Music Friday: "Man on the Moon"

The holidays have got me all discombobulated, so I'm doing this post a day late. 

I'm getting close to finishing the fine biography of R.E.M. written by Peter Ames Carlin: The Name of This Band is R.E.M.  

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I think it's hard to find a set of three songs to end an album like you find on Automatic for the People. 

The album ends with this trio:

• Man on the Moon
• Nightswimming
• Find the River

Here's the most popular song of the triad. 

Music Friday: "Radio Free Europe" & "So. Central Rain"

For the holidays, I received a couple of books, one of which is The Name of This Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin.

I'm only a few chapters in, but I'm enjoying it so far. 

In the Introduction, the author talks about the band's TV debut on Late Night with David Letterman, and they played these songs during their appearance. 

Music Friday: "Life and How to Live It"

This morning I'm listening to R.E.M.'s Fables of the Reconstruction, one of the band's great early albums. 

"Feeling Gravity's Pull," "Driver 8," and "Can't Get There from Here" get a lot of attention from that album, but I was reminded today of how much I like this tune. 

Music Friday: "Until the Day Is Done"

After the results of this Tuesday, this song seems appropriate. 

"The battle's been lost. The war is not won./ An addled republic, a bitter refund." 

Keep fighting for what's right and all people's rights. 

Music Friday: "Pretty Persuasion"

This song was, for whatever reason, in heavy rotation on a couple of different SiriusXM radio stations I listen to. 

You might as well enjoy it too. 

Music Friday: "Little America"

I've been thinking of this song lately, especially the line "Jefferson, I think we're lost." 

Music Friday: "Finest Worksong"

Man, I'm usually more productive on my blog during spring break, but that trend hasn't been the case this year. 

Regardless, here's the opening track on Document, R.E.M.'s commercial breakthrough album. 

Music Friday: "Find the River"

R.E.M. is one of the bands I listened to a lot during my formative years as a teenager and twentysomething. I was first drawn to them because I was an avid reader of Rolling Stone, and their albums were typically in the college radio album charts. 

Remember those? 

Life's Rich Pageant is probably my favorite album from the band, but I like them all. 

Automatic for the People was one of their more popular albums that had big songs like "Drive," "Everybody Hurts," and "Man on the Moon." 

I listened to that album this week. So here's the final tune on that fine album in official video format and live from Koln, Germany in 2001. 

Music Friday: "Pop Song 89"

I was talking with a friend yesterday about the few times I've been on the U of Iowa's campus. 

The last time I was on that campus was the Green tour of R.E.M. They played at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. 

My high school girlfriend and I went to the rock show. 

Here's the opening track on the Green album.

Music Friday: "Exhuming McCarthy"

I was listening to Document this morning, and this song reminds me of the various dog whistling movements that the right wing has undertaken over the years. 

What I'm talking about is recounted in David Corn's American Psychosis: A Historical Investigations of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. 

Music Friday: "Driver 8"

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit will have an album of covers out in mid October. The album is a collection of Georgia-based songs from various bands since that state smartly elected two Democratic Senators and went in favor of Biden. 

The album's title is Georgia Blue. 

Here's a cover of R.E.M.'s "Driver 8." 

Music Friday: "Driver 8" & "Outfit"

One of my favorite R.E.M. songs from their earlier work is "Driver 8." 

The Drive-By Truckers shared this video via FB. I've also included "Outfit" from the same person recording the concert.  

Music Friday: "Can't Get There from Here"

 As I was driving back to work just now, SiriusXM's Spectrum played "Man on the Moon," and I thought about how often I've listened to R.E.M. over the years. 

I tend to like their earlier work better, so here's a classic cut from the 80s. 

Music Friday: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) & "Rockin' in the Free World"

If you want to anger the members of R.E.M. and Neil Young, just have some GOP candidates play their songs at rallies. 

"R.E.M. to GOP Presidential Candidates, Go F@#$% Yourselves" gives the lowdown on all that. 

In their honor, I offer these two tunes for Music Friday. 

[Belated] Music Friday: "I Believe"

I'm a day late, unfortunately.

