the ocean machine is set to 9.
I love REM. Sounds simple enough. But it's more than that. Obsession always is.
It's 1991. Early. I'm 10 years old, and my favorite show is Saturday Night Live. The host/musical guest for this week is Kyle MacLachlan, a guy who's on a show called Twin Peaks about a murdered teenager that I'm not allowed to watch, but sometimes do, and it scares me, and a band from Athens, Georgia who are about to explode. This is just before Nirvana became the greatest slice of bread in the bag. The song is about a breakup, or a loss of faith, or a suicide, or none of those things. The singer is named Michael, and he has an ambiguously sexy thing going on, hiding his increasing baldness behind a goofy baseball hat, worn at a jaunty angle, a look at odds with the cream silk suit he wears. He mumbles more than sings, and doesn't look at people. He holds flowers in his hands like Morrissey did in a video i saw the previous weekend. He holds flowers like they're an anchor, they're the only reason he's still here. I'm entranced.
My mother and grandmother loved flea markets when I was young. I used to go with them, because at every flea market there were guys selling old books and records, two things that defined me from the time I could read, and still do. I would find old James Bond novels, or the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,or Choose Your Own Adventure books, or a copy of Led Zeppelin IV. One time, I found a weird record by that mumbly band who sang about who was in the corner, and what they did there. I couldn't tell what it was called, either Fables of the Reconstruction or Reconstruction of the Fables. There is a box of photos on the cover, and my mother agrees to buy it for me. It's $2. I don't stop listening to it for six weeks. Just parsing the words, mostly about trains, is a days long challenge, a dare from the universe.
When my parents split up for the first time, i was about 14, and I would hide in our subbasement, in my mom's band practice room. She played bass with a group of local women who called themselves Legato, a music term, which means "in a smooth, flowing manner." They mostly played blues covers, and Heart, and Black Crowes songs, mixed with Kathy, the lead singer's originals. I did not like them, but had a crush on the keyboard player's daughter, so went to many a band practice, so long as it was at Donna's house. While I hid, my companion was a record called Eponymous, a collection of greatest "hits", before REM had any hits, released by IRS records as a last-gasp cashgrab/contractual move when they moved to Warner Bros in 1987. The songs were about nothing in particular, but were like riddles i had to solve. He couldn't be saying "bent the pocket change you up", it must be "change you left", right? It's The End of the World As We Know It was the best one. Fast as fuck, nonsense words that actually turned out to be the most autobiographical Stipe ever wrote. I had to be secretive with my fandom by then, because it was punk rock time, and if it didn't come at you snarling with some incomprehensible accent, it was fucking shit, bro! Black FLAAAAAG, bro. I found out years later that Greg Ginn wanted BF to tour with the Grateful Dead, and imagined all my 9th grade meathead friends'heads exploding.
In any event, Michael Stipe said the record that made him wanna be in a band, write songs, was Patti Smith's Horses. My mom had been yelling at me about how great Patti Smith was, and if both my mom and Michael Stipe signed off on something, there had to be something there. I picked it up alongside Rancid's ...And Out Come the Wolves(punkrock time, remember?) and Thing-Fish by Frank Zappa, something I think i listened to all the way through twice, just to make sure i heard what I did. I remember when Nathan, my punkest punk punk friend, who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys, because I introduced him to NOFX, and punk thereby, saving him a lifetime of Ugly Kid Joe fandom, came over, and I played him Horses. He seemed to like some parts, like how the first line of the first song was "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"(We both went to Catholic schools, you see) but seemed unenthused. I was drawn far more to the artier, darker corners of punk. The Velvet Underground, Television, Talking Heads, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith. It just seemed more subversive than going like, fuck the cops, fuck the queen, fuck yeeeewwww! That shit was boring. I remember my sister coming into the room as the record was ending, and asking if he liked it, and as the soft strains of the piano outro to Elegie faded he was like, not this part.
A couple weeks ago, Nathan put out a request for our favorite REM songs, because he was finally ready to listen to them, at 37. I felt so vindicated, and sent him like 40 records worth of suggestions. He wrote me back, thanking me for introducing him to so many things, "even if I wasn't ready for them yet. I'll never forget that." And that is what culture should be. A mutual enthusiasm for weird nonsense, shared and spread like a virus. REM was an integral part of my being from the time I was 10 years old, and I'm still trying to figure out what it all means. They help, they always did.
It's 1991. Early. I'm 10 years old, and my favorite show is Saturday Night Live. The host/musical guest for this week is Kyle MacLachlan, a guy who's on a show called Twin Peaks about a murdered teenager that I'm not allowed to watch, but sometimes do, and it scares me, and a band from Athens, Georgia who are about to explode. This is just before Nirvana became the greatest slice of bread in the bag. The song is about a breakup, or a loss of faith, or a suicide, or none of those things. The singer is named Michael, and he has an ambiguously sexy thing going on, hiding his increasing baldness behind a goofy baseball hat, worn at a jaunty angle, a look at odds with the cream silk suit he wears. He mumbles more than sings, and doesn't look at people. He holds flowers in his hands like Morrissey did in a video i saw the previous weekend. He holds flowers like they're an anchor, they're the only reason he's still here. I'm entranced.
My mother and grandmother loved flea markets when I was young. I used to go with them, because at every flea market there were guys selling old books and records, two things that defined me from the time I could read, and still do. I would find old James Bond novels, or the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,or Choose Your Own Adventure books, or a copy of Led Zeppelin IV. One time, I found a weird record by that mumbly band who sang about who was in the corner, and what they did there. I couldn't tell what it was called, either Fables of the Reconstruction or Reconstruction of the Fables. There is a box of photos on the cover, and my mother agrees to buy it for me. It's $2. I don't stop listening to it for six weeks. Just parsing the words, mostly about trains, is a days long challenge, a dare from the universe.
When my parents split up for the first time, i was about 14, and I would hide in our subbasement, in my mom's band practice room. She played bass with a group of local women who called themselves Legato, a music term, which means "in a smooth, flowing manner." They mostly played blues covers, and Heart, and Black Crowes songs, mixed with Kathy, the lead singer's originals. I did not like them, but had a crush on the keyboard player's daughter, so went to many a band practice, so long as it was at Donna's house. While I hid, my companion was a record called Eponymous, a collection of greatest "hits", before REM had any hits, released by IRS records as a last-gasp cashgrab/contractual move when they moved to Warner Bros in 1987. The songs were about nothing in particular, but were like riddles i had to solve. He couldn't be saying "bent the pocket change you up", it must be "change you left", right? It's The End of the World As We Know It was the best one. Fast as fuck, nonsense words that actually turned out to be the most autobiographical Stipe ever wrote. I had to be secretive with my fandom by then, because it was punk rock time, and if it didn't come at you snarling with some incomprehensible accent, it was fucking shit, bro! Black FLAAAAAG, bro. I found out years later that Greg Ginn wanted BF to tour with the Grateful Dead, and imagined all my 9th grade meathead friends'heads exploding.
In any event, Michael Stipe said the record that made him wanna be in a band, write songs, was Patti Smith's Horses. My mom had been yelling at me about how great Patti Smith was, and if both my mom and Michael Stipe signed off on something, there had to be something there. I picked it up alongside Rancid's ...And Out Come the Wolves(punkrock time, remember?) and Thing-Fish by Frank Zappa, something I think i listened to all the way through twice, just to make sure i heard what I did. I remember when Nathan, my punkest punk punk friend, who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys, because I introduced him to NOFX, and punk thereby, saving him a lifetime of Ugly Kid Joe fandom, came over, and I played him Horses. He seemed to like some parts, like how the first line of the first song was "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"(We both went to Catholic schools, you see) but seemed unenthused. I was drawn far more to the artier, darker corners of punk. The Velvet Underground, Television, Talking Heads, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith. It just seemed more subversive than going like, fuck the cops, fuck the queen, fuck yeeeewwww! That shit was boring. I remember my sister coming into the room as the record was ending, and asking if he liked it, and as the soft strains of the piano outro to Elegie faded he was like, not this part.
A couple weeks ago, Nathan put out a request for our favorite REM songs, because he was finally ready to listen to them, at 37. I felt so vindicated, and sent him like 40 records worth of suggestions. He wrote me back, thanking me for introducing him to so many things, "even if I wasn't ready for them yet. I'll never forget that." And that is what culture should be. A mutual enthusiasm for weird nonsense, shared and spread like a virus. REM was an integral part of my being from the time I was 10 years old, and I'm still trying to figure out what it all means. They help, they always did.