Thread by @frankportman

Minor Secrets of "Here She Comes" Revealed!



(thread below)

Hail Wodan, that is to say Woden, that is to say Odin, lord of the wind, Sleipnir-borne, soft-hatted, grey-bearded, one-eyed, the hovering one, viator indefessus, his hounds in pursuit, his ravens Huginn and Muninn (thought and memory) ever airborne...

...his spear Gungnir shooting out sparks of lightning. I never, EVER, let go of a conceit, and I'm not letting go of this one. It's Wodensdæg and thus: a Song for Odin. Depend upon it.

To wit: this here rendition of "Here She Comes," an unlikely survival, from a Bay Area cable channel show called San Francisco Sound, from ca. 1998 probably.

If I'm not mixing it up with something else, the taping was done in the Starlight Room (atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel) in San Francisco and was arranged by our pal Ian Brennan.

If so, we did one other song ("Another Yesterday") and possibly a third, though as far as I have seen nothing but this one survives.

I remember it being a bit of a disaster, just an endeavor where we were out of our element and nothing clicked, and I was secretly glad to console myself with the secure knowledge that hardly anyone would end up seeing it. (Which was true.)

But despite a slightly hilarious and unfortunate back-up-vox-heavy mix ("front-ups" we used to say) this really is pretty darn good. And that Coronet plus JCM 800 sounds as terrific as ever.

That great big Mr T Experience logo banner was an expensive folly, made in Europe for our '96 European tour with Green Day, though we weren't actually allowed to put it up very often (and maybe never, I can't remember.)

We carried it around through Italy, Germany, Slovenia, etc., and then took it back with us in its own piece of luggage, but were never able to use it at our own shows: it was much too big for any of our venues.

This is probably the only time it was ever displayed, or at any rate one of the few times. Not sure if it still exists. Jim may still have it.

As for the song, I revealed some minor secrets on that a ways back, writing about the '98 Seattle RCKNDY show, and I'll quote that here, because you may well have missed it:

'"Here She Comes" is one of those songs where the Tin Pan Alley / Noel Coward approach to the lyrics actually clicks; the preposterous, yet (or hence) excellent, rhymes work almost in spite of themselves. Plus, I'll always love "je ne sais quoi like you wouldn't believe."

And that ayes/eyes nos/nose stuff... well, ya gotta amuse yourself first and foremost, if you wanna dance alone. Maybe folks don't dig it because of that stuff, maybe it's just because it's "peppy" or whatever, but they do seem to dig it.

This was always going to be the lead-off track for Revenge Is Sweet... from the beginning, and though my original plan to give it a "new wave" Attractions-ish tinge with a subtle Farfisa stab and drone on the 7th during the intro parts and bridge never materialized...

... it came out pretty much as intended otherwise. (The released recording, especially the CD version, was way over-compressed, though, something I'd really like to change if a re-issue ever materializes.)

But production and technical details that you fret about so much in the moment tend to fall away over time (unless they're notably great or memorably terrible) leaving only the song, somehow, in the end.

A solid song can transcend just about any error of judgment, or lousy drum track, or sacrifice of dynamics for loudness, or terrible vocalist.

You just gotta give it twenty years or so. This, at least, I have learned.'

(Here's that original post: doktorfrank.com/archives/2018/…)

To that I'll only add that since writing it I've learned some things about the MTX tape archive. Most of the multitrack master tapes of the Revenge Is Sweet sessions are lost, and quite unlikely to turn up, ruling out any remix outside of perhaps a few songs.

(The two reels I have are not labelled -- that they are RiSasAY reels is an educated guess -- so I don't know what's on them. It could be just seven takes of "Lawnmower of Love," who knows? It could even be some other band entirely.)

Basically we're stuck with the extant mix, which I hope is flat enough that we can work with it, but as per Kevin's comments in his recent Tape Op interview, it seems like the mix itself was heavily squashed pre-mastering.

It was what everyone was doing at the time but it's rather unfortunate that that's what everyone was doing at the time, and particularly unfortunate when your masters have evaporated.

I do now have a high-res digital capture of the edited mixed master reels... I'm working up the gumption to listen to it. A re-issue is planned, and I'll have more to say about that in future. We'll see if we get there.

Wishing you a pleasant Wodensdæg and a blessed holiday season,

I remain,

your Doctor