On the Facebook the other day, I shared some listicle that has been cavorting about the interwebs about the most underrated R.E.M. songs. 

I agree with a number of picks, and the article reminded me that Life's Rich Pageant is one of my favorite R.E.M. albums. 

"I Believe" is one of my favorite songs off that album. 

Music Friday: "Daysleeper"

Currently the family car has R.E.M.'s Up in the CD player, and one of my favorite songs on that album is "Daysleeper." Hannah had to suffer through "Lotus" and "Sad Professor" on the way back from gymnastics last night.





While R.E.M.'s song isn't talking about the type of daysleepers I'm more familiar with--folks who work the second and third shifts in factories--the song usually reminds me of those people who see the day from a very different perspective than the majority.

In fact, thinking about second- and third-shifters also reminds me of an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that I'm including in the book I'm writing with a colleague. "Beer for Breakfast" by John M. McGuire describes the taverns in the St. Louis that cater to the late shift crowd.

The tavern I frequented back in college also was amenable to those clientele.

R.E.M. Calls It Quits

As they related on their website yesterday, R.E.M., one of the groundbreaking bands of my lifetime, is calling it quits.

R.E.M. was alternative before alternative became a mass-market genre. Back then, if memory serves, many folks labeled them and other bands as "college rock," back when Rolling Stone covered the "college charts." I've listened to a lot of R.E.M.'s tunes over the years. The second concert I ever went to was R.E.M. playing at Carver-Hawkeye Arena during the Green tour.

When I look at the band's discography, there are only a few CDs of the band that I don't own: Dead Letter Office, Out of Time, and Around the Sun. I had Out of Time once, but I don't know what happened to it.

As much as I felt Reveal was a dog of an album, I went along and bought the band's last two discs, Accelerate and Collapse Into Now, both of which are good. For me though, they'll never stack up to the early works of Life's Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and Document.

In yet another sign I'm getting old, a band I grew up with finally disbands after 31 years of making music.

Music Friday: "I Believe (and Poem)" & "Nerves of the Nightmind"

I recently purchased the new R.E.M. album Collapse Into Now, and I like it. The band's releases before this one have decent (Accelerate) and mediocre at best (Reveal) for fans like me who have been listening to their work since Murmur.

My favorite R.E.M. album is Life's Rich Pageant. I like the album so much that I smuggled the phrase "life's rich pageant" into the book I'm writing/revising. "I Believe" above comes from that album, a work that also features "Begin the Begin," "Fall on Me," "What If We Give It Away?," and "Superman." Other favorite albums are mine are Fables of the Reconstruction, Reckoning, and Document. That era was a fine time to be a R.E.M. fan.

And I'm particularly fond of Automatic for the People too although I despise "Everybody Hurts." On that album the final three songs are outstanding: "Man on the Moon," "Nightswimming," and "Find the River." It's hard to repeat that kind of trio to close an album.

An emerging band that reminds me of R.E.M. in some respects is Frontier Ruckus, whose second album I featured on my "Top Ten/Twenty Albums of 2010" post. Check out the video for "Nerves of the Nightmind" from Deadmalls and Nightfalls below.



Now Frontier Ruckus is more alt-country, folk-rock, Americana, or whatever the heck they want to describe themselves as, but Milia's lyrics remind of Stipe's in some respects although when you compare his lyrics to Stipe's lyrics from the early R.E.M albums, there's a lot more to go on when deciphering meaning. But they both have playful and literary steaks as writers.

Early R.E.M. lyrics, to my eyes at least, remind me of "language poetry," and some of Milia's lyrics work that way too even though "Nerves of the Nightmind" isn't that hard to figure out unless I'm really off base.

And speaking of lyrics, both are below.

Music Friday: "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

For the most part, I've had kind of a crappy week.

But this morning I got an email indicating that a major journal in my discipline has accepted and will publish one of my research articles. 

And I feel fine. 

Click HERE for a classic video and song.

Music Friday: "Don't Go Back to Rockville"

I got the new R.E.M. cd this summer, and it's ok.

It's no Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Fables of the Reconstruction, Murmur, Green, or Reckoning.

Click HERE to watch R.E.M. circa 1985.