Some Songs Considered

“Electrolite (live July 19, 2003)” – R.E.M. 
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, available on Perfect Square DVD, Warner Brothers 2004)  

If you take Michael Stipe’s word for it, “Electrolite” got its title out of failure to find the right word.  I imagine anyone who writes knows how this feels and wouldn’t begrudge Stipe for seeing the warm yet distant starlight and not immediately coming up with “phosphorescence” or “bioluminescence.”  After all, “Electrolite” fits the melody better than the more accurate words.  

I bring this up for a couple reasons.  First, I’m trying to jar myself out of a wordless period (or a period where I haven’t had the energy to find the right words).  However, it’s worth noting in a song errantly titled, Stipe put together words in a way that still resonates perfectly with me.  Stipe describes the feeling of sitting on top of Mullholland Drive in Los Angeles taking in the city cloaked in a mix of streetlights and starlight and plainly encourages the listener not to be scared because “you are alive.”  In the context of the song, it’s encouragement to move closer and get a better view, but there are plenty of moments where I hear this line louder than the others.  It’s too easy to let inaction or fear make decisions for us rather than summon some courage (or nerve) to get past it.  After all, just as the best view comes right at the edge of the cliff, sometimes we have to tiptoe out of our comfort zone to get the best view.  

So as 2011 starts, I want to try to keep this in mind.  It’s OK to go toe to toe with the edge sometimes, whether that means taking a chance on something or just risking not finding the right words.  “Don’t be afraid, you are alive.”  Now it’s time to act that way.  

(As always, a more eloquent and insightful analysis of the song itself is waiting for you at Popsongs 07-08)

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Billy Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, available on Reckoning, I.R.S. 1984)

The story goes that I never slept an entire night as a baby until my brother was born in October of 1984.  At that point, Pete took the crib and I moved to a bed and I started sleeping.  For those first eighteen months, my mom would sit up with me in the rocking chair in their living room and watch TV.  MTV was one of her favorites, probably because there was little else on overnight in those early days of cable, and thus even to this day claims familiarity with anything MTV played, no matter how weird or obscure, from 1983 to 1984. 

Fast forward roughly a decade and a half – I’m still watching MTV late at night (usually by choice, often through tapes of 120 Minutes the following morning) and I’ve started scouring through R.E.M.’s fairly expansive back catalog.  This includes finding a used copy of the Succumbs VHS in order to see all of the band’s videos.  Each video carried an element of familiarity (after all, I knew these songs as well as I knew anything at that age), but the visuals – often surreal, often extremely dated – were a new experience to absorb.  Except for the video for “So. Central Rain” – for whatever reason, the silhouettes of the band members behind a shaggy-haired Stipe seemed strangely familiar.  It wasn’t until a few years later that I arranged all of the pieces in a way best described as unlikely and apocryphal.

Still, it’s worth asking – did I recognize the “So. Central Rain” video from those late nights as a baby?  Was it possible that my first memory, even if I couldn’t associate it with a time, was of a music video?

I’ll be reasonable – this is wishful thinking at best.  However, the facts all align: I was already a year old when the single came out in May 1984, and if I really slept as rarely as my mom tells me, chances are we saw this video a few times during those late nights.  A decade later, in the time between New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up, I grew to love the band, starting a life-long love and borderline obsession with music.  Is it possible that my tastes, whether specific points like R.E.M. or just general predilection for jangly, wordy, melancholy music goes back to the sounds and pictures that accompanied my newborn insomnia? 

Chances are this is a case of my brain constructing memories where there are gaps, letting “what-if” gradually twist itself until theory becomes personal folklore and personal folklore becomes history.  I accept the improbability of this chain of events and recognize that it’s just my mind playing tricks on me. 

At the same time, a tiny part of me wants to believe this version of history.  After all, how perfect would that be?

(On a historical note, Blender had a nice feature a few years ago that serves as a small oral history of the song, starting with its genesis from a weather report and including its performance on David Letterman’s Late Night before it had a title and the aforementioned video’s live vocal track.  It’s certainly worth a read!)

