So, I have clearly failed at NaBloPoMo 2009, leaving me an embarrassing two for four on the endeavor overall. Honestly, I was doing just fine until the little backend snafu set me back a few days. By the time I figured it out I was back a few more days.
I [...]
Today Gina and I had a scheduled Arcati Crisis rehearsal labeled “Brown Bag” on our calendars, which is our not-so-covert code-word for working on a new Live @ Rehearsal CD. We haven’t released one in over a year.
We held a brief rehearsal off-mic to tune up our cover songs, [...]
Hi. I am encountering a minor issue with posting – which is to say I wrote this weekend, but you aren’t seeing those posts at the moment.
So, yeah. Hang in there for a moment, listen to the three new demos just below this post.
[...]Hi. I am encountering a minor issue with posting – which is to say I wrote this weekend, but you aren’t seeing those posts at the moment.
So, yeah. Hang in there for a moment, listen to the three new demos just below this post. I located my mysteriously disappeared Friday [...]
Although I am an insidious night owl, I didn’t find out that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority – aka SEPTA – was on strike until I woke up early on Tuesday morning.
Too early, actually. My clock was set pre-7am, and I already forget why. Extra proofreading at work? Who knows, [...]
I don’t think I had the right idea about Michael Jackson’s This Is It.
I thought it would be a performance blended with documentary – much like Madonna’s fantastic I’m Going To Tell You A Secret. Really it was neither – none of the songs in the film quite made it [...]
Cover: Crazy for You (live demo) ["Save As" to download from that link]
Last recorded fall 2002.
There are no Madonna songs released before 1990 that I don’t like. Well, except “The Gambler,” but I don’t think I heard that until I graduated college.
In the 80s there were no iTunes [...]
Song #238: Kick Me (live demo) ["Save As" to download from that link]
Never before recorded.
Not all Fridays are not of the TGI variety. Some of them leave you bruised and battered, wondering if you can really make it through another week – or even through the weekend.
That was [...]
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 [...]
Last night E and I dressed up as Head Six and Dr. Gaius Baltar, respectively, from the cult Sci-Fi hit Battlestar Galactica.
E is not in Six’s standard spaghetti-strap dress, but Six can be spotted in this style at least once in [...]
There is a chance you are arriving here for the first time, launched from Twitter or NaBloPoMo.
If that’s the case, hi. I have an extensive series of bios linked off in that other direction. Oh, and for my first NaBloPoMo I spent the entire month re-telling my personal [...]
November is National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo, deemed as such by the blogger behind Fussy in November of 2006.
I am 2 for 3 in NaBloPoMos: knocked the first one out of the park with a reboot of my blog and thirty newly recorded songs, biffed [...]
I think I may have acquired a gnome.
It’s my keys, mostly. They keep disappearing. I’m not too haphazard with them – at least, not in comparison to my other worldly possessions. They go into the same basket every day or, failing that, in to the zip of my jacket.
Except, not [...]
When I’m being overly fussy about anything musical, I have a special mantra I use to get focused. It goes like this:
What would Madonna do?
That’s “WWMD?” for short.
Last night I was not feeling musical. I was tired. My [...]
As with any big event in CK-land, the Blame-a-Thon required some recovery.
I can get into the whys and wherefores of the recovery some other time. In short, I stayed up for something to the tune of 32 hours, we raised tons of money for LiveStrong, and by the end of [...]
For all 24 hours of today my life will be streaming live @ www.livestream.com/blameathon. If you miss it live, some of the best bits are available as on-demand archives.
[...]For all 24 hours of today my life will be streaming live @ www.livestream.com/blameathon. If you miss it live, some of the best bits are available as on-demand archives.
[...]I am approaching peak stress.
Like, peak stress ever. More than wedding stress. Catching myself pulling at my hair with my fists in meetings stress.
And I’m really happy. Like, deliriously.
#blamedrewscancer planning insanity is in overdrive heading into Wednesday’s 9/9/09 Blame-a-Thon benefit concert (right now working to curate our overnight [...]
This a post in my new column, “Making Music Work,” where I take a look at the challenges facing local, indie musicians.
As a musician it’s hard to say no. But, should you always say yes?
