some point. It’s about our preferences becoming locked in. If you’ve always loved Garth Brooks, chances are you might still enjoy a new Garth Brooks song when you are 42. The thing that could become more scarce is liking something that sounds entirely new.

(Perhaps that is why our interest in popular music dwindles as we age – the sound keeps evolving with out us.)

From that perspective, I don’t think me liking “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” is as encouraging as me falling in love with the songs of Czarface on that same night, as East Coast Hip Hop is a little bit further outside of my typical preferences as the Glam Rock of Sparks.

Glam Rock was my whole life for a while there, right? The theme song of my new internet show is a song called “Glam,” wherein I state “When I was 16 I thought I was David Bowie because nobody told me there was more than life than being glam.” Liking Sparks should come as no surprise.

One way it was a surprise was just that I had never heard of Sparks. I have a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of rock history and a song collection to match, yet they were a complete stumper for me when Liz put them on the stereo.

Not only that, but the song sounded completely alien to me. I instantly recognized it as a form of Glam Rock, but it also had a galloping free time feel to it that I associate with mathier rock, like Rush. And I was convinced it was being sung by a woman, which left me completely incredulous when Liz reveal the band is comprised of a pair of brothers!

What was this sorcery!

[Read more…] about Song of the Day: “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” – Sparks

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: Arcati Crisis, bowie, Glam Rock, Queen, Sparks

35-for-35: 1987 – “Where The Streets Have No Name” by U2

November 7, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]On September 24th. I found myself on stage in front of thousands of people, guitar held aloft beside my head, thrashing The Edge’s signature two-bar riff from the chorus of “Where The Streets Have No Name” while silently screaming with happiness.

As impressive and stadium-filling as many of U2’s epic early anthems are, when you break them down at the musical level you find that there’s very little there. Like, practically nothing. This song is pretty much a eighth-note bassline entirely of roots and a handful of chiming mid-neck electric guitar notes with a delay. Bono and Larry Mullen, Jr. do all the heavy lifting, and it’s not even all that heavy.

That’s fascinating to me, because I think this song sounds nothing less than majestic.

I discovered the simple bones beneath this epic song this summer as we prepared to play the first day finish line of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s City to Shore bike ride. My cover band Smash Fantastic had been invited back to play after missing 2015 due to a hurricane that never really came.

where-the-streets-have-no-nameWe had one problem – our lead singer, Ashley, would be at the happiest place on Earth during the show. She had even though about our charity gig while booking her Disney vacation, but was working from the later date of the previous year’s race.

Playing for the MS even is a cause that’s meaningful to me on several levels, so I didn’t want to pass up the chance to play and had Ashley’s blessing to perform without her. Yet, we couldn’t do that without a rocking female lead singer.  Jake and I both sing lead on a significant portion of Smash Fantastic songs, they weren’t enough to fill a two hour gig – and, even if they were, they’d leave out tons of our most-popular tunes.

Enter by BFF and long-time collaborator, Gina. We had done covers on many occasions as Arcati Crisis, including once as a wedding band. Plus, Gina is a karaoke veteran who occasionally fronted a rock band for holiday dinners at her old job. While she wasn’t going to be tackling any Kelly Clarkson, the Smash classic rock rep is right up her alley.

With Gina’s came the assumption that we’d be learning a U2 song. There’s just something about Bono’s overdramatic delivery and not-quite tenor voice that maps perfectly onto Gina’s voice, but we never had the excuse to exploit that as Arcati Crisis. Gina, Jake, Zina, and I kicked around a few choices, and decided that this would be the most-appropriate to celebrate finishing between 25 and 90 miles of bike riding.

I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name.

the-joshua-tree-u2There was much charting and mapping to get the song set for our first go at rehearsal. It was almost too simple for us to make work – so few notes create the overall tonality that one minor misstep sends the song spinning into something unfamiliar. Yet, once we got past counting issues, those simple pieces snapped together perfectly. Suddenly, we were creating that majestic sound.

We rehearsed it only three more times before the show; there was really nothing else to do other than count.

I wanna feel sunlight on my face.
I see the dust-cloud
Disappear without a trace.
I wanna take shelter
From the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

On stage on a gray, windswept September day we rolled out of the second chorus and into the refrain and I had my guitar held up high beside my head as I kept up the machine-gun strum of The Edge’s riff while mouthing the lyrics along with Gina as a way to choke back my tears.

The city’s a flood, and our love turns to rust.
We’re beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled in dust.
I’ll show you a place
High on a desert plain
Where the streets have no name

We’re still building and burning down love
Burning down love.
And when I go there I go there with you
(It’s all I can do)

For five minutes on September 24th, that majesty belonged to us.

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: 35-for-35, Arcati Crisis, gina, Joshua Tree, memories, Smash Fantastic, U2

Live @ Rehearsal Video Concert – November 1st, 2016

November 3, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]After a month of piloting Facebook Live lunch rehearsal concerts to my network of friends, this week I unveiled them on my Facebook page!

 

Setlist: Shake It Of w/Shake Your Body Down (to the ground), A Few Bars of Goodbye, Saving Grace, a totally off-the-cuff and unrehearsed cover of Lady Gaga’s Million Reasons, Bucket Seat, Saving Grace, and a special encore duet with EV on We Are The Crystal Gems (the theme from Steven Universe)

lar-20161101-status-quo-500pxPerformance Notes:

With my first solo performance in a LONG time under my belt two weekends ago, I’m starting to get a feel for my solo repertoire again.

For me the standout here is “Status Quo.” I invoked it in this year’s anniversary post, and this is one of the strongest versions of it I’ve performed. It has all sorts of extra ornamentation I’ve never done before. Definitely wish I had that one in studio quality!

“Shake It Off” was a decent rendition, and I’m starting to get the muscle back to pull off three whole minutes of those hammers (seriously, it’s a workout).

I was really focused on keeping “A Few Bars of Goodbye” on the slower side since I tend to gain speed on songs in 3, but the tempo focus distracted me from some of the lyrics. That said, it’s great to hear it at the right speed (and I got the final chord right)!

“Million Reasons” was a bit of a train-wreck, but that’s the fun of doing this live and not as some big studio project where such things would never sneak through. Early Trios featured plenty of beautiful wrecks. I need to take the key slightly up from there to get to a better place in my range for sustained notes – you can hear how much trouble I’m having with breath management. It’s a statement to how damn good the song is that the quality still shows through my shaky performance.

As for the pair of Arcati Crisis songs, “Saving Grace” and “Bucket Seat,” I’ll simply say the transition to doing that material sans the incomparable Zina on drums hasn’t been the easiest.

##

FB Live presented an interesting technical challenge, because FB offers nary a means of broadcasting video from a desktop device. I tried for a few weeks by using my phone, but discovered that the cap on its WiFi upstreaming capabilities meant that live music just didn’t sound great.

After a bit of research, I found a magnificent walkthrough on JoelComm.com that explained desktop-based streaming and even included an applet to generate your streaming key! Once I installed the excellent open-source software OBS I was ready to stream (the next best solution is hundreds of dollars).

The next hurdle is achieving studio-quality sound. The sheer volume of me clips any standard cellphone or laptop mic, plus those mics aren’t great with dealing with reflections and echo and can make even the most pitch-conscious singer (which I am not) seem out of tune. Unfortunately, OBS doesn’t play very nicely with my studio setup, or else this would already be a solved problem. It’s a work in progress.

Filed Under: my music, performance, rehearsal Tagged With: Arcati Crisis, Lady Gaga, Live@Rehearsal, Video

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