More on R.E.M. : Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Carnival of Sorts (Boxcar)” – The Feelies
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, recorded live in Woodstock, NY 9/12/2009 and available via nyctaper)

One of the unintended consequences to obsessing over a band is to unravel and retrace their influences.  Being a devout R.E.M. fan meant travelling down several paths.  The trio of Velvet Underground covers on Dead Letter Office made the Velvet Underground an obvious choice, as did Michael Stipe’s repeated and enthusiastic mentions of Patti Smith in various interviews.  The Feelies came later only after someone connected the dots for me that R.E.M.’s earliest songs “sound a lot like Crazy Rhythms.”  Sure enough, the same guitar tone (which I want to say that Buck said came from plugging the guitar directly into the mixing board, but I can’t remember exactly) and frantic energy filled these songs.  If the Feelies weren’t a direct influence on R.E.M., they certainly drew from a similar pool of influences.

Naturally, when I saw that the Feelies recently covered an R.E.M. song from the Chronic Town EP, my heart nearly skipped a beat.  Having seen the band perform earlier this year, I was eager to hear them play one of my favorite early R.E.M. tunes.  Not surprisingly, they perfectly replicated the original’s guitar in tempo, tone, and tune – easily as good as the way R.E.M. played the song on tour in 2008, at least.  It made sense, as this similarity drew me into the band in the first place.  Even though vocalist Glenn Mercer flubbed a few lyrics (which, to be fair, Michael Stipe does on a regular basis), he captured not only the melody of the original but also the intonation in his delivery.  His performance singing the tune made it sound as natural as one of his own, which is as good as a cover version gets.  Aside from a mini guitar jam at the end, their version stays faithful to the original, which fit in nicely with the rest of the band’s set.

(Kudos to the always terrific nyctaper for sharing yet another brilliant live recording!)

More on The Feelies: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Half a World Away” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, available on Out of Time, Warner Brothers 1991) 

For someone like me who enjoys the process of writing about music – (over)thinking about a song, collecting thoughts, and finding the right words to crystallize a personal connection – Matthew Perpetua’s Pop Songs collection is essential reading.  The wonderful writing combined with the subject of the blog –   R.E.M.’s pre-Accelerate catalog – tackling the only band I’ve ever called my favorite, makes the Pop Songs blog my personal holy grail.  In fact, starting this blog sixteen months ago, it was Pop Songs (among others, including Perpetua’s flagship Fluxblog) that set the standard for the kind of writing I work toward creating. 

So naturally, before writing about an R.E.M. song, I wanted to cross-reference with the Pop Songs blog to make sure I wasn’t taking the same angle that Perpetua covered far more eloquently.  It turns out that we have entirely different associations with the song!  Buoyed by a Christmas memory of his first CD player, Perpetua associates the song with winter.  I’ve always thought of late spring or early summer, perhaps because Stipe sets the song during dusk.  It’s this feeling of dusk as the most beautiful time of day (usually during late spring / early summer) and thus as the time where heartbreak hits the hardest.  After all, the moments where separation always hits me the hardest are the moments where the missing person’s presence are missed the most.  Aside from our differing associations, we’re on the same page.  Even with the skilled instrumentation around it, the spotlight stays firmly affixed on Stipe’s vocal performance.  Watching Stipe’s voice rise and fall with his imagery is a masterclass in performance; Stipe foils his imagery with perhaps his best vocal performance on the album, letting his voice rise and fall in a way that augments his imagery.  As with many of Stipe’s best lyrics, his performance builds on the imagery; as his voice rises to meet the chorus, he runs through a series of directions – “blackbirds, backwards, forward and fall” – and by that point I’m completely sucked into the melody that Stipe that the clever wordplay becomes a bonus. 

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“9-9 (Live at Florida Atlantic University, 1984)” - R.E.M.
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, originally available on Murmur, I.R.S. 1983)

(This post originally ran as a guest post on A Post Punk Tumblr’s Top 35 or So Songs of the 1980s late last summer, not because “9 - 9” specifically was one of the best songs on Tristan’s list, but because Tristan was kind enough to ask me to write a guest post.  I linked to it but never ran the text of it on this blog, and with all of the new people reading this blog I thought today was as good a time as any to run it.  It was originally shared with the studio version, but tonight is shared with a solid bootleg from the Reckoning era).

