Something 4 The Weekend #245

Brian May & Friends:  Star Fleet Project:  "Starfleet"  [mp3]

One of Brian May's friends on this 1983 project is Eddie Van Halen.  That's pretty much all that matters to a guy like me who believes Eddie is the second greatest rock guitarist after Jimi Hendrix. 

I saw the original Van Halen in concert three times.  Aside from Eddie being the second greatest rock guitarist of all time, I still believe, after all these years and sooo many concerts, that Diamond Dave is the best front man I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Michael Stipe.

I never saw Queen live, nor Jimi, though my dad claimed he and my mom saw Jimi live.  My mom didn't agree.  I can say that one of my earliest memories is going to a Willie Nelson show with my parents when I was about four years old.  Willie Nelson isn't one of Brian's friends on this project.

REO Speedwagon's drummer, Alan Gratzer, is one of Brian's friends.  I saw REO Speedwagon headline The World Series of Rock at Milwaukee County Stadium back in 1981.  That show is significant because it was the first time I smoked weed.  Combined with too much blackberry brandy, and I spent a good chunk of 38 Special's set puking and shitting in a filthy stadium bathroom. 

I don't know if this is true, but I seem to recall being hunched over that disgusting toilet and thinking, "Alan Gratzer is not a good rock'n'roll name."  Meanwhile, five hundred feet away, on the stage erected out in the centerfield bleachers, I hear Donnie Van Zandt singing "Hold on loosely, but don't let go..."

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 227

Wire: Red Barked Tree: "Please Take" [mp3]

Fucking Wire, man.

34 years ago, December of 1977, these guys released their first album, Pink Flag, which was pretty much Post-Punk before Punk had even happened, you know? Which leads me to wonder if this thing we call Post-Punk is actually Post-Anything? In other words, Pink Flag was a true sideways maneuver, babycakes, and in the end Post-Punk has as much to do with Punk as it does with Prog or Disco or KISS.

34 years later, and dammit if Wire didn't possibly make my very favorite Wire album with Red Barked Tree, and Wire has made quite a few very good Wire albums over the years that I know and love quite well, with three or four different Wire configurations making eight or nine different kinds of music, almost all of it called Post-Punk by whoever the fuck it is that decides these things. Robert Christgau? Some dude in a cube at Spotify? Anyways...Wire!

The music Wire is making on this album sounds like the dark side of Spoon to me, and I believe that's saying something because I believe we're all in agreement that Spoon is damn outstanding themselves, and I bet if you asked Britt Daniel, he'd tell you that Wire are a pretty important influence on his own band's sound. It's a lean, mostly clean sound, with a thick, propulsive bass, and a reliance on repetition, melodies and song structures that aren't quite as simple (or repetitive) as they might first appear, creating subtle tensions that are always lurking beneath and around the beats. Beats for head nodding, finger tapping, body swaying, or driving at slightly inappropriate speeds. And damn good sex music.

Fucking Wire and Spoon, man.

And sometimes, as with this song, the tension is lyrical, because beyond the bright guitars and pulsing bass is a truly great kiss-off song (well, a fuck-you song, really), crooned in a halting way that reveals the layers of betrayal and anger slowly. It's a song that boils, boy.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and type to you that I was hip to Wire from their start, because I wasn't. I was aware of them because I read music rags even in my youth, but it wasn't until REM covered "Strange" on 1987's Document album that I decided to actually and finally check out Wire. I started with Pink Flag because their "Strange" was tucked away in the middle of side two (yeah, still buying vinyl in 1987), and I must admit, I wasn't immediately smitten. I liked Wire, but didn't love them. I like them enough to keep following them, however (I've got A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck on cassette to prove it), and eventually I got older and wiser. Nowadays, it's as much a matter of respect as anything else. 34 years of interesting music from a band that is always exploring, evolving and refining their sound, and dammit if the stuff they've been doing the last five years isn't as good as what they were doing their first five years. Wire sounding exactly the same and nothing like Wire.

Fucking REM, man.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 220

R.E.M.: Murmur: "9-9" [mp3]

I just wrote down a list of my favorite REM songs. Right now there are 23 songs on the list, and I could keep going because you know what? "Me 'n' Honey" is a fun tune, and a great album closer, just like their cover of The Clique's "Superman" at the end of Lifes Rich Pageant. "Superman", by the way, isn't on the list, but only because it isn't an REM song.