There are a lot of positives to saying yes. More chances to play, which means more [...]
(Yes, I still owe you one last skydiving post. Suck it up, people. It’s coming.)
So, you’re a cancer blamer but you’re not sure what this whole Blame a-Thon thing is about? Never fear – we’re here with answers to all of your questions (and, by “we” I mean me [...]
In a moment I’m going to show you a song so new that I’m not entirely sure what the title is. I’ve played it less than a dozen times.
At some prior point in this site’s storied history I would write a song, literally record my first run-through, and post that [...]
Today is the ninth birthday of Crushing Krisis.
I have hundreds more words to share on that topic, but they’re still simmering. In the meantime, I am counting down my top nine posts from Year 9 of the blog on Twitter, adding them to this post as I go.
#9: [...]
I. The 27-Club.
Last September I turned 27.
It made me nervous.
Being a major music fan and devout lifetime subscriber to Rolling Stone, I am all too aware of the so-called “27 Club” – a musical super-group headlined by Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi, Janis, Jim, and Kurt, all of whom [...]
I disliked District 9 from the start, but it took until about an hour in for me to reach the “I really might leave this theater” stage.
Mild spoilers, but not as many as the Rolling Stone review.
1. It’s a personal take on sci-fi, except we’re made to dislike the extremely [...]
A rare glimpse at Arcati Crisis in the wild, as Gina and I duet on our new cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star” at last night’s benefit for #blamedrewscancer.
[...]By rights and logic I really ought to be asleep right now, but if I don’t recount the past week it’s going to sleep out of the memory banks and completely disappear into the ether. At least this way I can prove that it actually happened.
So. If you’ve been wondering [...]
My ass was firmly planted on the lazy-train this weekend. I watched a lot of movies and listened to a lot of music in my collection that I’ve been inexplicably neglecting (notably Andrew Bird; how in god’s name did I ignore that one?).
Anywho, all of which is to say that [...]
I’ve decided that as frequently as I can I’d like to highlight a specific blog I love by talking about the blogger and linking to my favorite recent entries. It’s only fitting that I start with the single blog that was at the top of my link list when I [...]
I’m not quite ready to be done with my story of jumping out of a plane to Blame Drew’s Cancer.
You see, I promised this girl I used to have a big crush on that I would write something “epic,” and now I have Drew on the edge [...]
I am angry about something. I ran the same situation by Elise, and she just found it amusing.
I’m interested to know what you think, posed in both hypothetical and actual flavors.
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Hypothetical:
You are attending a conference titled “Asian-Americans Emerging in Social Media.” Whether or not you are Asian is irrelevant; [...]
I flag a lot of techie links, as if I’m going to go and use 39 how-tos or 87 productivity tools right there on the spot. That’s not how it works. You tuck that information away for when you need to look back on it. And a scattering of bookmarks [...]
I’m on hold with Sprint right now to make sure my old cell account is really cancelled so I can go on my merry way with my spiffy new android phone.
(imagine a world where we could just trust this stuff to happen)
Sprint’s hold music is always super-anonymous – very sincerely [...]
Elise & Co. (aka Filmstar) rocked an amazing show tonight at the M-Room, followed by the obscenely sexy and awesome Stone Thrown (like Muse, but Philly-local and half-Asian).
Here’s Filmstar’s newest tune, which I am in love with. Note the Bowie / Karen O. dual influences.
(Or, head to YouTube [...]
Last night our Arcati Crisis rehearsal ended with me in fantastic voice and looking rather delicious.
I decided to harness those powers to record my first-ever video for CK – of the reticent original song “Shake It Off,” that has proven nearly impossible to record an audio demo of.
Behold:
Earlier tonight Twitter was abuzz with news that CDBaby would be increasing their take on digital downloads from 9% to 25% to coincide with the relaunch of their digital shopfront.
I quickly called foul. That’s a fourth of your profit just for distribution via a paid download, and an increase of [...]
I am not a major reader of mommy-blogs.
Sure, I have my certain mommy favorites, as well as several long-time reads who happened to be or become moms, but I don’t typically seek out new moms to read. They’re just in a different part of their lives than I am, at [...]
In my Google Reader I have a tag called “PROMPT” that I affix to posts that made me think or feel something that I might like to share on CK.