The paradox of music is that it’s simultaneously a shared experience and a highly personal one.  Whether it’s being part of a crowd at a concert, discussing a single with friends, or giving a head nod to someone wearing a shirt of a familiar band, music unites us.  It’s also the sounds of solidarity – the company on those nights where we want solidarity yet don’t want to be alone with our thoughts.  While our relationship with music draws on both sides of this relationship, music discovery tends towards the social side.  Specifically, it’s hard to “stumble” on music from another era without an introduction.  For example, I count a bunch of records from the postpunk era among my favorites, but I discovered them many years later.  Some of these records came through friends’ recommendations, but a lot of my musical discoveries seem like the results of a personal journey.  Still, retracing my steps now, I’ve realized that while it often seemed like a personal and solitary process discovering to music, I wasn’t alone.

Thinking back, even if I didn’t have a cool older sibling to pass on records from bygone eras, some of my favorite bands helped “guide” me to these albums.  In the mid-1990s, when I started becoming obsessed with music, I had no idea what the term “postpunk” meant, but I loved R.E.M. and started working my way through their discography.  As I became enamored with their albums, I started devouring every interview, biography, and review I could find, taking note of the records and artists they mentioned repeatedly.  This was my introduction to a lot of the bands I’d love like Television, Gang of Four, and Patti Smith.  As I developed this personal relationship with R.E.M., I developed a sense of trust that led me to other records.  I largely have R.E.M. to thank for my love of Marquee Moon, Entertainment, and Horses (in addition to Reckoning and Murmur and the other half dozen R.E.M. albums I adore).

I ended up taking to these records because I heard a lot of the same things that I loved in those R.E.M. albums, in particular the first couple discs.  “9–9” from Murmur leans heavily on these influences.  Listening to it now, I hear the same wiry guitar lines that stitch together Marquee Moon ringing through Peter Buck’s Rickenbacker.  Michael Stipe’s rapid, free-associative lyrics feel like they came from someone who spent hundreds of hours with Patti Smith LPs.  Mike Mills and Bill Berry creep into the front of the mix just like the bass and drums on my favorite Gang of Four songs.  Before I owned any of these albums, I spent hours listening to Murmur, and in a way it prepared me for these other records.  My time with songs like “9–9” gave me a running start toward a lot of records I now adore, and I have the boys from Athens to thank for pointing me in that direction.

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Living Well is the Best Revenge (Live)” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, available on Live at the Olympia, Warner Brothers 2009)

Earlier today, Yahoo! Sports Kelly Dwyer wrote an unexpected treatise on fandom.  I encourage you to read his post not only if you’re a sports fan, but if you’re a passionate fan of anything.  Dwyer, a life-long Chicago Bulls fan, looked back at his obsessive fanaticism during the end of the Bulls’ dynasty and subsequent recession into mediocrity.  His advice is to maintain joy even in the most critical moments.  “Nothing’s guaranteed save for the joy you create,” Dwyer writes, and the more I thought about what he wrote, the more it made sense beyond the world of sports.  Even if there aren’t championships to win or lose in music (and let’s be honest, the Grammy’s or Billboard #1s aren’t equivalents), there’s the same gamut of emotions when a favorite band missteps or disappears, whether it’s betrayal or disappointment or depression.  To be a fan is to open yourself up to heartbreak as much as it’s to open yourself up to euphoria.

As a fan, I have the longest and strongest allegiances to R.E.M..  They were one of the first bands I obsessed over, and remain the band I return to the most often.  They are the most played band on my Last.fm profile by several hundred plays.  Over the past decade and a half, I’ve seen the band’s popularity recede and return gently.  Their output over this period runs the gamut from surprisingly charming to crushingly disappointing, to the point where I started to write the band off around the middle of the last decade.  This is what made 2008’s Accelerate such an important album – one that revived my faith in the band and brought me back to long-forgotten corners of their back catalogue.

