Travis’ Top Tier: Music: Crush by Dave Matthews Band

To start off this little feature I’ve come up with to give my blog some life and personality, I’ve decided to focus on a song that is one of my favorite songs of all time, and coincidentally has a music video that is equally good and even manages to elevate its best element.

The song is one of Dave Matthews’ often overlooked gems, Crush.

Now, Dave certainly has his share of love songs, Crash being the obvious popular choice. But in my opinion Crush tops it. Why, you ask? Well, for starters, Crash, like many other of Dave’s love songs, is deceptively vulgar. I’m not sure when that last time you looked at one of his lyric sheets or actually, ya know, listened to the words, but there’s a lot in there that might surprise you if you’ve never picked up on it before.

Not that that’s a bad thing. Crash is a great song. Hell, I’ve made out to it just as anybody else who spent significant time listening to the band with a date in the past 10-15 years. But Crush is quite a different love song.

From the very opening baseline you can tell you’re in for a different sound. The tone that’s set right off the bat is one of mellowness and a smoothness that suggests class. This is the song you won’t be afraid to play at a wedding, both because of its PC lyrics and its implications of sweeping a girl off her feet as a cherished treasure.

I’ve been in love before; full-on using the words beautiful, gorgeous, and all the synonyms you can think of, touch her face gently as you look into her eyes and each stare a bit before leaning in for a passionate kiss kind of love. And anyone else who’s been in love will attest that it’s the greatest thing in the world. And when you’re that kind of “I want to marry you I love you so much” love, this is a song that expresses perfectly that feeling of wanting to put this wonderful, beautiful girl on a pedestal and carry her away in class and show her parents how much of a gentleman you are.

With a chorus like:

It’s crazy I’m thinking
Just knowing that the world is round
Here I’m dancing on the ground
Am I right side up or upside down
Is this real or am I dreaming

It just makes you want to sing this to your special someone in an upscale wine bar after buying her a ridiculously expensive martini and make them feel like the most special person in the world; someone who you can’t believe you are with every day.

When I first fell in love and heard this song, it was a powerful combination. We danced to this song at our wedding, and it was perfect and everything was right with the world.

Even now, 3 years after my divorce, with relationships in between ranging from short flings to a year and a half relationship where I also fell in love, and currently single and living as a bachelor, I can still listen to the song and appreciate it. It’s still a great love song that exudes classiness and brings back those feelings. Not necessarily of my ex-wife, but feelings of being in that state of love and feeling like everything will be ok and you have this person who loves you back and will be there for you no matter what.

The video only takes the classy vibe to another level. Set in a dimly-lit, possibly 50s-era jazz club, with a black and white filter, the setting alone is enough to instill the proper atmosphere. Further, all the background actors, dancers, musicians, bartenders, and Dave himself are wearing fancy, night-on-the-town attire. The women are in evening dresses and the men are in smart ties and hats. People are smoking, drinking, dancing, smiling, and laughing as they sit around tables and the band plays up on stage.

At the start of the song, Dave is sitting at the bar with a cigarette in his hand, milking a martini while he sings out his feelings. He is alone and it’s never revealed who he’s singing about or even if he is referring to any woman in particular, but a leading lady is not needed. It’s right for the atmosphere and this way the listener can imagine himself in the setting with the girl (or guy) of his (or her) dreams.

When the song hits its midpoint violin solo, Dave takes this as a cue to get up from the bar, walk to the back room, grab his guitar, and head on up to the stage to finish the performance and give the remainder of the song that much more feeling and energy. It’s great stuff, and deserves to run with the best of the Dave Matthews catalog.

A New Look, and Travis’ Top Tier

Ok so I’ve completely redone my blog. Ever since I started writing more professionally, I’ve thought about taking this space and trying to connect it a little with my writing for sites and make it more of a portfolio type thing, while still being able to keep it a relatively personal place to keep as a blog/journal. Hopefully this is a successful first run at that.

I rather like the new layout. It allows me a lot of flexibility with featured pics and sticky posts and things. Stuff that I will hopefully use more in the future. Especially since I’ve been thinking of different ideas for making this site more of a portfolio. I’ve been thinking about different features and things that will (in theory) give me more motivation to write regularly, as well as present something a little more skilled and thought out should for some reason someone ever want to look at my work with a more critical eye for the purposes of seeing what I can do.