I’ve discovered that prompts are best served fresh – ideally I should be writing a post about that intangible thought or [...]
Today on the bus an attractive, muscle-bound, black man was sitting across from E and I rocking to an unknown sort of music. He was wearing a muscle-shirt version of this Magneto t-shirt.
I turned to E and said, “That guy’s shirt is awesome.” She nodded in agreement.
Then I motioned [...]
I played an unexpected concert on the 4th of July.
I bring my guitar with me just about everywhere I go. Parties. Barbeques. Vacations. My default social state is to be idly playing guitar, and I don’t like to subject other people’s instruments to my style of playing and non-stop litany [...]
Funkin’ Donuts update: Elise has arrived to appreciate a beet donut, as have a charming pair of older women eating the Fourth of July lunch special.
And suddenly it is hurricane-crazy rain outside. The rain is all you can see in any direction – up the road or over the mountains.
Both [...]
It is almost ten in the morning, and I am eating a bacon donut.
Kat and Jeremy currently farm enough to support three or four families, but they have enough eggs to stock said three families, a small market, and a donut shop.
Conveniently, Kat works at a donut shop. It’s actually [...]
I have eleven minutes to write this post. I will just pretend I am on a bus.
Somewhere shortly before or after Albany Elise and I stopped at a rest stop that supposedly had wireless. It did not. It did, however, contain a rather dubious “Fish’n'Chips” connected to Roy Rogers.
In' [...]
The internet had the chance to see and hear the first ever live web concert of my original songs and familiar covers, plus help to raise donations for Unicef’s Believe in Zero campaign for 12for12k
My 12for12k Setlist with demo downloads (if available)…
Once I was in a very bad place, and also in the hospital, and I asked my mom to walk to B&N to buy me David Foster Wallace’s massive masterpiece Infinite Jest.
It kept me sane through three days in the hospital, and kept me awake at night for another [...]
This is a meandering post about life and stuff. Content that’s all focused like a laser mounted on a deadly shark may or may not resume tomorrow.
This weekend E headed up the NNJ/NYC to play a show and help with some solstice cleaning along with the sibs at her mother’s [...]
The pair of surviving Beatles recently appeared at E3 to hype the impending The Beatles: Rock Band, out on September 9. It represents a remarkable milestone - mass licensing of Beatles songs to a third party, cooperation of all four Beatles estates on new intellectual property, release of new [...]
I have a habit of dozing off on the 57 bus in the afternoon on the way home from work. I don’t think it’s because I am so tired. There’s just something about the rhythm of motion and the droning of the motor humming through my body while I listen [...]
My body is convinced that there are 27 hours in the day.
It will gladly absorb a requisite eight of sleep, but then it wants to stay up and about for a too-long 18 hours, plus a bonus hour to wind down to sleep.
I’ve long since been used to tricking myself [...]
This is post 7 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
This pair of songs have always been as easy [...]
This is post 6 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
This was definitely the hardest pair I’ve yet to [...]
This is post 5 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
These are certainly not two songs I expected to [...]
This is post 4 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
Thankfully, my voice was back tonight. Also, I actually [...]
This is post 3 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
I don’t have too much voice after my night [...]
Five months after the fact my wedding has taught me a lesson about return on investment - aka ROI - and it has nothing to do with the cost of our appetizers.
I could probably summarize the gist of my epiphany in a bite-sized snippet, but for me the realization was [...]
This is post 2 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
If we’re all lucky my mixing skills will begin [...]
This is post 1 of 30 featuring live, single-take demos of each of the 30 songs I’m considering for my upcoming studio album. Each potential album tune is accompanied by a B-Side, to make each post a virtual 45 single (remember those?).
Song #222: Small & Lonely (live demo)
Never [...]
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 [...]
(1) A few years ago I saw Malcolm Gladwell deliver a speech at the New Yorker Festival that is largely recapitulated in the second chapter of Outliers, called “The 10,000 Hour Rule.”
In it, Gladwell draws our attention to a data point converged upon by countless studies of experts in [...]
Being “Network Agnostic” is a practice I’ve been preaching over the past few months as my business and personal lives converge on social networking.
