Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

(The last fifty or sixty hours have not been especially good for me physically (despite the very good exciting news Saturday evening) -- muscle pain, severe headaches, stretches of insomnia broken by really poor sleep ... trying to get things done in the times between taking drugs and the drugs wearing off, trying to rest in the times between drugs wearing off and it being long enough since the last dose to take more drugs, not doing especially well at either of those. Weeks like this happen, unfortunately. I try to deal. (Not very well, but I try.) In the meantime, I get frustrated and decide to distract myself with LiveJournal every so often.)

Anyhow, I found a cassette containing a recording of a performance by a band I used to be in (a while before the performance that got made into an album), so I played it to see just what was there while I've been trying to get some work done, and it's a pretty terrible recording, and the performance is a little uneven on some songs, but it turns out that there's some good playing there (obscured by the poor recording). That's rather reassuring.

(Note: It's easier to listen to my own playing a long time after a recording was made than it is while I still remember where all the mistakes are to listen for. I can actually judge my playing, if it's been long enough.)

Well, I got to the end of the tape and reached to flip it over, and I noticed that there was no label on side B. Looking more closeley at the label on side A, I saw where it said "Yamaha MT100" ... which meant it was recorded on a borrowed four-track, and I'd just listened to two of the four tracks. Whoops. I went ahead and flipped it over to make sure it was what I thought it was, and sure enough, there's another track (apparently only three tracks were used that night), that I'm now listening to backwards.

Harmonica doesn't sound terribly strange backwards. Guitar does a little, but in a familiar way because it's a trick that's been used a lot -- it doesn't register as wrong. Human speech and singing is quickly identifiable as backwards-voice; the wrongness gets classified quickly ... but hearing someone laugh backwards really caught my attention as being a really odd sound.