This is probably my favorite of the Actors' demos.  Coincidentally or not it's also a) the one that I had the most influence on and b) the one that Nate, the bassist, disagreed with me most about on the tone and arrangement...but as it's recorded here, this is definitely "my" version.

In Nate's inner ear, this was supposed to sound like the Cars or some other kind of new-wave thing that frankly I was never in to in the first place.  I didn't know that until after I'd put my very heavy mark on it and we'd recorded it and been playing it for months, and I still just can't hear it any other way. 

I get this mental image of windsailing across a desert or something.  It's upbeat, it's got all the right punctuation and energy.  They lyrics, which Nate wrote (he's also singing here), have to do with not sleeping with a girl because he'd promised some other girl that he'd sleep with her, and the internal regrets/conflicts that resulted. 

As for the recording itself, it's a bit sloppy...in addition to the dirtiness of the overall recording that I described in the Claudia and 99th President articles, we were all fairly drunk by this point and my timing suffered for sure. 

It's still my favorite; it captures the "bigness" that I've always liked, very arena-rock-meets-arena-grunge sort of feeling to it.  I wouldn't say that it's a song I'd write myself (just the drum parts and arrangement are mine), but it's the song from this band that sounds closest to the kind of music I'd prefer to make.  This track could fit in on any alterna-college radio station in the country without sounding out of place, and on some of the hard rock stations as well.  It's melodic, it drives, it's not too long or too short, it's not overplayed or underplayed anywhere...it's just a good tune, period.  Some listeners will probably say my hair-metal roots are showing strongly here.