It’s a simple concept: don’t let the technology dictate your content, and make sure your content adapts across multiple technologies.
While the concept is simple, the ensuing conversation [...]
After a few months of worrying about the big events in my life more than my music, I decided to spend the past week focusing on my musical life.
Well, that and American Idol. (Hey, at least it’s thematically connected!)
Here’s a list of what I did:
Installed backend software on my [...]My friend Rob Baniewicz (of killer improv comedy duo Meg & Rob) shared an article from the Onion A/V Club Q&A titled “Lifetime Grudges.”
The article caught my interest because it’s about lifelong, subjective, sometimes irrational grudges that people develop against artists. Many of the Onion’s regular contributors shared [...]
Can I just put something in perspective for a moment?
My free time has been devoted to event planning on at least a weekly basis since November of 2007. That’s one and a half years of constant event planning.
We spent two months planning our engagement party. Then wedding planning started [...]
Six years ago my friend Lindsay had a birthday party with music. With tongue in cheek she called it “Lyndzapalooza.” I carried all of my meager musical equipment down the street to her apartment on my back and we partied to a full day of our friends’ musical talents.
In each [...]
“I feel as if I’ve been able to try on many different archetypes. So much so that it feels like a Pandora’s box of archetypes sometimes. But not all of them figure in to my personal myths.” (Piece by Piece)
Pandora’s Aquarium was the first song to come after the bloodletting [...]
“This was a very dark time for me. I kept seeing all these children that had been separated from their mother. They seemed to be coming through the door with the songs ushering them in. I saw the songs shadowed by these children, and it appeared to me as this [...]
“Imagine that you have been able to let yourself into this fascinating architectural space but you’re in only one room and you do not know how to get to the other rooms because as of now there are no doorways. It becomes like a sonic puzzle.” (Piece by Piece)
This is [...]
“My heart goes out to where that song comes from. It’s very much about thinking you were loved for who you were, and realizing you weren’t and realizing maybe you don’t love yourself.” (uncredited, Here. In My Head)
Isn’t it interesting how the choirgirl hotel is suddenly about the men [...]
“When I use this term, the Dark Prince, this is my definition of a male essence that is able to shed light in darkness. … A lot of people around me at that time were turned on by cheap come-ons, drawn to thinking that the Dark Prince was somebody who [...]
“I feel like I’m in a dream, I’m in some crazy dream, boy. I feel like I’ve made a movie with my baby, with my baby. We were, we were riding through the mountains. Then we found some rocks, and then you told me, ‘look closer baby. You’re a diamond. [...]
“I would close my eyes when he would appear. And I would follow him. And he would say things like, ‘come here…’ And I would go.” (VH1 Storytellers)
We are at the nadir.
Take your ease, and your happiness, and your country, and your god. Leave me alone to wail into [...]
“I started to look to Jackie and how that woman held the country together after she watched her husband get cut down right in front of her.” (Uncredited, Here. In My Head)
This song is a super-8 movie of suburban lawns in a line, each with an identical mother wrapped [...]
Once upon a time I bought a Tori Amos album even though I didn’t really love her, and it became my favorite album of all time.
Once upon a time I bought a Tori Amos album and decided to write an essay for every song on it live on my [...]
I’ve been the rotating host of the LP Wednesday night open mic since October, and it’s just recently reached self-sustaining status where we don’t have to plead and beg to get people to attend.
A regular weekly crowd means a slew of musicians who I’m getting know a little better, [...]
Earlier tonight I attended a fantastic networking night and discussion forum hosted by the Social Media Club of Philadelphia.
In a room full of super-mobile urbanites I was the sole attendee clacking away at a laptop, which resulted in my capturing an abridged transcript of the evening. It’s presented below [...]
It took only seven days for me to appreciate the conversational power of Twitter, and to see why fans use it to follow artists and businesses. As I entered my second week I wondered what I should be tweeting about. I’ve wrangled a consistent audience of blog readers for [...]
I’ve now been married for a little over a quarter of a year.
It’s been really swell, aside from the part where I was really pissed off in France for a day or two. And the quality of gouda there more than made up for it.
We’re still the newest newlyweds in [...]
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform brought to you by the evil geniuses behind original-flavor Blogger: Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey.