So, I've spent the last hour or so listening to REM songs, trying to decide which is my favorite, and after an hour, I still hadn't made a decision, finally deciding that it had to be this song, "9-9" , because my memories are telling me that this is the song that convinced me that REM were my new favorite band somewhere back in late 1983.

On this song, Mike Mill's fluid, propulsive bass kicks things off, with Peter Buck's serpentine guitar quickly joining with an Oriental flavor that found it's way into many REM songs back then. What I particularly love about Buck's playing on this song are all those little fills that he sneaks in between vocal lines, no two the same. But in general, Buck packs this song with a seemingly endless array of guitar sounds and riffs and styles, and to my ears, it's all very awe-inspiring. Easily one of the most forgotten guitarists when fanboys talk about all-time greats.

I can't say whether or not Bill Berry could or should ever be considered as one of Rock'n'Roll's great drummers, but I always found him steady, tasteful and interesting back in those early IRS Record years, and always a great partner with Mike Mills as the rhythm section. When the band made the conscious decision to become the biggest fucking Rock Band they could be when they signed to Warner Bros, Bill Berry's drumming got more powerful, and really helped the band evolve and succeed in becoming that big rock band that could fill big arenas and stadiums with a bigger Rock sound than the Indie Jangle kinda thing they had been known for.

And then there's Michael Stipe. I've always loved his voice, though many believe it took him a few years and a few albums to really become a good and proper Singer. Others will always hate his voice, which I'll never quite understand because it's a real voice, it's his own voice, and he was always messing around with phrasing and sounds. Of course, on this song, Stipe's legendary mumbling is in full effect (Murmur was their first LP, after all). Listen to the lyrics and try deciphering them, and then click here if you feel like reading the lyrics as decided upon by a consensus/collaboration of fans. I promise you weren't even close. "Right on target" and "conversation fear" are probably the only words you got right.

I linked to an REM lyrics site, but I won't read anything there. I've got my own version of all those songs long figured out for myself, and yes, for the sake of nostalgia that's the version I'm sticking with. So many hours spent singing along with Stipe, sussing out a word here and a phrase there, puzzles that were often nonsense, but so fun to sing along with...

So yeah, my sentimental favorite band of all time broke up this week, and this is my favorite song of theirs.

Hotcha! Hank

It's The End Of R.E.M. As We Know It (And I Feel Old)

REM were my absolute favorite band from 1983 to 1995. After drummer Bill Berry retired to rest his brain and do some farming, REM were never quite the same to me. I still followed the band, of course - bought all the albums, and even saw them one last time in 1999 on the Up Tour, but without Bill Berry, well, I guess in some ways, REM broke up, in my mind, back in the summer of 1995.

Fun Fact: My Halloween costume in 1987 was "Bill Berry". Essentially I just glued two swatches of "fun fur" over my eyebrows to approximate the magnificence of Berry's eyebrows. Somewhere out there a VHS tape might still exist that shows me saying nothing but "Hi, I'm Bill Berry" about three dozen times at various moments throughout the night.

REM was my favorite band because their music sounded like a true and real democracy. What I mean is that their songs never sounded like "a Stipe song" or a "Buck song". All four of those guys brought something unique to every song, and in doing so, no band before or since has sounded quite like REM. "All Songs Berry Buck Mills Stipe" indeed.

Fun Theory: People with big eyebrows tend to be the most interesting people you're going to meet in this life.

See, the thing is - REM were a great band to get high to. Far and away my favorite band to get high to.

They were also a great band to drive to, and guess what! Back then, in the 1980's, my buddies and I used to do alot of "buzz runs", which was nothing more than driving around out in dairyland, passing around a pipe and cranking tunes. Most of the time it was my car, a muscled 1973 Chevy Nova. Most of the time, we ended up parked out at Rabbit Ridge, our secret party spot at the end of a very long fire road. We partied out there dozens, maybe hundreds of times, and we never once encountered a cop.

One summer we grew our own weed out there. "Gardening At Night", indeed. (It wasn't very good weed.)

Anyways, I could probably dedicate a blog to REM alone, but I think we all know exactly how little writing I actually do, so...

RIP, REM. No band will ever matter more to me, for so many reasons I will probably never share. Thank you.

