#meRightNow: obsessively tweaking the playback speed of one recording of a band performance from... [checks notes]... 29 years ago, to try to get it to sync up with the other one, for slightly better overall audio quality.

The performance wasn't even that good. (It kind of sucked... though I think I performed ok.)

Why am I doing this.

It feels like... not so much an attempt to redeem the past, to recover something of value from it (although I'm probably trying to do that as well) as just to have the best possible testaments to all the time and energy -- the slices of my life -- that I invested in what were, ultimately, dead ends.

I bought the $1000 DAT recorder I couldn't afford. I brought it to the show. I brought the discarded bedside cassette recorder-thing with built-in stereo mics to the show. I made sure the cassette recorder was recording (the DAT was up in the soundbooth, so I couldn't supervise that... and they actually forgot to switch it on until a few seconds into the first song). I transcribed the cassette recording onto the same DAT cartridge, so they'd both be together and analog deterioration wouldn't be an issue. I hung on to all those DAT carts through 2 moves and 29 years. I digitally transcribed the DATs to computer, when that became possible.

Meanwhile... after the band broke up because the bassist and primary gear owner couldn't get along with the guitarist, the guitarist and drummer and I got together at the guitarist's house and did some recordings of his songs on his Mac, with me playing an actual piano he had there. I felt like those recordings really had some potential (I generally liked his songs), but was quite disappointed in the mixes he sent me later.

By that time I also had digital audio capability, and tried to get him to send me the original multi-track files (I think they call those "stems" now?) so I could remix them, and he kept saying he would but he never did.

So here we are.