When the band toured in support of the album in 2008, I bought tickets to three different shows, none of which were in my home state.  I ventured to Massachusetts and came within 30 feet of the stage.  I braved a torrential downpour and near-brush with lightning in Long Island.  I took several days off from work to take the train down to Philadelphia and even bought scalped tickets just to move up a couple dozen rows.  Despite the time and money invested, I didn’t question my decision because deep down, I knew the fleeting nature of this moment.  Somewhere deep in my brain I knew that the band might never sound this good again (and the jury’s out on that, hopefully I’m wrong), but rather than dwell on the tour as the band’s swan song, I wanted to be in the house for every possible second I could.  To this day, I have notebook pages full of thoughts from these shows, dozens of blurry pictures, and archived downloads of every bootleg I could find.  I’m even on YouTube ruining a perfectly good video of “Begin the Begin” by singing along too close to the camera.  All of these artifacts bring me back to the sheer joy of seeing one of my favorite bands perhaps at their best moment during my fandom.

“Joy” is the operative word here, and it’s the key to being a fan.  As Dwyer suggests, there will always be imperfections (not to mention the lingering feeling that what goes up must come back down).  These are valid parts of fandom yet shouldn’t preclude the reason for being a fan in the first place.  In reference to these moments, Dwyer says, “So make them work for you. Don’t ever let up, and question everything, but make them work.”  It’s easier said than done, especially when disappointment sets in.  Still, I’m brought back to the end of Michael Stipe’s speech accepting R.E.M.’s enshrinement in the rock and roll hall of fame.  Stipe shares that his grandmother interpreted the band’s name as an acronym for “remember every moment,” and I can’t think of a better definition of fandom than that.

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“The Yankee Flipper” – The Baseball Project
(Words/music: Scott McCaughey, available on The Baseball Project, Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, Yep Roc 2008)

I’m the first to admit that I take baseball for granted.  I don’t watch as many games as some of my friends, yet I’m always sad when there isn’t a game to watch.  I guess at this point in my life it’s one of those things that makes me happy just knowing that it’s there.  If I don’t always watch a game (and this year, watching Mets games wasn’t always a relaxing decision), I still like seeing Baseball Tonight or catching scores on the radio.  Even if I’m not actively watching games every night, I feel better knowing that somewhere a baseball game is going on.

So when I heard that Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn, and Peter Buck (among others) collaborated on an album of baseball themed songs, I immediately wanted to hear it.  These songs lace together the type of power pop Wynn and McCaughey usually create with stories pulled from baseball lore.  In particular, “The Yankee Flipper” immediately stuck out because I remember watching Jack McDowell pitch for the White Sox and Yankees in the 1990s.  It turns out that the night before McDowell’s infamous incident where he flipped off Yankee fans, he was out drinking with McCaughey, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and Dennis Diken from the Smithereens.  McCaughey claims that the story is true, and given McDowell’s own musical pursuits it’s entirely believable.  It’s also one of the few instances on The Baseball Project, an album culled from recalled moments of fandom, where the fans in question had an influence on the game itself.  Sure, it was ultimately McDowell’s lousy performance (and short fuse) that led to his back page infamy, but it’s also an instance where some diehard fans felt partly responsible.  I’m sure that the rock boys felt bad that their friend experienced the backlash (just imagine what that would have been like in the YouTube era!), yet McCaughey feels responsible without ever feeling remorse.  After all, it makes him a part of one of our era’s more colorful footnotes.

So tonight, as the Yankees appear on the verge of putting baseball to bed for the winter, consider this a salute (not necessarily the same salute as Black Jack, unless you’re a Philly / Boston fan) to baseball and a reminder that spring training can’t come soon enough.

More on The Baseball Project: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Crazy” – Pylon
(Words/music: Pylon, available on Hits, DB Records 1989)

I know the music of Pylon for two distinct reasons.  The first was hearing R.E.M.’s cover of “Crazy” on their Dead Letter Office collection when I first got into R.E.M..  I remember loving the collection of B-Sides, in part because it contained the 1981 Chronic Town EP (which I also had on cassette tape from a department store’s going out of business sale, not know the scarcity of the artifact), but also that it contained a lot of really catchy songs – in particular, the track “Burning Hell” and a lot of the cover songs.  I knew that “Crazy” was a cover only through reading the track notes in the CD (and, also, from reading a bit about Pylon in the R.E.M. oral history Talk About the Passion).  Otherwise, it seemed like a more upbeat version of an early R.E.M. song – a mysterious sounding verse in Stipe’s trademark mumble, and the catchy chorus sounding out through Peter Buck’s jangling guitar.  I can remember making a R.E.M. mix tape for friends and putting this song at a prominent position early in the tape.