Hotcha! Hank

Things I Liked Last Week 071810

01: R.E.M.: The Athens Demos: "Life & How To Live It" [mp3] Once more for the record - Fables Of The Reconstruction is my favorite album by my all-time sentimental favorite band, R.E.M. Capitol Records has just reissued Fables in a very deluxe kind of way, although once you move beyond the poster and postcards, and the packaging in general, one is left with a remastered version of the original album, and a second disc of demos from the sessions for the album. These demo recordings probably only hold interest for a serious and longtime fan like me, especially of this particular album, and the quality and progress of the songs are all over the place, but that only helps to illustrate just how great the Fables album ended up being. Producer Joe Boyd does an excellent job fashioning the moodiest album in REM's catalog, and the album that has come to best represent the "classic" R.E.M. of their IRS Records years, at least for me.

02: Lego Architecture: Seattle Space Needle: We're quite literally right in the middle of moving our offices over to the other side of town, into a smaller, but fancier, building. Since I'm one of only 4 people in the Operations Department, I've been busting my ass for the past two weeks, and will be busting my ass for a couple more. I'm going to miss the old place - for the last ten years we've had a fantastic view of Lake Mendota, and now, for at least the next five years, we'll be able to see the West Beltline Highway. Which is almost beside the point except to say that I bought myself this Lego model for my new workspace. I can see a Starbucks from there. I've never been to Starbucks, though I've been to Seattle three times, and I've been to the top of the Space Needle twice. Fuck, the West Beltline might as well be Omaha or Jacksonville.



03: The Good Guys [Fox, Mondays 9/8c]: Colin Hanks plays Jack Bailey, a cop as straight as his name, and he plays the character well, or at least wears the hairdo well. But he doesn't wear that square, lacquered hair as well as Bradley Whitford wears his moustache, which is my way of saying this is Whitford's show, and so far, he's doing alright. He plays Dan Stark, an aging, seemingly washed-up detective who still manages to show the guts and tenacity that made him a golden boy once upon a time for the Dallas PD. Of course, Dan Stark is a fool unafraid to rush into stupid, often unavoidable danger, and this is why The Good Guys is an Action-Comedy. Dan Stark has a lot of balls and just enough brains to be dangerous, and so far, Bradley Whitford is making the character come alive, and really carrying the show. For his part, Hanks is doing a solid job as Stark's straight-laced partner, Bailey, who's function, obviously, is keeping Stark's bravado in check. As actors, Hanks and Whitford play this typical good cop/loose cannon buddy cop dynamic well. Add the lovely and radiant Jenny Wade as Liz Traynor, an assistant DA with a "complicated" romantic past with Jack Bailey, and well, a show like this pretty much writes itself. A loud, funny and action-packed show that's currently eating up an hour of my life these past few weeks. Will it last? Will Whitford continue to make Dan Stark a brash and bold character worth watching? Ach, who fucking knows?

04: Wu-Tang Pizza: This one is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Black olives rule everything around me and those jalepenos ain' nuttin' ta fuck wit'.

05: 66 Mailboxes: I took this picture somewhere in Marin County, California, circa 1996. (As always, click to enlarge) I've counted 66 mailboxes, and I know there are more.

Hotcha! Hank

HOT FIVE: R.E.M. Warner Bros

05: Out Of Time [1991]
Featuring..."Radio Song", "Losing My Religion", "Low", "Near Wild Heaven", "Shiny Happy People", "Half A World Away", "Country Feedback"


There are plenty of questionable songs in the R.E.M. catalog, and even a few outright stinkers. Out Of Time, the band's second album for Warner Bros, contains at least two of 'em. "Shiny Happy People" was fairly annoying even before it was a radio and MTV hit, but "Radio Song", featuring a rather lifeless KRS-One (whom I genuinely like), is perhaps my least favorite R.E.M. song of all time, and they had the horrible sense to lead off the album with it and eventually release it as a single with it's own meaningless video...It's a bloodless, plodding tune that leads directly into the biggest hit of the band's career, "Losing My Religion", which proved that seven albums in, they could still write a "classic R.E.M." tune. Out Of Time also contains two of my favorite R.E.M. songs from their Warner Bros years, "Low" and "Half A World Away", not to mention "Country Feedback", their best straight C&W tune since "Rockville". "Me 'n' Honey" ends the album on a throwaway note, the song meant to be this album's "Superman", but instead the duet with Kate Pierson of the B-52's is an unfortunate routine finish to an otherwise solid, if not stellar, album.