I’ve been rather sick lately so I haven’t produced much, here or for Pixel Perfect, barely managing to poop out a couple articles a week. I’ve only now caught up on the stories assigned to me recently, but I still have a review to write which I’ve been putting off for two weeks while dealing with my impending death (I exaggerate, but still). Actually, I have another, albeit short, game to play and related review to write tomorrow too. Ugh.

Plus, my day job (i.e. the one that pays me) has recently instituted mandatory 50 hour work weeks, so I’ve been putting in stupid hours there for a while now. Apparently there’s a lot of work that HAS to get done by February 17 otherwise shit will hit the fan. Oh well, at least they’re willing to pay us to stay and get the work done that needs to. You know, instead of giving us 10 hours of work a day and telling us we have to do it in 8 hours a day and if we don’t we just suck and if the entire staff complains of being overworked well that’s just tough cookies and you need to get more efficient. Bah.

Anyway, I’m prepping to write my reviews and thinking on ways to make this writing gig something that will be good for me career-wise. Not that I’m expecting this to turn into a career, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t do what I can to make a name and a presence for myself in this kind of professional space. I can still do things and go places and make contacts and produce content I can feel proud of.

That’s kind of been the biggest revelation for me about this whole thing, and it’s something that’s inspired this blog revision and everything else I hope to do with my writing, personally and professionally. Producing content that is going somewhere where people see and read and occasionally comment on it, it’s been incredibly encouraging and inspiring. It feels like what I’m doing is being validated and that there’s a skill that I’m good at. For a long time now I’ve felt like there is nothing that I am good at that a lot of other people can’t do and that I can be proud of. I’m not an athlete, I can’t play sports or score a winning home run or make a breakaway skate down a rink and shoot a goal or jump a ramp on my bike and pull of a great trick. I don’t act in plays, I don’t race cars or motorcycles (as awesome as that would be), I don’t tear up the social scene and leave a memorable impression on people.

All I have is my video games, which no one cares about, and my writing. I love to do it, I’m good at it, and by producing content that shows that knowledge and skill and have people read it, gives what I do purpose and gives me something that I’m doing that not a lot of people do and that I can point people to and be proud of.

Not that I’ve ever needed such validation in the past. I don’t need to go into an existential rant about that kind of thing. But to someone who has spent the majority of his life quietly off to the side and remains someone who doesn’t like being the center of attention, it feels pretty good to potentially come out of the shadows a little and be recognized.

So, to celebrate this, I’ve decided to debut my latest and greatest feature I’ve come up with. I’ve decided to call it Travis’ Top Tier. This is so I can abbreviate it as TTT. See how clever I am…..heh yeah yeah, shut up this is my blog, it’s awesome.

Travis’ Top Tier will be a way for me to feature various Songs, Bands, Movies, Games, or pretty much whatever I want. A way for me to expand on a Twitter post and make it clear that, in my mind, this is a cream of the crop piece of work that is worth of everyone’s attention. Not that everybody will agree with me. That’s ok. This will be a very subjective thing, but if you’re open to try new things or want to hear what I think of some of my favorite things, here you go. Look for the first entry into my hall of fame-like feature soon! Actually, I’ll probably put it up tonight.

Hope the new format works as cool as I think it looks. I’ll be back with more soon.

Ramblerambleramble

So much for trying to write something every day lol. Oh well. To be honest, at the moment I really feel like writing something but cannot for the life of me think of anything I want to write about. Maybe I’ll just start typing random thoughts as they come to me.

Man I love the Smashing Pumpkins. They’re playing on my iPod right now and damn if they’re not the greatest bit of music from the 90s I’ve ever heard. Billy Corgan is a lyrical genius and an amazing musician. I hope he never stops producing creative work.

There’s three people at the table next to me in this coffee shop that are having a meeting. Don’t know if it’s wedding planning or what, but they’re talking in another language, I think Russian. There were another three people in here earlier that was obviously the happy couple meeting with a DJ for their wedding. Made me smile and remember all the good times. I’m glad I can do that.