I finally heard some of Pylon’s music directly when the DFA reissued their Gyrate album (I was also able to pit up the Hits collection – essential listening in my book).  Of course, I immediately went to “Crazy” so that I could hear the original version of this song that I loved.  I was struck at how faithful the cover was – the same riff runs through the song, granted it’s played by late guitarist Randy Bewley darker and with less reverb.  Vocalist Vanessa Briscoe sings in a more confident manner than Stipe (perhaps because Stipe made up some of the words, according to Pylon’s drummer Curtis Crowe).  Throughout the music collected on Hits, Briscoe toes the line between letting her band take center stage and becoming the focal point in the songs.  She commands a strong presence (in a way that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O does) but is content enough to share her spotlight with her bandmates by disappearing behind their taut rhythms and focused songs, only to storm back to center stage moments later.  It’s the kind of music that makes me simultaneously happy and sad – I’m glad that I’ve discovered one of the true American post-punk gems, even if I kick myself a bit for waiting the better part of a decade before seeking it out.

More on Pylon: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

“Cuyahoga (Live in Mansfield, MA – 13 June 2008)” – R.E.M.
(Words/music: Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, originally appears on Lifes Rich Pageant, IRS 1986)

When I saw R.E.M. this past June, Michael Stipe offered this song to Barack Obama.  The choice is interesting because aside from the opening lines (as his dedication suggests), it doesn’t seem like an obvious choice; if I were to have guessed which song they dedicated, I would have probably guessed one of the more recent Bush-fueled political rants (like the ho-hum “Final Straw”) or one of the more overtly political songs (like “These Days” from the same album).  The ban even played “I Believe” (key line: “and change is what I believe in”) in South America the night of his election.  Sure, the song references the polluted Cuyahoga river - a cause that the environmentally friendly candidate would emphasize with, buy it still seemed like an odd choice (one I didn’t complain about that night, however, as it’s one of my favorites).

Thinking about it months later, I’m immediately drawn back to the lines that Stipe highlighted in his introduction – “Let’s put our heads together / and start a new country up.”  It captures the sentiment of Obama’s “change” mantra as well as his message of unity.  After watching the sea of humanity in Washington, D.C. this morning, it seems that his message of unity, hope, and yes, “change,” enticed millions of Americans.  Appropriately, Obama’s inaugural address hit on the theme of working together – it’s not Obama or his party creating the “new country,” but everyone in America.  It’s a refreshing change of message for someone like me, who has heard nothing but partisan dogma for almost a quarter century of life.

So as I thought about this earlier today, it seemed more and more appropriate.  After all, many of R.E.M.’s songs blurred the lines between the personal and the political, as the Obama administration at least begins by stressing the individual’s role in government.  “Cuyahoga” isn’t just about the death of a river, but about the narrator’s personal memories attached with the river.  The song’s filled with “we” and “our,” to the point that the Cuyahoga is less a call to recycle more but a symbol of a proud and highly personal past that’s been corrupted (as the river now “runs read over it”).  Even more importantly, the song focuses on gathering friends and moving towards reclaiming their pride rather than lamenting the death of their icon.  It’s an appropriate song to dedicate to a man who wants to promote community, even at the national level.

_______

PS – Even though R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands (and, if pressed, probably the most important band to me), this will probably be the only post on one of their songs (I might pick one more at some point, but that would be it), in part because of Matthew Perpetua’s wonderful Popsongs 07-08 project, where he writes about these songs with eloquence and insight that I could only dream of possessing.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that this site (along with the other excellent work he does on the web and in print) is a major inspiration for what I want to do over the next eleven and a half months.  Here’s a relevant quote from Matthew’s entry on “Cuyahoga” from July ’07:

“Cuyahoga” may be a lament, but it’s also one of the most optimistic politically themed songs in the R.E.M. songbook. Even better, its optimism is not cheap and facile. The lyrics make a point of acknowledging the fact that we need to collaborate and work hard for change, because without that effort and emphasis on community, we stand to lose so much.

More on R.E.M.: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm