"Talking About Myself" is the first of three songs on GO WEST that I wrote in 1993-94. You can call them the "sexual dysfunction trilogy" as each one deals with the inability to bond with other people, in increasingly alarming terms and again, there was no need to go back as a songwriter and try to recreate what it was like to be that person when I was writing brutally honest songs about it at the time. "Talking About Myself" in many ways is the first decent song I ever wrote, even though I'd been writing songs for years prior. The version of the song on RARITIES VOL. 1 was recorded in Summer 1993 with future Cockeyed Ghost members Rob Cassell and Robert Ramos, as well as future Nerfherder bassist Justin Fisher. These were the first sessions where I started to get a clue about how to apply my own influences to what was going on in music around me and order my lyrical thoughts in an understandable and relatable way. I'd gotten some good advice about this from Justin and his roommate and ex-bandmate Rivers, whose band shared practice room with ours and who loaned me his guitar amp for the recording...which was the first time I'd ever had a decent guitar tone in my life. About this time I borrowed a bunch of CDs from those two, bought a few more, and took off on a cross-country road trip. I deliberately did not take along any of my old comfort food music, just new stuff. When Frank Black's version of "Hang On To Your Ego" played, the light went off in my head. Punk rock and indie pop wasn't some alien life form...it was my music. The mainstream and pop stuff was cool, but I realized I'd spent my life hanging out in the wrong room.

Likewise, "Talking About Myself" was a turning point for me, writing-wise. I had written literally hundreds of songs prior to that, but this was the first song where I really found my own voice. The pop thing was there, but so was a certain grit and ruthless honesty that I'd been too much of a pussy to embrace before that. It's probably no coincidence that the song's lyrics deal with my self-absorption and social deficits that kept me from really connecting emotionally with an audience or my own writing. Musically, the shifting bridge with the church organ is a particularly proud songwriting moment.

This song and others laid around for awhile until January 1994, when I finished it for some songwriting contest or other. It came out pretty well, and this was one of the songs that was played at Cockeyed Ghost's debut gig the following month and when we made our first live demo soon afterwards. Kurt and I liked the song and revisited it various times over the years, and it was considered for every single Cockeyed Ghost album but never quite fit, but its minor-keyed social pessimism was perfect for GO WEST. The new version closely followed the original demo, with Teresa and I (and Evie in spots) performing the harmonies and a rich, rootsy acoustic-electric guitar sound. Despite the crispness of the recording, this was the single most difficult song to mix of the album. We did three complete remixes before everyone was satisfied with the end product.