04: Up [1998]
Featuring..."Lotus", "At My Most Beautiful", "You're In The Air", "Why Not Smile", "Daysleeper", "Parakeet"

It only seems natural that R.E.M.'s first album without drummer Bill Berry would make use of drum machines and plenty of keyboards and synths. While there are still guitars on Up, it would seem Peter Buck was more interested in creating textures than being upfront with his usual melodic leads. What we end up with is perhaps the biggest left-turn in the band's discography. As a whole, the sound is soft and warm and breezy, a triumph of tone on an album concerned with air and flight, a literal departure from their previous longplayer, New Adventures In Hi-Fi, which was an album built for the road, and concerned with pavement and metal and glass and modernity. Up is mostly about the sky, from the album's title, through songs like "Airportman", "You're In The Air", "Parakeet", and "Falls To Climb". A decade later, Up still sounds rather fresh and inviting, an underappreciated, and maybe even forgotten, gem in their 25 year career. Solid and lasting.

03: New Adventures In Hi-Fi [1996]
Featuring..."How The West Was Won & Where It Got Us", "The Wake-Up Bomb", "New Test Leper", "E-Bow The Letter", "Bittersweet Me", "Be Mine", "Electrolite"

New Adventures In Hi-Fi is grimy and fuzzy. It's all about travel and exploration and escape, about love and lust and other earthly delights, and it's perhaps no surprise because many of the songs were written and recorded on the road during their Monster Tour of 1995. As a whole, the album has a sweeping, almost epic feel to it...Gradually unfolding, like the American landscape through a tourbus window...Heavy and raw and alive, sometimes rushing along like all the windows are open, at other times moving in slow motion, content to enjoy the ride, and it brings to mind "You Are The Everything" from their Green album..."Here's the scene, you're in the backseat, laying down, the windows wrap around to the sound of the travel and the engine...All you hear is time stand still..." But that's another song from another album, and we'll get to that later...Ironically (or not), R.E.M. didn't tour in support of this album, but I did spend six weeks on a road trip around the western half of the United States in the 1996, with my old friend Ike. In fact, New Adventures In Hi-Fi was released on the fifth day of our trip, and I bought the cassette at Amoeba Records in Berkeley for the road. It proved to be a remarkable soundtrack for our own new adventures that autumn. Even without my own deep personal connection with this album, critics and time have been kind to this album, and while it might be a song or two too long, it's still a very good and solid longplayer.

02: Automatic For The People [1992]
Featuring..."Drive", "Try Not To Breathe", "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight", "Everybody Hurts", "Star Me Kitten", "Man On The Moon", "Nightswimming"

To be honest, I can't explain why I like Automatic For The People so much. It's a bit scattershot, stylistically, and doesn't really have any utterly remarkable individual songs, and yet, listened to all the way through in one sitting, the album has a nice flow to it, and even as I type that fucking cliche, I understand how meaningless it sounds. "Everybody Hurts", of course, was an enormous hit for the band, but for me, it's just a bit too earnest, even if it ranks as one of Michael Stipe's best vocal performances. It does come on the heels of the first three song - three very solid songs that illustrates how the album doesn't really knock you out, but just keeps bringing one good song after another, the next a natural progression from the last, until we get to the final three songs, perhaps the three best on the album - "Man On The Moon", "Nightswimming", and the wistful "Find The River". "Man On The Moon" was one of their biggest hits, of course, and "Nightswimming" is simply one of the finest songs in their entire catalog, and because the album is so solid and so well-arranged, can be confidently placed at the end, followed up finally by the equally lovely and contemplative "Find The River". A truly great collection of songs, the sum greater than the parts...And isn't that what a truly good ALBUM is supposed to be?