The concept is simple and has been beaten to death by the media all this month: answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters [...]
They say you can make or break a habit in just 21 days. If that’s true, today is the official confirmation of my Twitter addiction.
I had no plans of getting into Twitter when I made my first regular post on April 6. I was merely checking out the network for [...]
Last week I spent an evening writing about Tori Amos (which will surface here next week). In doing background research I came across the following quote:
A lot of people think darkness is making somebody emotionally defecate on themselves. That’s baby demon stuff. … These baby demons can be wonderful in [...]
A strongly-worded NYT Style Article about my American Idol obsession Adam Lambert, whose “is he or isn’t he” gay controversy is DOA.
Interesting, though, that the article is ostensibly about the recent Neil Patrick Harris effect - wherein “He crossed the Rubicon. He did the ‘sudden death’ play. Supposedly you [...]
I am suddenly a fan of savvy music blog Lefsetz Letter, who provided me with the link that inspired my previous post.
I found him via Amanda (fucking) Palmer, who sent him an email about the power of twitter and why she wants to get dropped from her [...]
Ten super-perceptive questions with Trent Reznor, courtesy of Digg users.
The interview is incredible. Trent is articulate and honest, laying out his opinion on the shifting models of the music business.
His answer to the first question is lengthy and fantastic - talking us through how he manages the NIN [...]
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 [...]
I’m a pretty jaded news-browser, but this USA Today headline got my attention: Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing.
Yes, in the United States.
It sounds a bit dubious in concept, but the practice is sound:
The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to [...]
A few vignettes.
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I’ve been really exhausted lately. Not physically exhausted, though. Intellectually.
When we first got back from the honeymoon I was in my super-aggressive “What would Madonna do?” phase. Working fiercely, hitting open mics, having rehearsals, et cetera.
I still have the physical energy to do all of that, but I’m [...]
I am not an especially sentimental person.
Maybe that isn’t a fair statement. I have sentiment. I care about relationships. I treasure memories. I cry during Julianne Moore movies.
More acurately, I don’t sentimentalize. This is a true fact. I no longer need to save every scrap of paper I’ve ever [...]
Last night was the series finale of Battlestar Galactica.
Elise and I are hopelessly devoted to the show. After watching the miniseries from Netflix we went all-in, picking up the DVDs on our fifth anniversary before eating sushi in a snowstorm and ensconcing ourselves at home to devour the first two [...]
My esteemed friend Matt Lydon has left the confines of LJ for his own WordPress blog.
This is worthy of announcement because - not entirely to my surprise - Matt is a very compelling blogger. He swings from classic literature to pop culture to personal reflection with the ease of [...]
Before we head into a week of Kelly Clarkson coverage (just kidding!) (but not really!), here’s a brief interlude from real life.
.
(1) Today at work we had a meeting about social networking.
I make it a point not to talk about work so much, but this seems like a big milestone. [...]
An amazing hour-long interview and concert with Ani DiFranco and Andy Stochansky from 1994 - fifteen years ago.
It’s a fantastic time capsule - bald Ani! bushy-haired Andy! enthusing over selling-out a 1200-seat show!
The concert portion is treasure trove of Out of Range songs. For the guitar freaks out there [...]
Tori Amos gave a brief interview to Spinner about her impending disc, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, on the verge of her upcoming SXSW debut of new tunes next Thursday, March 19, at La Zona Rosa in Austin.
The article was accompanied by the debut of both cover art and a [...]
A long time ago I had a neighbor, freebasing cocaine at his kitchen table.
That came later, though.
Curled around my first guitar on the front step, maybe? Must’ve been. I don’t remember how else he knew I could play. I remember our porch, and his hammers on Ziggy. That’s exactly what [...]
I ran into one of my favorite professors today on the subway, trundling to work in this non-event of a snowstorm.
We briefly caught up (me, married! him, reconstructing his house! my band, awesome!), and the conversation then turned to my blogging proclivity and how I have yet to abandon it. [...]
There is a wonderful meme sweeping the illustrators of blogland wherein they render an antiqued paperback cover for a modern classic.
I first caught this meme earlier in the month from the blog of author Martha Wells, who pointed to these clever Harry Potter covers, in the style of classic [...]
