WET



performed on:
This song is very hard to recognize live. It's a beautiful keyboard instrumental with some minimal atmospheric guitar and lovely wordless harmony vocals from the entire band. In truth, the EP version actually is the same exact song except with a very funny sample from a porn movie played over it. The record company objected to the content of the sample so the band simply turned in the EP with the song completely backwards. The result is terrifying; the vocals suddenly sound like living evocation of hopeless death, the sample is creepily distant and filled with echo, the guitars and keyboards all seem to be screaming in pain. Plaastik hoped to use the original version on their debut album for Geffen in 1983, adding a few overdubs, but they too turned the track down and the band again destroyed it in another way entirely, releasing it as the backing track to "My Laundry is Yours."

A version closer to the original intention did surface on the "Hot Glass" single called "da funk mix," but this is a completely new recording with a dance beat and wah-wah pedal. The porn sample is still there, but backwards. Capitol finally brought the original recording out on SUPER FUN GOLDFISH TOYS, billed mysteriously as the "Sweet 'n' Low Mix," but DGC beat them to the punch somewhat. On the first best-of, PROJECTION CONSISTENCY, Plaastik and Geffen opted to release a demo of the song that is essentially identical to early live versions (no porn, of course).

After a lengthy absence, the song returned to live performances in 2001. It was never in the setlists but if the band heard someone shouting for it, they obliged. Once this had happened twice, fans caught wind of it and, of course, it became an almost nightly occurrence. One night (8/7/01) when someone evidently unfamiliar with the track's convulted history continued to shout for it after it had been played, the band as a joke attempted to reproduce the backwards version precisely, resulting in a mess of fun confusion and amusing proof that they listen to their own records, at least this one, with some regularity.


[instrumental]