01: Green [1988] Featuring..."Pop Song 89", "Get Up", "You Are The Everything", "Stand", "Orange Crush", "Turn You Inside-Out", "I Remember California"

While the argument certainly can be made (and won) that Green is NOT the best album from R.E.M.'s Warner Bros years, I'm ranking it #1 here for at least two reasons. First of all, it marks perhaps the most radical departure for the band, in that they simply "went for it" when they seemingly "sold out" by signing with Warner Bros. Green is a big and shiny album, full of plenty of big pop hooks and a radio-ready sound. They got their big contract, got a glimpse of how big they could get, and went for it. Not only did they craft an album readymade for mass consumption, but the band stepped up their live act. Forced to contend with the rather big and open stages of arenas and stadiums for the Green World Tour, the band cranked up the amps, wore louder suits, and Michael Stipe, in particular, proved he was a great frontman. Now he was leading crowds of 15,000+ around the world, and he was every bit as mesmerizing as he was in those early days, when crowds of a few hundred were child's play for him. I saw the band on the Green World Tour in September of 1989 at Alpine Valley, an outdoor ampitheater in the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin, and it remains the greatest and most memorable concert of my life. It was a cloudless night of a million stars, and I leaned back on the grass, stoned on weed and wine, and was stunned and shaken. They were larger than life, and yet with a crowd of about 14,000, it also felt perfectly intimate. Stipe had become a masterful performer, and even an outright entertainer, and the band brought the tunes and amps to fill those major league spaces. They could have failed, but they didn't, and I was able to gloat to my friends because from their very first album, Murmur, I had been telling anyone who would listen, and plenty who wouldn't, that R.E.M. were going to be a band for the ages. Green marked the crucial turning point simply by being the band's first release for Warner Bros.

And here we are.

Hotcha! Hank

HOT FIVE: R.E.M. I.R.S.

05: Murmur [1983]

Featuring..."Radio Free Europe", "Talk About The Passion", "Perfect Circle", "Catapult", "Sitting Still", "9-9"

Discounting their debut EP Chronic Town, this is where my love affair with R.E.M. started. What else can I call it but a "love affair"? They were my favorite band from 1983, until 1996, when drummer Bill Berry left the band after suffering a brain aneurysm onstage in Switzerland...Because I'm a 88% purist when it comes to rock bands, believing that the original line-up is the only one that counts (one exception would be Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones, for example), when Bill left the band to take up farming, well, it was time for me to move on...Like I always say, R.E.M. will forever be my all-time sentimental favorite, but nowadays, there are several bands I like better (The Kinks, for example)...But my love affair with Berry Buck Mills Stipe began with this album...I was sixteen, seventeen, and I read more than one rock music rag, and they all said Murmur was something kinda fresh and exciting, a melding of retro-jangle guitars with a pulsing New Wave rhythm section, and the enigmatic Michael Stipe with his slurring and mumbling and howling buried in the mix...WTF is he singing? Is he really a poet, or only some sort of scam artist, like his idol Patti Smith? Stipe played a shaman of sorts onstage, and they're really nothing more than salesmen too...Well, I bought into the myth, and my memories of Murmur include driving my '73 Chevy Nova out to Rabbit Ridge one night with Chauncy and Grits, and we passed around the pipe and a bottle of pineapple wine, and played this tape...It really was music custom-made for me and my friends, our generation...Caught halfway between the geezer mold music of the 1960's and '70's that we grew up on, and the fresh Punk and New Wave sounds of 1983...In a 350 Nova SS Coupe parked out at Rabbit Ridge, under the moonlight, the trees all around us, like a rustling wall, the glowing eyes of raccoons and rabbits...Sooo many rabbits, which is how the place got it's name..."Lots of scandals in the twilight..." We called 'em "Buzz Runs", and it was cool. Anyways, Murmur is number 5 on this list because it sounds a little dated and a bit quaint to my ears nowadays, compared to their subsequent I.R.S. LPs...The songs got better, and so did the recordings...

04: Document [1987]
Featuring..."Finest Worksong", "Exhuming McCarthy", "Strange", "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", "The One I Love", "King Of Birds"


This was R.E.M.'s last recording for I.R.S., and it finds them beefing up their sound a bit, working with producer Scott Litt for the first time...The big, polished sound of this recording signaled a play towards a major label deal, which they accomplished the very next year when they signed with Warner Brothers, but despite this "sell-out" the songs themselves were a daring and eclectic mix of styles, incorporating more horns, funky backbeats, weird time signatures, an edgy cover version of Wire's "Strange", and the exotic and beautiful "King Of Birds"...It also contains "It's the End Of The World As We Know It" and what can only be described as Stipe "rapping", and the band's first Top Ten single, "The One I Love". Document was also their first platinum album. Yeah, it was time to leave the College Rock world behind...

