Misfits and Slow Learners Unreleased Track 1: When the Time Comes by Cub Lea as Hot Spot Last updated 05/06

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	Credits:	Words, music, arrangement & production by Cub Lea, 11/87
	Players:	Cub Lea (all instruments)
	Guitars:	Westone "fat Strat" (Bill Lawrence L500 bridge); heavily EQ'd with a Boss 10-band stomp-box EQ; stomp-box chorus; Tokai Talbo bass using heavy foam mute at bridge & preamp to overdrive
	Drums:	Roland TR-505 digital rhythm composer
	Keys:	Yamaha FB-01, Casio CZ101 via MIDI keyboard
	Notes:	Recorded and mixed on a Tascam PortaStudio 0.5 4-track cassette recorder 12/87-01/88 in a Toronto, Canada rooming house

Concept

This was yet another turn of arrogance which I still have trouble with. This song was built around the basic riff underneath "when the time comes" and was constructed essentially as a complete unit...the lyric evolved with the music, making this one of the most holistic compositional processes I'd ever had.

The original theme of this song wasn't set until I was past writing the verse and into chorus, and began to see a picture emerging of a man lamenting the end of a "relationship that could have been". This turned out to be one of several songs I'd write in this period that would have profoundly prophetic overtones...a major relationship ended (or suspended indefinitely) under circumstances very much like these not long after the Hot Spot site subsection was first produced.

I'm not sure that I ever had a clear musical influence for this track...it more or less evolved musically and tonally from my total memory of FM radio rock of the 1970s and 1980s.

The song was strong enough that I eventually redid it at a professional level in a 16-track studio as We Go On, but the rewrite suffered from gear-availability problems (the synth tracks were weak), a failure to get the same fat bass tone (my Talbo had long since been sold off; I didn't keep any instrument on which I could make a decent profit), and a change in lyrical direction prompted by a fear that it was too lyrically dense to be marketable. At that time, I was sadly too concerned with earning a living at this to keep good songs intact when they worked, and I knew damn well that this was a power ballad that might easily get picked up for recording by any of a hundred different hair bands of the era if I could ever find an agent to push it for me.

Execution

The song came out not too badly, but the entire production is far too dense. I had been working with a mixing/mastering model based on getting a clean, even set of bars in the readout from a stereo 15-band EQ with band level meters. It worked marvellously well on most of the other tracks, but this needed a more judicious approach.

The slow, even build of the song worked out quite nicely. The bass line, played with an oddball Tokai Talbo aluminum bass with an unusual pickup that gave it the relatively sweet overdriven tone heard here, complemented this quite well, and at the time this was recorded I had the luxury of both a Casio CZ101 and a Yamaha FB-01 for a tone palette. But as with all Misfits-era tracks, I was limited to synth lines with zero control over velocity (dynamics). Fortunately this track doesn't suffer much for that.

The bell-like tone came from a special wiring setup I arranged in my cheap Westone "fat-strat", which used a Bill Lawrence L500, a pickup I've always loved for its sweet, fat, semi-sterile tone.

When the Time Comes

When the time came
I was right, and on the wrong side
When the time came
You brought the night and the dark age dawned
What I'd give to lose my freedom
But our time came
There will be no sleep tonight

Chorus:
In the heat of the moment we exchanged a vow
And the love that we cherished is behind us now
We can each have our freedom but the love's still ours
And now the time's gone

When the time came
I felt the pull but I could only resist
When the time came
We had our shots and thank god they missed
What I'd give to turn back time (But no)
Let's go smiling different ways

Chorus:
In the heat of the moment we exchanged a vow
And the love that we cherished is behind us now
We can each have our freedom but the love's still ours
And now there's no time
(No time left for anything but the rage)

When the time comes
I'll remember only good times
When the day dawns
I'll regret every angry line
I go back on every time you made my eyes shine
It does no good to say goodbye

Chorus:
In the heat of the moment we denied our vow
And the love never faded and we know this now
I can put it behind me if you show me how/And tell me who is the winner in our games of power
As the time's come
Now our time's come
Our time's come
The time's come

Copyright ©1988 Living Skill Music