Now Foster the People is on the iPod. I’ve been hooked on them for a wile now, even though they’re a total hipster band and I feel like one just listening to it. But whatever, I’ve come to terms with my hipster side, it’s not such a bad thing.

Went on a date with a girl last night. Went pretty well. Plans are in the works for another one. Still don’t know each other that well so we’ll see what happens.

I really need to get on it and finish Bastion. It’s shameful how I still have not completed it. On that note, I need to sit down and finish To the Moon too. Especially if they want me to take part in the podcast about it they’re doing.

I got a new webcam, and in the few times I’ve used it since setting it up it performed admirably. Surprisingly, my PC even held up pretty well. I wasn’t sure if it would be able to handle it but so far I’ve recorded a short video of myself and taken part in a podcast recording via Skype and have had no issues whatsoever. I am excited. Maybe I’ll do a video blog this weekend. This will also allow me to do Skype interviews should the opportunity arise in the near future.

Speaking of said things, it’s pretty fucking awesome to actually write about video games for an actual website. I’m actually writing on a regular schedule and I couldn’t be happier about it. Who knows where this will go. I’ve wanted to write about games for a long long time so I plan to take advantage of this opportunity and ride it wherever the journey takes me.

it just occurred to me last night how I have more nerd friends now than I’ve ever had before. That’s actually kind of sad in a way because it speaks to my social abilities (or lack thereof) for the majority of my life, but it’s pretty awesome to know more people that share my interests and passions and spend time with them.

Working in mortgages again is proving extremely frustrating compared to what it used to be. Thanks to the market crash and all the checks and balances and regulations that have been put in place because of it, trying to close a mortgage loan is like trying to align the fucking stars and planets all at once. I guess that’s as it should be, but goddamn is it frustrating. It’s not so bad though, I still enjoy doing what I do and don’t regret coming back to the bank at all. Oh, and this 8-5 work schedule is for the birds. Ugh.

Ok now John Meyer is on the iPod. I must say, I’m not ashamed to admit that his music and voice are damn powerful. If I was gay or a chick and a guy played his music for me, I’d be done. Hell, even as a straight man his music is enough to do strange things to me. It’s no wonder girls drop like flies at the sound of his music.

I should probably post some kind of 2011 retrospective or something, but I’m not sure I want or need to. Every time I feel like doing it I lose my motivation. Here’s the cliffs notes version. 2011 started off pretty good but started to get worse as my girlfriend and I broke up. It was a peaceful, mutual split though and we are still friends, so I’m very grateful for that. The rest of the year was relatively uneventful. I went skydiving again, which was phenomenal as always. Met a girl there that resulted in a couple months of fun as we seemed to hit it off pretty well. Nothing serious came of it though and we were both ok for it being exactly what it was and nothing more.

The year started to take another downward turn in the second half when things at my previous job got really intense and the workload reached insane levels. I was super stressed out for a while until the bank offered me a job doing very similar work as what I did for them before, plus a big raise to boot. Needless to say, I jumped on that ship pretty fast. Then this writing thing came along with Justin and Pixel Perfect right around Thanksgiving. All in all the year ended on a pretty big high note.

In 2012 I have a few goals planned. I hope to pay off a good portion of my bills and maybe even save a bit of money. Now that I’m writing for a legitimate gaming site, there’s a slight possibility that I might get to go to E3 as a member of the press, so I’m trying to save money for that should the opportunity arise. Don’t know if it’ll happen or not, but if it doesn’t then at least I’ll end up with some money squirreled away.

Basically, I’m back to living life for me and enjoying being my own person and hanging out with my friends. Still pretty ok with being single. I’ve decided that I don’t mind being single until the right girl comes along. I can have some fun in the meantime and if a girl comes along that I get attached to then that’s ok too.

Man I hope this post doesn’t delete itself when I try to post it. Last time I write up a blog my WordPress iPad app crashed when I tried to post it. I’m not going to bother retyping all this if that happens again.

I should probably go home now. Assuming they’ve fixed my heater. If not then I may just go to bed early. I’ve written the news story I needed to turn in today and don’t really have anything else planned for the rest of the night except dinner and maybe some video games.

I think I’m done rambling for now anyway. Felt kind of good to write though, even it was just stupid random ridiculousness.