Wednesday, June 30, 2010

20 Years in the Wrong Place

I realized a few weeks ago that I was coming up on the 20-year anniversary of one of my favorite originals. So, I'm indulging myself.

I wrote "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" back on 30 June 1990 (according to my notebook from the time), though I suppose it technically might have been percolating over a longer stretch. The title came from a mix tape a friend made for another friend and me, the sentiment for the song came from an on-again, off-again relationship (which I think was on again when I wrote it?)...

As I said, I'm indulging myself, so I include four versions of the song, the first two of which are from old poorly-recorded cassettes, and so have even more than the usual handicap as a result. The first version is from the summer of 1990, not long after I wrote it. The band is Dr. Lüst and the setting is a practice session in Masterton Melody Lounge in East Campus. I did the old "I can't sing this so I'm going to recite it" trick for the bridges, which I reprised as recently as my most recent post on this blog.

I wasn't crazy about the arrangement on the first version, and we sped it way way up for the second version, Dr. Lüst recorded live during the winter of 1990-1991 at a Bexley party that we drove everyone away from. It was too bad, we were pretty good that night (all things considered). Against my better judgment we played something more like the first version at Battle of the Bands during the spring of 1991, except with 1000 times worse singing on my part. After that, I didn't revive it for any of the other bands I was in.

In 2000, however, I decided to record it for my first "album", The Red Album. I went for the second ("fast") arrangement and piled on the synthesizers, and it became one of my new old favorites and one I was really happy with. Hence, the third version.

Upon realizing I was coming up on the 20th anniversary and that I had both 0th anniversary and 10th anniversary recordings, I decided to re-rerecord it again. So, the fourth version here is newly done in Garageband. It's perhaps closest to the version I inflicted on some of the East Campus folks back in the day while sitting outside my dorm room learning to play guitar, though this version has two guitars and a chorus effect. Progress marches on.

1 August 2012: Edited to change link for 3rd and 4th version of WPWT to the Bandcamp site, where they appear on The Red Album and as the B-side on the Men Are From Mars single, respectively.