Time After Time

Summer's always the best time at the cemetery where Isaac is buried. The sunflowers are in the shops, the sky is blue, the grass is dry enough to sit on, and the light grey of his headstone catches the sun. 

Sunflower

Sunflower is the opening song on Low's 2001 album Things We Lost In The Fire. Until summer 2022 I never associated it with Isaac and since then I always do. 

'I bought some sweet sweet sunflowers/ And gave them to the night'.

It's well over three years now since he died. Last November, containing both his birthday and a week later the anniversary of his death, was very rough- the build up to his birthday and then the week in between. The next day it's December and then there's the run up to Christmas to be endured. When we got into January this year it felt a bit like everything settled down and that some kind of 'three years on' accommodation with grief had been made. The rawness of the anniversaries and the first two to three years faded a little and although I still thought about him every day it became possible to do so with a smile. The feeling that tears or the sucker punch of grief were always close to the surface receded a little. 

I noticed in the early summer that it still had the power to come in and floor me occasionally- sometimes a sudden gasp, that instant (but recurring) realisation of 'Isaac's dead'. It can sometimes leave me feeling like the breath has been sucked out of me. But more common was the gloom descending for no reason for a day or two, a sadness covering everything that wasn't directly triggered by anything, it was... just there. Then it would go. It happened in early May and lasted nearly a week. It's happened since but only for a day or two and then it dissipates. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut noted in Slaughterhouse Five.

Earlier this summer we came to a decision about Isaac's bedroom. It was largely untouched since he left it, when we took him to hospital on 27th November 2021. His calendar's were still on the wall, still displaying November 2021. His clothes and belongings still where he left them. I didn't like to go in there much at all. It had also though become a bit of a dumping ground for some of our stuff, some coats on his bed and so on. I went in there a few months ago and driving home from work a day or two after came to the conclusion we needed to do something about it. I wasn't ready to do anything about it until that exact point. Lou wasn't either. 

We decided to take his bed out, to go through his clothes and things and sort them out, keep the ones we really couldn't let go of but store them properly in some boxes, replace the bed with some furniture, and make it a room that was still his but not his bedroom. Going through his clothes was the most painful thing we've done since last November and made me remember how difficult this can still be- and also how far we've come. Some of the clothes, when we looked at them, we decided could go- some of them, straight away, we knew didn't spark anything but some of his clothes did so very much, they seem to contain his essence in some ways, to be a version of him. 

The room is now much better- brighter, some pictures of him framed and mounted, still his room but not the room he left that night, not a room preserved in time- I can go into it and feel ok. Progress. I'm not sure why this song is accompanying this post, it just seems to fit. The last song on side one of R.E.M.'s second album, Reckoning, released in 1984. Something about the ringing guitars and Michael Stipe's vocals just suggested itself. 

Time After Time (AnnElise)

Calling Out

R.E.M. have released an old/ new EP, a bit unexpectedly maybe. Despite being resolutely still split up the band members' opposition to the Trump government is something that is stirring them into action. One of the many actions of Trump in his first hundred days in office- as well as tanking the global economy and uprooting the global order while destroying any/ all trust in the US internationally, oh and selling Ukraine out while promising to take Canada as a state while turning Gaza into prime real estate while supporting Israel's continued destruction of the Palestinian people and their homes- was to cut all funding to Radio Free Europe, a US backed radio/ media outlet that promotes democracy abroad. RFE may have a checkered history- it was funded by the CIA as part of its Cold War weaponry until 1972 but in recent years it's been seen as a force for good and has been banned by among others Russia and Belarus, neither state being remotely democratic, and it won awards for its coverage of the war in Ukraine. Trump cut the station's funding by Executive Order in March.

R.E.M.'s song Radio Free Europe was their debut single way back in 1981, a song that showed how good they were from the start- raw, fast indie rock, shot through with both something from post- punk and something very southern, Stipe's mumbled words tumbling over Peter Buck's guitars. The very first session R.E.M. had with producer Mitch Easter at his Drive In Studio resulted in three songs- Radio Free Europe, Sitting Still and Wh. Tornado. All three have been released on the new Radio Free Europe EP along with a brand new Jacknife Lee remix of Radio Free Europe and more interestingly, a Mitch Easter remix, unreleased since 1981. The remix, the Radio Free Dub, is a bit of a wonder, an off kilter and sideways version of the song, lots of murky echo and some stuttering FX on the vocal, the guitars and bass submerging and emerging. The five song EP can be bought at R.E.M.'s Bandcamp page, with proceeds going to help fund Radio Free Europe.

The 25th anniversary double CD editions of R.E.M''s albums came with some choice extras- both the Murmur and Reckoning editions had full early 80s live gigs as disc two. The Murmur live show was from Larry's Hideaway, Toronto in 1983, the band in blistering form in a small venue, Mr. Stipe ringing out loud and clear, playing Radio Free Europe thirteen songs into a sixteen song set.

Radio Free Europe (Live at Larry's Hideaway, Toronto 1983)

A year later in Chicago at the Aragon Ballroom they played it early, second song in after opening with their Velvet Underground cover Femme Fatale. 'Put that put that put that up your wall/ That this isn't country at all'.  

Radio Free Europe (Live at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago 1984)

Up

R.E.M.'s album Up is one I've developed a connection with recently. I found a copy on CD for £3 in a second hand shop early on in the new year (the one I bought years back I realised a while ago had gone missing somewhere along the line). It's an album I've often in the past found difficult to love but I know it also has its fans. This time around, playing it in the car while driving to and from work much of it struck a chord in a way it hasn't done before. 

Up was released at the end of October 1998. This was a month before Isaac was born and he spent the first few weeks of his life in hospital so by the time I got my head back into music mode I think Up had passed me by. Other bands were doing for me what R.E.M. used to do- Grandaddy and Belle and Sebastian both spring to mind and I wasn't listening to that much guitar based music either. Also, R.E.M. weren't exactly selling Up. It was the first album without Bill Berry, got some mixed reviews and the making of it was problematic for the three existing members. Michael Stipe said in an interview that 'a dog with three legs is still a dog', which maybe wasn't the vote of confidence he thought it was. 

Berry left the band after suffering an aneurysm on stage but told the other three that if it meant R.E.M. finishing, he'd stay- which put them in the position of having to carry on to allow Bill to leave. Not ideal. Peter Buck had been buying up synths and keyboards and was keen, as he often had been previously, to change the sound and do something different but the making of the album was fractious and they nearly split making it. The first song was written, recorded and mixed in a day (album opener Airportman) but after that they struggled. They couldn't rehearse without Berry and tried drum machines and session drummers (both on the songs on the album along with Buck drumming). Later on Stipe got a bad case of writer's block. Scott Litt, who produced their previous five albums, was gone too. Parts of Up feel and sound like they were written in the studio, clock ticking, the musicians having to come up with something, anything...

The previous album, New Adventures In Hi- Fi, had been written on the road at soundchecks and in hotel rooms. The writing process had been disrupted further by Berry's departure. He wasn't just the drummer but a key part of R.E.M.'s songwriting. Often Buck and Berry would play together, knocking ideas and arrangements around before Mike Mills would come in and add bass and organ. Now they were a three piece in the studio trying to make an album that embraced electronics. The sense of it being a bit incomplete or unfinished is added to by the inclusion on the album of several fairly non- descript songs that drift from start to finish. Quite a few of the songs end in a buzz of noise and feedback, as if they'd forgotten how to end a song. The last song, Falls To Climb,  just sort of ends, an anti- climax of a song (and previous albums had had really strong closing songs- Electrolite, Find The River, Me In Honey- that felt like finales). Up also suffers from being fourteen songs and sixty six minutes long, a victim of the bloated 90s CD album, with extra time on the disc to fill. A ten track, two sided vinyl album could have been a much stronger album. 

Despite all of this Up really has some moments and they struck me last week in the car. It was almost like hearing the album anew, it being so long since I'd heard it and not having any real emotional connection to it. Opener Airportman sets the tone, with ambient keys and noise,a  Brian Eno like feel and Stipe singing of a man permanently in transit. Lotus is a strong song, Peter Buck's minimalist keys and live drums behind Stipe's surreal lyrics clicking together- a subtle groove, some hey heys, a gnarly guitar topline, and Michael singing in a deeper register, a step away from the rock star persona he'd had played with on Monster and New Adventures In Hi- Fi. No surprise it was the album's second single after the catchy and melodic pop- rock of Daysleeper.

Four songs in comes Hope, a distorted analogue keyboard sound repeating, the tip tap of a drum machine and Stipe at his most Stipe- like, a song about looking for something- meaning, friendship, something to do, a way to live and stay alive. There's some pre- millennial tension in there too. It's a song that catches fire, shifts the album forwards, shakes the bones a little. 

Hope

Hope's rhythm and vocal were so close to Leonard Cohen's Suzanne they gave him a writing credit (although Suicide's organ sound is almost as much the basis of the song as Cohen). It has that melancholic hopefulness that R.E.M. were so good at. Cohen too. 

Past Hope there's more songs that stood out for me- The Apologist (a song that could have been a Monster or New Adventures throwback to these ears), Sad Professor (acoustic guitars, echo, a character study) and the Patti Smith inspired Walk Unafraid, the only song on Up that actually sounds up, one that shows they really were looking for a new sound, to do something different and that despite all the difficulties they encountered recording Up the magic was still present. 

Daysleeper sounds woozy, a slightly dislocated vocal that then swells with the music, Buck picking away at his guitar, a song for nightshift workers and their messed up rhythms. 'I cried the other night', Stipe sings at the breakdown, 'I can't even say why' and it sounds absolutely genuine. 

Daysleeper

Funny thing music isn't it. I've had a very ambivalent relationship with Up since 1998 and last week it really made some kind of sense to me- a flawed but interesting album with enough good songs to keep me letting it go back to the beginning when Falls To Climb ran out. It feels like maybe the last album they made where they really wanted to make art, to write songs that they cared about. After Up each album felt like they were making an album because that's what you do, because Warners wanted one, because they didn't know when or how to stop. Reveal, Around The Sun, Accelerate, Collapse Into Now- they have one or two songs each but are overworked or overproduced or a deliberate attempt to go back to basics. Each one seems like a case of diminishing returns and none of them feels right to me- but Up does. 

This Song Is Here

A Christmas gift for Christmas Day. This popped up on Bandcamp on the evening of 23rd December, an instant hit for me. DJ Jon Carter (Monkey Mafia and Heavenly Social) has done an edit/ remix (or R.E.M. ix) of the song known as Eleventh Untitled Song, the final song on R.E.M.'s 1989 album Green, transforming it into a beautiful Balearic/ electronic disco tune, with Michael Stipe and Mike Mills' vocals over a brand new track, retitled They Love You. It's as Christmassy as you like, not tinsel and schmaltz, but joyous disco love. Find it at Bandcamp. All proceeds will go to help the homeless in January, the coldest month of the year. 

'This light is here to keep you warm/ This song is here to keep you strong/ I made a list/ Of things to say/ But all I really want to say is/ Hold her and keep him strong/ While I'm away from here'

Here's the 1989 original, a song they added to the end of Green with Bill and Peter swapping instruments, and the song unlisted on the sleeve. 

Eleventh Untitled Song

Happy Christmas everyone, hope you have a lovely day with the people you want to be with. 

The Time To Rise

A couple of weeks ago I posted Get Up by R.E.M., the Athens foursome performing it in 1989 on the Green tour, a brilliantly spiky, psychey guitar pop song, Michael Stipe singing about dreams and how they complicate his life. YouTube is an easy place to get lost in and there are plenty of other songs from R.E.M.'s Tourfilm on there at the moment, an audio- visual record of them on stage in '89, at the peak of their powers as a live band. Fairly soon I was watching R.E.M. doing Finest Worksong....

Stipe was a consummate, and unique, performer and front man by 1989. On the tour that became Tourfilm (a tour I saw them at in Liverpool in May '89), he had different dances and actions for different songs. On Finest Worksong he does a sideways run, a run on the spot, and a lithe, hip swinging boogie/ shuffle dance, as his ponytail swings around and mascara runs down his cheeks. 

Finest Worksong was the first song on Document, their 1988 album, the fifth in a run of records that took them from playing tiny venues to big ones. It became a single, the third from Document and the last one they released on IRS before the move to Warners and Green. 

Finest Worksong

Finest Worksong is a classic opening song, a call to arms- 'The time to rise/ Has been engaged/ Your better best/ To rearrange'. It's difficult to not hear the lyrics, oblique in places maybe but more overt in others, as a plea to resist the conservative 80s, Reagan and the incoming Bush, a decade of Reaganomics increasing the US's poverty gap- 'You are following this time/ I beg you not beg to rhyme' and 'What we want and what we need/ Has been confused, been confused'. 

Peter Buck's guitars sound like a call to the barricades, crunchy, big riffs, ringing lead lines, the guitarist moving from Rickenbacker to Les Paul. 

Finest Worksong (Other Mix)

The Other Mix was on the 7" and 12" releases, a big booming late 80s drum sound that wasn't really necessary. The single mix added horns which in retrospect was probably also superfluous. The B-sides included the gorgeous live performance of Time After Time Etc, a medley of Time After Time, Red Rain and So. Central Rain (but we'll come back to that another time). 

Document saw them become a rock band, the guitars toughened up and the production much clearer and punchier. Michael Stipe's lyrics had already become more audible and less stream- of- consciousness on the previous two albums (on Fables Of The Reconstruction where he tells stories about people from the south and on Lifes Rich Pageant where he engages with politics, the environmental crisis and the wider world). Document had a hit single (The One I Love), a Wire cover (Strange), some political sounding songs (Welcome To The Occupation, Exhuming McCarthy) and the rattling, end of night, end of the gig, end of the world show stopper, It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). On release in 1988 Document was very much an album that chimed with the times- but maybe a holding record too, not a discernible move on from Lifes Rich Pageant. Maybe they were saving themselves for Green. 

Dreams, They Complicate My Life

I've been having particularly vivid dreams for about a year now. Last summer I got a high cholesterol reading and started taking statins (as well as cutting down on crisps, cheese and cake). Statins can have all kind of side effects and apparently vivid dreams and disturbed sleep is one. The dreams aren't all necessarily nightmares but they aren't always pleasant either and they are often vivid enough to wake me up suddenly, unsure for a few seconds what is real and what is dream, and then I spend a few minutes calming down as the reality sinks in and I try to drift back to sleep. These vivid dreams, coupled with the fact that occasionally I dream about Isaac, means my sleep is pretty erratic- and dreaming about him always wakes me up, leaving me unsettled. In my dreams he's still alive. I also have some lucid dreams, where I think I'm aware that I'm dreaming. I have got used to it over the last year to some extent but it's all quite odd. 

R.E.M. are named after the stage of sleep where dreaming occurs, where brain activity is high and there is rapid eye movement. In 198 on Green Michael Stipe wrote a song, Get Up, where he deals with sleep and dreams. I say deals with- it's as close to dealing with as Stipe got in the 80s. Get Up is wonderfully simple sounding song with layers of complexity. Peter Buck's guitars clang and riff, the drums and bass thump and surge, there's a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic breakdown/ middle eight and some of the best vocal interplay between Stipe and Michael Mills on any R.E.M. song, especially in the 'Dreams, they complicate my life/ Dreams, they complement my life' call and response vocals. In the late 90s, on stage, Stipe announced that song was written about Mike Mills and his tendency to lie in and then be late to the sessions for Green. Get up Mike. 

Get Up

It's right up there as one of my favourite R.E.M. songs. In 1989 they toured the world playing Green and songs from their previous albums. I saw them at the Royal Court in Liverpool, 26th May 1989, what felt like a big venue at the time but pretty small in comparison to the arenas and domes they played in the mid 90s. They were superb- electrifying, urgent, arty, rocking- and it was impossible to take your eyes off them all night. R.E.M. filmed some of the U.S. shows and released a concert length video Tourfilm, based mainly around the gig at Greensboro in November but also containing some sections from four other American shows. In the middle of Tourfilm R.E.M. play Get Up and if anything it's even better live than on Green. They power into it, all the guitar psyche- pop turned up to the max, Stipe bouncing around in his ragged white clothes, his late 80s pony tail hanging down his back, the strobe effect projections producing a dream- like effect. Get Up at breakneck pace, two and a half minutes of intense dream/ indie/ psyche. 'Where does time go?', Stipe sings, the smudged mascara blurring around his eyes. 'I don't know'.

 

What A Beautiful Refrain

In 1996 R.E.M. made what would turn out to be the final album made by the four piece band of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry. The drummer, Bill Berry, left the group in 1997 and although they carried on as a three- piece until 2013 they never really reached the heights they did on the run of ten albums they made between Murmur in 1983 and New Adventures In Hi- Fi thirteen years later. Much of New Adventures In Hi- Fi was written and partially recorded on the road, at soundchecks while they toured Monster, a mixed bag of an album that saw them tour the big venues. Many of the songs on New Adventures... reflect the album's on the road origins, songs with titles like Departure, Leave, Undertow and Low Desert. There's also a sadness, a mournful quality running through it, countered by some brash riffing and Stipe continuing the rock star persona he developed for the Monster tour- Wake Up Bomb and So Fast, So Numb- but the melancholy pervades. The final song, Electrolite, makes sure that things finish on a high of sorts, a gorgeous song celebrating the end of the 20th century, Mulholland Drive, Steve McQueen, Martin Sheen and Jimmy Dean, that closes with Stipe singing, 'I'm not scared/ I'm outta here'. 

It's an album I think of as a vinyl record, the four sides mini- albums in their right. By this point CDs were outselling vinyl and the record industry had scaled vinyl production right back. Bands were making CD length albums, not vinyl length ones. New Adventures.. is R.E.M.'s longest album. Most listeners I imagine think of New Adventures In Hi- Fi as a CD album, fourteen songs in succession but for me its always been a vinyl album with four distinct groups of songs. Side one of the vinyl opens with How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us, a typically untypical way to start an R.E.M. album, low key and led by drums and bass, piano providing the melodic backing to Stipe's vocal. Peter Buck's mandolin, his acoustic and electric guitars are nowhere to be heard until the second song, Wake Up Bomb bursts in with the big guitar riffs and a glam/ grunge stomp. Side one concludes with New Test Leper, the song on the album that sounds the most typically R.E.M.- led by acoustic guitar, with some understated Mike Mills organ and one of those universal Stipe lyrics, one where he plugs himself into the human experience and comes up with something that seems both personal and universal. 

New Test Leper

The lyric opens with a nod to Michael's heroine Patti Smith who kicked off Piss Factory with a line about Jesus. 'I can't say that I love Jesus', Stipe sings,'that would be a hollow claim'. He goes on to quote Christ, 'judge not lest ye be judged' and then laments the behaviour of a TV host and a live studio audience. Stipe was watching one of those TV programmes where members of the public and their deeds are paraded in front of an audience, an Oprah/ Jeremy Kyle type show. He found himself empathising with the woman whose life was being pulled apart for entertainment. Michael sings from the point of view of the woman, 'When I tried to tell my story/ They cut me off to take a break/ I sat silent for five commercials/ I had nothing left to say'. He then switches back to being the observer again and concludes, 'What a sad parade'. Buck's guitar jangles beautifully, backed by Bill Berry's drums and shakers and Mike Mills plays a superb lead bassline and that lovely ascending organ part that appears and re- appears. 

New Test Leper was recorded at Seattle's Bad Animals studio, resurrected from a tape Michael had of the song from a soundcheck. A second version, acoustic and recorded live at the studio, was used as a B- side for Bittersweet Me. Stipe has said that New Test Leper is his 'crowning achievement' and its easy to see why he would see it that way- it's a song that displays his humanity and empathy and done in such a way that it strikes a chord whenever I hear it. 

New Test Leper (Acoustic Version)

Saturday Live

I found a copy of the 25th Anniversary edition of Reckoning by R.E.M. recently, cheap and second hand, a double CD re- issue of the album with a second disc of the band playing live in July 1984 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. There aren't many live discs that stand up to repeat plays but this does and will, mid- 80s R.E.M. at the peak of their powers, the Reckoning songs fresh and honed on the road, the band tight and with the faster, energetic, distorted punky/ indie feel they had early on. On some songs Peter Buck's Rickenbacker jangles but on some the Wire/ Gang Of Four influences are obvious. Michael Stipe's vocals are wayward in places, nicely so, words and syllables extended and the three way harmonies with Bill Berry and Mike Mills have a rough quality that really works. The gig in Chicago is sixteen songs long,  opening with their cover of Femme Fatale and ending with a two song encore- Second Guessing and (Don't Go Back To) Rockville. This is a selection of songs from the live disc. 

Gardening At Night (Live In Chicago, July 1984)

Sitting Still (Live In Chicago, July 1984)

Harborcoat  (Live In Chicago, July 1984)

Little America  (Live In Chicago, July 1984)

Second Guessing  (Live In Chicago, July 1984)

A month earlier, 9th June 1984, they played at the Capitol Theatre, Passiac, New Jersey. The gig was filmed, an hour and five minutes of R.E.M., a similar set but played in a different order but with first debut appearances for Hyena (later to show up on 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant) and Driver 8, freshly written and soon to be one of the centrepiece songs of 1985's Fables Of The Reconstruction. They look great, Peter with red shirt sleeves flapping, Stipe with long curly hair and Mills bopping about. They look like they're having fun too. Amusingly, when Reckoning was reviewed by Rolling Stone on release the  reviewer, Chris Connelly, wrote that  Stipe's evocatively gloomy baritone... and ... erratic meanderings will prevent R.E.M. from transcending cult status'. Not quite eh?

Work

Back to work today for me and many other people, not a day of much rejoicing for many of us. January is a horrible month on the whole, the vague feeling of freshness of a new year quickly becoming a month with five Mondays and seemingly six weeks until pay day, a month of unending cold and dark. Once we get to February- a much more civilised month, only four weeks long and with the promise of spring ahead- things start to improve. January must just be endured.* 

If you're back at work today, I hope it goes well. Here are a pair of work songs from the mid- 80s to celebrate/ commiserate, one from either side of the Atlantic. In 1984 The Jasmine Minks, freshly signed to Alan McGee's new label Creation, recorded and released a slice of punk influenced indie on 7" single. Work For Nothing was the B-side to Think, the single bearing the Creation catalogue number 004 (only The Legend!, The Revolving Paint Dream and Biff Bang Pow! put out records on Creation before them). They were on tour with The Jesus And Mary Chain as Upside Down came out and as demand for the Reid brothers grew the Minks got a bit side-lined. This is a great piece of mid- 80s Creation indie.  

Work For Nothing

In 1987 R.E.M. opened their final indie album Document with the work song, Finest Worksong,  and  put it out as the third single from Document in 1988. Finest Worksong is based around Peter Buck hitting a B string on his guitar while Mike Mills follows with a huge bass riff. Stipe always denied that the song was political or a protest but it can't help be seen in some way as a response to Reagan's America- 'The time to rise has been engaged', Stipe sings, qualifying it with 'I'm talking here to me alone'. It doesn't sound that way though, it sounds like it's for everyone, the massive Scott Litt production thrusting the song out of the speakers. The Other Mix came out as a  B-side on the 12" in 1988. 

Finest Worksong (Other Mix)

* Apologies to any big January fans out there. I appreciate other points of view re: the first month of the year may exist. 

Linger On

'Sometimes I feel so happy/ Sometimes I feel so sad', Lou Reed croons softly at the start of Pale Blue Eyes, the most brokenly beautiful song on the most brokenly beautiful Velvet Underground album. Written and demoed with John Cale in May 1965 it wasn't released until 1969 by which point Cale had left the band. 'Thought of you as everything/ I had but couldn't keep', Lou goes on and in the final verse it becomes clear this isn't just about lost love but infidelity too- 'It was good what we did yesterday/ And I'd do it again/ The fact that you are married/ Only proves that you're my best friend/ But it's truly, truly a sin'. In his memoir, Lou Reed said he wrote it for his first love, Shelley Albin, a married woman (who had hazel eyes  but poetic license and making lines scan saw her eyes change to blue). 

Pale Blue Eyes

It's one of those songs that is so right, so perfect- the singing, the playing, the production, the tone of the guitar and the repeating riff, the tambourine rattle, the solo- that you wouldn't want to change a note or a second of it. But it also cries out to be covered. This cover came back to me recently while I was looking through my 10" singles (looking for something else but it caught my eye). I put it on and it jumped out of the speakers, simplicity of the song hurtled forwards from the late 60s to 2012 by The Kills, a raw version of the song. Alison Mosshart's husky, small hours vocal is spot on, the drums thump and shake and Jamie Hince's guitar snarls as the amp distorts. You can smell the practice room. The guitar break and the juddering effect between the second and third verses is electrifying and the way they cut back in for the 'skip a light completely/ Stuff it in a cup' verse is thrilling.

Pale Blue Eyes

In 1984 Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn released a version as a single, taken from the soundtrack to the film Punk Rock Hotel. Edwyn croons, really croons, and the country and western guitar takes The Velvets to Nashville. The guitar solo is a joy and the song swells to the end, filled out and lush.

Edit: it is of course Paul Quinn crooning while Edwyn plays guitar. Thanks to JC for noting my error. 

Pale Blue Eyes

In the same year R.E.M. recorded a version that first saw the light of day as the B-side on the So. Central Rain 12" single and then later when it was compiled onto the Dead Letter Office album, a record that pulled together odds, ends, B-sides and drunken rehearsal room takes. Michael Stipe's voice was made for Pale Blue Eyes and Peter Buck's guitar is drenched in reverb. In the sleeve notes to Dead Letter Office Peter Buck says it was recorded live to two track and notes he added 'an exceedingly sloppy guitar solo'. Sloppy sounding just fine on this occasion. 

Pale Blue Eyes

Here R.E.M. play it live in New Jersey in 1984, the band caught brilliantly half a lifetime ago. 

Now Fool Might Be My Middle Name

I acquired a digital copy of the 2019 remix album of R.E.M.'s Monster recently and have been playing it a lot. Monster was always an odd album for me. It came out in September 1994, the band having had two enormous records (Out Of Time and Automatic For The People) neither of which they'd played live- they hadn't been on the road since 1989's Green tour. Prior to meeting to record Monster Bill Berry said he wanted to tour and wanted an album that rocked. Green, Out Of Time and Automatic For The People had all been at least partly played on acoustic guitars and mandolins with accordions and organs, slower paced songs (I need to come back to Out Of Time at some point soon). 

Monster was a curious mixture of slinky sexed up glam rock (Crush With Eyeliner, Circus Envy), some fairly straight ahead alternative rock songs ( What's The Frequency, Kenneth?, Bang And Blame) and some murky, feedback ridden laments (Let Me In, You) and a batch of album songs with lots of electric guitars (I Don't Sleep I Dream, Star 69, King Of Comedy). The sequencing seemed curious, frontloading the record with the two biggest hitters and the second half of side two a long drawn out affair. Michael Stipe's lyrics were unbalanced too- songs in character about being famous, songs about about identity and sexuality, an ode to Kurt Cobain and some songs about love gone wrong. For every song with catchy, sharp one liners like Crush With Eyeliner there's another one about self disgust like Tongue. It all seems a bit all over the place. Maybe becoming the biggest band in the world (give or take) without even touring does that to a group. Additionally, the peaks aren't as peaky as on previous albums (Out Of Time has at least five genuine R.E.M. classics, certainly from their major label years- Half A World Away, Country Feedback, Leave, Belong, Me In Honey) and Automatic For The People (which almost doesn't have a weak spot but especially the closing trio of Man On The Moon, Nightswimming and Find The River). If the peaks on Monster aren't as high, the lows are flattened out too- no billion sellers that you really don't ever need to hear again (Losing My Religion, Shiny Happy People, Everybody Hurts), no novelties. Monster just seemed a bit flatter all round, a seven out of ten record. At the time, 1994, I was drifting away from them and indie rock anyway so maybe I didn't give it the time it needed. I loved Crush With Eyeliner, liked some of the rest and some of it didn't really register at all.  

But, and here's the funny thing, listening to the remix has been a revelation. Scott Litt, producer of the original album, had always felt the album needed revisiting and the 25th anniversary of its release gave him the excuse. He'd long felt the songs were often muddied by the production and that the layers of guitars and feedback that covered the songs needed stripping away and that Stipe's vocals were too often buried as well. Litt stripped away a lot of the murk, took off some of the multi- tracked guitars and pushed Michael's vocals to the fore (and in some cases used a different vocal, such as on Strange Currencies). It should be said, none of the band felt this needed doing. Stipe said Monster was an exact record of 'who we were at that moment in time'. The newer version of Monster has made me hear it anew, the songs revealing themselves in a way they didn't at the time. It sounds like four people playing together, a more balanced album. On some of the songs, it feels like Peter Buck has played the main guitar part, added one overdub and then everyone was happy with it and they left it at that, no need to go back and add more. A lot of the words are much more audible too and Stipe's lyrics on these songs are a world away from the early years but also from the more narrative approach he'd adopted on Out Of Time and the sombre meditations on death and mortality on Automatic. 

I could have posted almost any of the remixed songs, they've all made an impression on me over the last couple of weeks, some of them returning into my world after a long absence and some seeming almost new. 

Strange Currencies (2019 remix)

I Sit At My Table

This clip from R.E.M.'s TourFilm came my way at the weekend, World Leader Pretend filmed during R.E.M.'s 1989 world tour to support their major label debut album Green. 

I was at the Liverpool gig at Royal Court 21st May 1989, the only time I saw R.E.M. live. I didn't see them earlier because I only got into them around Document and didn't see them later on because of my general aversion to arena and stadium gigs (and drift away from them in the mid 90s)- probably a mistake on my part especially when you watch the 1999  Glastonbury performance where they look like a band on fire. On the other hand, I saw them once in a relatively small / medium sized and it was so memorable and so good, that maybe once was enough. 

In the clip above Stipe introduces World Leader Pretend by whacking a metal school chair with a drumstick. The white suit, dark smear of eyeliner and intense demeanour under bright lights is pretty arresting on film and was very much more so in the flesh. On that night, a warm evening in north west England towards the end of my first year away at university, R.E.M. were highly anticipated. Green had been out for six months already so everyone knew the songs inside out and the Royal Court was packed from before the time the support band took the stage (The Blue Aeroplanes, fantastic that night incidentally). Their set pulled from their back catalogue as well as Green, opening with Pop Song '89 and finishing with It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), a song taken at breakneck speed, the entire crowd waiting and then almost missing the 'Leonard Bernstein' part. In between they sprayed us with their 80s brilliance, Buck whirling around, white shirt and Rickenbacker or Les Paul, and Mike Mills at the front stage left, his backing vocals high in the mix. The website SetList FM says they followed Pop Song '89 with These Days, Turn You Inside Out, Disturbance At The Heron House and Orange Crush. They slowed down a bit for the next few- King Of Birds, Sitting Still, Feeling Gravitys Pull and Coyahoga. Then they played World Leader Pretend before pitching it up again with Begin The Begin, Pretty Persuasion, Get Up and Life And How To Live It. I don't really remember too much of the details and I couldn't have listed that setlist without the help of the internet. I just recall the overall blur and energy of song after song, harmonies and guitars, and Michael Stipe's presence out front and a crowd lapping it up. I clearly recall Michael calling somebody out who was throwing beer around in the crowd- 'that better not be styrofoam'- and the intro to Orange Crush where he stood in a single spotlight singing acapella 'be all you can be/ in the army' before Bill Berry crashed in with his drums. 

The encores do stick in the memory- Stand, Belong (then unrecorded, a song that would appear on Out Of Time in 1991) and You Are The Everything. They went off again and then re- appeared for a Hugo Largo cover version, a brief run through Gershwin's Summertime and a crunching, loud Finest Worksong. Following that they played Perfect Circle, one of early R.E.M.'s highlights, a beautiful, fragile song, Stipe introducing it as a song 'we only play when we've played really special gigs'. They finished with their cover of The Velvet Underground's  After Hours and we all disappeared into the summer night, giddy/ drunk on our own youth and music. 

This photo appeared on Twitter some time ago, a postcard from the past, Stipe with his megaphone at the Royal Court taken by someone nearer the front than I was. 

Green was the first album for Warners and seems like both the end of the first chapter and the start of the next one. It is still clearly the work of the same band who made Document and Lifes Rich Pageant, a record stuffed full of singles, clarity, direct statements and loud guitars played in major keys. I still like the silly songs, the singles, that some people can't stand- Stand and Get Up. Turn You Inside Out and I Remember California are dark heavy guitar rock, forerunners of Monster perhaps. Green also feels like the first album in the trilogy that made them enormous, turned them into genuine stadium superstars, the mandolins and acoustic guitars and softer spaces of Hairshirt and The Wrong Child paving the way for Losing My Religion, Low, Half A World Away and Automatic For The People. It's an album that the band have said is haphazard and scattershot, experimental even, but to me it's a complete piece of work (and an instant return to being eighteen and nineteen too). 

World Leader Pretend was clearly a big song for Michael Stipe, a grand statement. The lyrics were printed on the inner sleeve, the first time R.E.M. had done that and no other song from Green got that honour. It's straightforward and direct, no mumbling or confusion, no oblique images stitched together, just Michael Stipe. Apparently the vocal on the record was the first and only take. The instruments jump around in the mix, the acoustic guitars, mandolin, the cello and pedal steel taking it in turns to have a moment in the foreground while Stipe sings, a song he says was in part a tribute to Leonard Cohen. Despite speculation about it being about political leaders the song seems to me much more personal, an admission that he/ the narrator isn't the centre of the world, that not everything is about him, and what we hear is a humility from someone about to become a superstar- Stipe's inner conflicts and past mistakes writ large. 

World Leader Pretend

All The People Gather

On 28th July i.e. two days ago, it was the thirty- fifth anniversary of the release of R.E.M.'s fourth album Lifes Rich Pageant (no apostrophe, Stipe's punctuation). I've been meaning to write a post about that album for some time and if I'd been better prepared it would have gone up on Wednesday but I didn't realise it was the anniversary until yesterday so, we are where we are, as people like to say. 

R.E.M. recorded Lifes Rich Pageant in Belmont, Indiana with Don Gehman at the producer's desk. The recording of the previous album Fables Of The Reconstruction (another album I've been meaning to write about but not got around to yet) was fraught with problems- recorded during a cold, damp winter in London with Joe Boyd producing and the band homesick, an album that took a while to grow on people. Some of the band were unhappy with it but its reputation has grown over the decades since its release. Lifes Rich pageant was well received from the start and a definite attempt to push on, gain more listeners, release an album which would drive the songs further into college rock radio and beyond. Gehman was best known for his work with John Cougar Mellencamp and his production and the directness of the songs are in stark contrast to the mystery and obliqueness of Murmur and Reckoning and the Southern storytelling lyrics of Fables. Stipe is to the point, writing lyrics that mean something and stand for something, six years into Reagan's America and everything that went with that. Buck, Mills and Berry meanwhile play harder and with a rockier edge, stripping back and away from the denser jangle of their early songs. The environment is a key theme along with the state of the nation and US foreign policy. Beginning with Begin The Begin, a song kicking off with heavy guitar notes and Stipe's lower register, an urgency that jumps out of the speakers, and words that point a finger- 'silence means security/ silence means approval'. The song finishes with 'let's begin again', a lyrical motif he comes back to on Coyahoga ('let's put our heads together/ And start a new country up'). The second song blasts straight out of the blocks and leaves no doubt where the band's politics are at... 'We are young despite the years/ We are concern/ We are hope despite the times'.

These Days

There's still some fairly obscure lines about rearranging scales, marching to the sea, slapping your hat on your head, but These Days, with Berry whacking the drums and Buck hitting the guitar strings hard, sounds like a group nailing their political colours to the mast. Stipe has said that he had some kind of breakdown in 1985 and when he began writing again he knew he had come out of his darkest, most depressive time- hence the songs for Pageant were inspired and forward looking. These Days is one of my favourite R.E.M. songs, a stark contrast to the songs of their first two albums but showing a band growing and changing while keeping their instincts and integrity intact. 

The third song is in many ways the quintessential IRS years R.E.M. song, Fall On Me, a yearning, melodic, accessible song with lines about either acid rain or oppression (depending on when and who was asked). Mike Mills and Stipe sing it almost as a duet, Mills voice to the fore. After that Coyahoga, a beautiful, rousing song about the Coyahoga river, once so polluted that the river actually burned, contrasting the then current state of the river with the theft of the land from the American Indians. Stipe manages to write a positive lament, if that's possible, an optimistic call to arms- take the land back. Four songs in and possibly the strongest opening four songs of any R.E.M. album, the band then show their range- Hyena, a pacey rocker first recorded for Fables but not used- listen to the demo and its difficult to disagree with Buck who said that leaving it off Fables showed that the group 'obviously didn't know what we were doing'. It fits the rockier sound of Pageant better though so maybe the decision was right in the end. 

Hyena (Demo)

Side two always seems slightly weaker to me. That's not to say the songs aren't good, they almost all are, but it just feels like the tempo drops a tad and the sequencing feels a bit random. The Flowers Of Guatemala is a wonderful, lilting folk rock tribute to the dead of that country, the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the USA's dirty wars in Latin America. What If We Give It Away (wistful jangle folk) and Just A Touch (fast, jumbled, feedback) are both fine but sound a bit jammed together. Swan Swan H is a civil war ballad. Lifes Rich Pageant closes with a cover of a daft 60s garage band song, Superman (by The Clique), sung by Mike Mills as Stipe wouldn't do it. It works really well, underlines what has gone before with a bit of bubblegum, a goofy contrast with the album's themes of change, politics, the environment, destruction of native peoples and their lands.

In the middle of all this on side two is I Believe, a song that sounds like it was written and recorded in the same instant as Begin The Begin and These Days, starting out with banjo and then suddenly Buck chiming in, Mills and Berry right on cue and fired up. Stipe, often asked by journalists what the songs were about and what he believed in, gives them what they want, a manifesto (of sorts)- 'when I was young and full of grace/ I spirited a rattlesnake' he lets fly, a startling opening couplet, before setting his beliefs out in full- 'I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract', 'the difference between what you want and what you need', 'trust in your calling... practice makes perfect... I believe in example/ I believe my throat hurts'. 

That's what you get for asking. 

I Believe

Opportune

There's been a lot of R.E.M. in the blogosphere over the last few months. The Vinyl Villain had a year long weekly series tackling every one of the band's UK singles in chronological order and co- writer Robster has now started a weekly imaginary singles series (based on the evidence that R.E.M. didn't always represent themselves best by their choice of singles). Craig at Plain Or Pan dissected Catapult last week. Back in April I pulled out their first four albums and really listened to them again for the first time in years (and then went on to Green and In Time too). I got stuck on Murmur for days, listening to the re- issued CD in the car going to and from work and then at home too on my old vinyl copy. 

There's something magical about Murmur and by magical I mean something that's difficult to pinpoint precisely, it has an inexplicable quality and is way more than the sum of the parts. The songs on Murmur were in part the product of hundreds of gigs in bars and small venues but on wax/ tape they become something else, the magic transforms the songs. The sympatico production of Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, totally in tune with the group's influences- 60s folk rock, 70s punk and post- punk- is part of the magic. They had the the desire to make an album that didn't sound like it was recorded in 1983 but could have been recorded at any point in the previous two decades. Then there's the chemistry between Peter Buck's guitar playing, all Rickenbacker arpeggios, the Berry- Mills rhythm section (especially Mike Mills' melodic bass playing) and the three part harmonies. On top, the indefinable voice/ words/ vowel sounds/ growling of Michael Stipe. Much has been written and said about his vocal style in the early years, the timbre of his voice, the off key moments and ability to suddenly turn a song on its head and the words- impressionistic lines and images, words jammed together that suggest meaning, a sort of Southern US poetry. Maybe trying to unpick the words and the way the four young men played together is fruitless- it doesn't matter how they did it, just be transported by what they did.

Shaking Through is my current favourite, the jangle of the guitar, the thump thump thump thump of the bass drum and Stipe soaring over the top, something about geisha gowns and denial and then that weirdly brilliant chorus- 'shaaaaaaking through/ ooopppppuurrrtune'. Magical. 

Shaking Through

The deluxe CD re- issue included a full live show, the group recorded at Fat Larry's Hideaway in Toronto, 9th July 1983. There aren't many live CDs I can listen to in full repeatedly but this is one, R.E.M. in 1983, an exhilarating, life affirming experience. 

Sitting Still is essential early R.E.M., the Byrds transported to Athens, Georgia in the 1980s, Stipe only really properly audible for the line 'waste of time/ sitting still', those harmonies really nailed on.  

Sitting Still (Live 1983)

9-9 is clipped post- punk riffing, Gang Of Four influences in evidence, while Stipe really makes the listener work, on record and live, only surfacing for the phrase 'conversation fear'. 

9-9 (Live 1983)

Edit: Martin blogged about early R.E.M. today as well here, a very similar first paragraph to mine and a really moving post about Camera. 

A Must!

I got into R.E.M. in 1987 or '88 and then was able to swallow the IRS years whole and rapidly- the run of albums from Murmur to Life's Rich Pageant seemed cheap at the time so their back catalogue came at me in rush and I can't remember the exact order I bought them but I think it as something like this- Document first, then Reckoning before Murmur (which is the wrong way round obviously) and then Life's Rich Pageant, the B-sides compilation Dead Letter Office, a treasure trove of oddities and offcuts, followed by Fables Of The Reconstruction. Reckoning made a deep impression on me, the beautiful chiming guitar lines and riffing, Stipe's unintelligible, enigmatic and strange lyrics, Mike Mills' bass playing and the backing vocals from Mills and Billy Berry, all wrapped around some really strong songs, moving, melancholy odes to people and places in the USA in the mid 1980s, a world away from the USA we saw on the TV- Ronald Reagan, Miami Vice, Hollywood films about Vietnam, Moonlighting, shady government activities in Central America on the news. R.E.M.'s songs were about small towns called Rockville, how Stipe would rather be a camera and letters he never sent, central rain and second guessing. Poetic and full of yearning but countered by the powerful Byrdsy/ indie punch of the band. 

On  Dead Letter Office  you can find the song Voice Of Harold, the music from Reckoning's 7 Chinese Brothers but with a completely different vocal and lyrics. The story goes that producer Mitch Dixon was struggling to get a usable vocal recording from Stipe, who was burned out from the constant touring and a diffident and reclusive person in the studio. Dixon became increasingly frustrated about Stipe singing so quietly he couldn't be heard on the tape, climbed a ladder above the vocal booth and dropped an album in that happened to be in the studio- the album was a gospel record from the 1970s called The Joy Of Knowing Jesus by The Revelaires. Stipe began reciting and singing the liner notes and then warmed up and inspired he went on to record the vocal for 7 Chinese Brothers. 

Voice Of Harold is one of my favourite R.E.M. songs, there's so much mystery and plain oddness about the words and Stipe's phrasing of them. Back in 1987/ 88 they made as little sense as anything could and still sounded so full of importance. The liner notes of The Joy Of Knowing Jesus are a puffed up promo piece, extolling the virtues of the singers not least the 'pure tenor quality of the voice of Harold Montgomery', and 'the power of [the album] to mend a broken heart or straighten out your life through the sincere testimony in the songs of The Revelaires/ A must!' Stipe sings the words like his life depend on them, pouring his heart into them and as a result unlocking something he wasn't able to before. 

The granddaughter of Harold Montgomery is fairly active on various internet forums. It seems at first the family were unhappy with the release of Voice Of Harold but have come to terms with it over the years and now sell vinyl copies of the album for hundreds of dollars a copy. 

Voice Of Harold

After singing Voice Of Harold Stipe sang 7 Chinese Brothers, a song that made no more sense to me lyrically aged seventeen or eighteen than Harold did. I was always into the words/lyrics/ poems but with R.E.M. the meaning of individual lines or entire songs never seemed to matter that much, the stream of consciousness/ babble/ imagery could be taken at face value, a wash of words coming out of the speakers that went with the music. It sounded like Stipe meant whatever he was singing and that was enough. The opening line of 7 Chinese Brothers was arresting if ungrammatical (not that that mattered), 'the smell of sweet, short haired boy/ woman offers pull up a seat' but after that it was anyone's guess. No internet lyric sites to help out. Michael has since explained that the song is about a couple he broke up and then dated both halves of, the boy and the girl. The chorus, the seven Chinese brothers part, is based on a children's book about five Chinese brothers, based on a traditional Chinese story. Each brother has a different supernatural ability, one of them the power to swallow an ocean. This greed leads to his death- I guess Stipe finds a parallel between the greed of the brother and his own greed in wanting both of the couple he broke up. 

7 Chinese Brothers

Reckoning stills sounds really special to me, ten songs that whizz by in a blur, pulling at the heartstrings and reminding me of the teenager I was. I don't think it's my favourite R.E.M. album or their best- of the albums from their early IRS years  Murmur has an even deeper sense of mystery and is full of all the things that made them so special. Fables Of The Reconstruction has songs that I still find beguiling and I love it's murk and muddy edge. Life's Rich Pageant is rousing and less oblique, full of mini- anthems for outsiders. But it's got something that marks it out, an energy formed by being a good band constantly playing live coupled with confident songwriting and playing and a genuinely brilliant singer finding his voice. 

Eleven

This blog is eleven years old today. Somehow I had the presence of mind to start it on New Year's Day which makes remembering when it's birthday is easy even if some years I've been a tad fuzzy headed when waking up to it. Not so much of a problem today. 

Back in November I posted 11 Years by The Wolfgang Press (a pair of Sabres Of Paradise remixes of their song) so there's not much point posting them again so soon. I've got this pair of elevens instead, the first from Pete Wylie in 1987, a soaring, anthemic love song with it's roots way back in the blues and the slums of New York in the late 19th century

Four Eleven Forty Four

This one is the so called Eleventh Untitled Song from R.E.M.'s major label debut Green back in 1989. The musicians swapped instruments for this, Pete Buck playing drums and drummer Bill Berry playing guitar. Stipe sings his heart out, a song about missing someone while being away. It's simple and direct and one of their most affecting songs. 

Eleventh Untitled Song 

Happy new year. 

The Big Sleep

There's a film channel on Freeview called TCM which shows a random selection of movies. Recently I noticed that they were scheduled to show The Bog Sleep and The Maltese Falcon so set the box to record both.  I was a big fan of film noir back in the 80s and early 90s, watched both these films and others, especially those with Humphrey Bogart in them. I read some of Raymond Chandler's novels. This week there was a night when everyone was out and I settled down to watch The Big Sleep.

Bogart plays a private detective Phillip Marlowe hired by General Sternwood to settle a problem with some gambling debts one of his daughters (Lauren Bacall) has accrued. Carmen (Bacall) wants to stop him. She suspects that what her father really wants is to find Sean Regan, who vanished in mysterious circumstances a month earlier. From there on in the plot thickens to involve a bookseller, some blackmail regarding indecent photos of the younger Sternwood daughter, a very flirtatious scene in the bookshop and implied sex, a casino belonging to Eddie Mars, several visits to a house where the body of the bookseller Joe Geiger is found, a beating for Bogart, some resolution of plot issues, Bogart and Bacall suddenly falling in love and the death of Eddie Mars, shot by his own men when Bogie tricks him into going outside. All good film noir stuff.

The film was made during the war- there are a few wartime moments such as a female taxi driver and poster of FDR- but its release was delayed until 1946 so the studios could rush release all the war films they'd made. It was criticised on release for being difficult to follow and confusing. Marlowe sometimes makes deductions that aren't shared with the audience. The death of chauffeur Owen Taylor is unexplained. It's not especially confusing but there is a lot of back and forth, people going to and from places rapidly. There's little character development, it is all plot. And it does look old- really old. But Bogart and Bacall are superb, the lighting is dramatic, there's a grittiness about it that appeals and script is witty and fresh. Everyone, Bogart especially, smokes constantly.

A couple of pop culture things leapt out. Firstly the line 'now wait a minute, you better talk to my mother', taken by Coldcut, who have been posted here several times this week now, and used in their 1987 remix of Eric B and Rakim's Paid In Full. Paid In Full (Seven Minutes of Madness Mix) was a pioneering example of the art of the remix, a record that gave Eric and Rakim a hit, spliced in vocals from a recent hit from Ofra Haza and introduced the world to the much used 'This is a journey into sound...' sample.

Paid In Full (Seven Minutes Of Madness Mix)

When Marlowe (Bogart) visits Eddie Mars' casino Vivian (Bacall) is singing (backed by The Williams Brothers including Andy). The song is And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine, a jazz song written by Stan Kenton. One of the lines she sings refers to a girl being 'a sad tomato'- the lines go 'she's a sad tomato/she's a busted valentine'.



In 1994 Michael Stipe would use the same line in R.E.M.'s Crush With Eyeliner, a line that has always jumped out at me as being such an odd expression. I've no idea if Stipe got it from The Big Sleep or from a different version of the song but it seems reasonable to assume he watched the film late night on tour in a hotel room. Stipe follows it with 'she's three miles of bad road'.



Finally, as this picture shows, the younger of the two Sternwood girls must have been one of the inspirations for the look Ridley Scott gave Sean Young in Blade Runner (Martha Vickers, second right).

That's your lot from The Big Sleep. Next stop for me is to watch The Maltese Falcon, a film and book that from memory are far more confusing and difficult to follow than The Big Sleep.

8

Morning. If it is morning when you're reading this. Hope you're feeling alright. On January 1st 2010 I published my first post here at Bagging Area. Today, 3441 posts and 9727 comments later, the blog turns 8. Thank you to all of you who read it, thanks especially to those who comment, and here's to a few more. I never really set a deadline or expiry date when starting out. I'll keep going as long as there is something to write about I  suppose. Like this...

Songs with 8 in the title aren't numerous. This is a 1985 R.E.M. song about a passenger train running through the southern states. The chorus goes ''and the train conductor says 'take a break driver 8, driver 8 take a break, we can reach our destination but we're still a ways away''. In 2008 Michael Stipe introduced Driver 8 live by saying 'this is a song that represents great hope and great promise, a song that represents the dream of the United States of America'. So it's about that too.

Driver 8

This is from 1990's still stunning 90 album this is a song that pays tribute to a drum machine. An attention grabbing intro followed by rave synths and beats with a great breakdown section.

808080808

In the days when football teams were numbered 1-11 number 8 was always a central midfielder- not the flash captain figure of the number 7 shirt and not the centre forward of number 9 but in between, a gutsy, hard tackling midfielder, someone who did the simple things well and chipped in with the odd goal. In the 90s Paul Ince and Nicky Butt were the number 8 shirt wearers at United. In the 80s the shirt belonged to Gordon Strachan and Remi Moses (and for a season apiece Ashley Grimes and Ray Wilkins). In the picture below Remi is to the left of Diego Maradona in a European Cup Winners Cup second leg at Old Trafford, one of the greatest games I've attended. Diego barely got a look-in all night. The first leg had finished 2-0 to Barcelona. The return leg was won 3-0 by United, with goals from Bryan Robson and Frank Stapleton, but the end to end performance of Remi was behind it. In the next round he marked and tackled Michel Platini of Juventus out of the game. Injury forced him to retire in 1988, aged just 28.

Hey Now Little Sleepyhead

I haven't deliberately listened to any R.E.M. for ages. I hear them in passing but don't often make the effort to play their records. Recently I had an overwhelming urge to hear Find The River. The album it finished off, Automatic For The People, came out a quarter of a century ago and for an album that is right up there in their back catalogue, Find The River is quite the ending, heartstrings tugged at for sure, but also optimistic and wide eyed (at the end of a record that was surrounded by rumours of death and illness). Lovely beyond belief.

Stipe's lyrics were much clearer by this point-

'The river to the ocean flows
A fortune for the undertow
None of this is going my way'

But he could still chuck in words for their own sake, for the sound of them-

'Of ginger, lemon, indigo
Coriander stem and rose of hay'

And finish with couplets that seem to mean something-

'Strength and courage overides
The privileged and weary eyes
Of river poet search naivete
Pick up her and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
All of this is going your way'

She's A Sad Tomato

Watching an R.E.M. documentary the other night reminded me a) what a good band R.E.M. were in the 80s but also b) how they kept that going into the mainstream- such an unlikely band to be stadium size, multi-million selling albums big. After Automatic For The People I always think they tail off very quickly but the fade was delayed longer than that. I didn't think too much of Monster when it came out but Crush With Eyeliner is really good- it shimmers and throbs and has groove. New Adventures In Hi Fi has several 90s peaks on it too. Being massive and mainstream and still being interesting is a difficult trick to pull off. In retrospect they should have called it a day when Bill Berry left- that would have left everything intact.



Which then led me to this 90s Sonic Youth masterpiece. Sonic Youth crossing over with New York fashion shows and Cara Delevingne in tow. Sonic Youth crossed back pretty quickly.