03: Reckoning [1984]
Featuring..."7 Chinese Brothers", "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", "Pretty Persuasion", "Time After Time (Annelise)", "Camera", "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville"


The first R.E.M. concert I attended was at Merlin's in Madison, on their Reckoning tour...I was a newly-minted freshman at the University Of Wisconsin, and I was wild and I was free for the first time in my life...My memories of Reckoning are intertwined with those of casual dorm-room hook-ups, passing a huge bong called "The Purple People Eater" around a perfect circle of smoking acquaintances and friends, and other times listening to this album and Murmur on headphones while doing my Introduction to Folklore reading assignments...It was the best of times, nowhere near the worst of times, even though I did plenty of foolish things when I was eighteen and still minty...I was making some mistakes, and gaining some wisdom, and doing some new and exciting kinds of living, and R.E.M. were the biggest part of the soundtrack.

02: Lifes Rich Pageant [1986]
Featuring..."Begin The Begin", "These Days", "Fall On Me", "The Flowers Of Guatamala", "I Believe", "Swan Swan H", "Superman"


By 1986 I was living in Milwaukee, laying low on the "fashionable east side" in a spacious loft hovering near the UW-Milwaukee campus...I spent most of my time outside of class writing awful poetry alone in that loft, to the muffled sounds of heated, booze-fueled sex coming from the loft on the other side of the northern wall...That was Irene and her part-time boyfriend Bill. She called him "Little Willie", and so did I. I wanted to have heated, rum-soaked sex with Irene on this side of the northern wall, but we were only ever part-time friends. Her and I did see R.E.M. on their Pageantry Tour stop at the Oriental Theater in November of that year, and it was a good-sized venue (1200-1500 capacity) for that point in their career, when they were transitioning from a more intimate College Rock band into something more powerful and compelling. Songs like "Fall On Me", "Flowers Of Guatamala" and "Swan Swan H" were in their more "classic" jangly style, but they were also getting a bit heavier, with bigger-sounding songs like "Begin The Begin", "These Days" and "Just A Touch"...At that Oriental show, the stage was crafted to look like the inside of a country church, with a huge spotlight in the back corner of the stage acting as a full moon, shining through a "window" in the backdrop down upon the middle of the stage...Which just so happened to be where Michael Stipe was proselytizing. The band was growing, and Stipe was turning into a larger-than-life and undeniable performer. He had 1000+ people in the palm of his hand for two hours. This was my fourth R.E.M. show. I was already a convert. As far as their five I.R.S. LPs are concerned, I believe Lifes Rich Pageant is perhaps the strongest and most cohesive of the bunch, and sounds the least dated and quaint to my ears. It strikes a great balance between their earlier, janglier sound, and the big rock band they were on the verge of becoming. This was the last tour the band would do during their I.R.S. years, deciding not to tour behind 1987's Document LP...By 1988 they were doing a bonafide WORLD tour behind the Green LP, and nothing would ever be quite the same...A pageant, indeed...

01: Fables Of The Reconstruction [1985]
Featuring..."Feeling Gravitys Pull", "Driver 8", "Life & How To Live It", "Cant Get There From Here", "Green Grow The Rushes", "Auctioneer (Another Engine)", "Wendell Gee"


I saw two R.E.M. shows in 1985. The first was in May, on the Pre-Construction Tour, at the fucking Stock Pavilion on the UW-Madison campus! The Stock Pavilion was nothing more and nothing less than a large indoor rodeo ring - an open dirt floor dotted with cow and horse and bull shit. It was hot and it was dusty and full of life's richest aromas, and somehow the rural, southern-fried gothic storytelling of the new Fables Of The Reconstruction songs were stunningly perfect for that night...I was floating around on shrooms, lost in an older time and a different place... "Read the scene where gravity is pulling me around...Peel back the mountains peel back the sky...Stomp gravity into the floor...It's a Man Ray kind of sky...Let me show you what I can do with it..." They opened that show with "Feeling Gravitys Pull", and it quickly became my favorite R.E.M. song of all time. When I saw them again on their Reconstruction Tour, it was late August at a skeevy club in Jacksonville, and when they opened the show again with that song, I swear I smelled manure. "Holding my head straight (looking down)...This is the easiest task I've ever had to do..." Fables Of The Reconstruction remains my favorite R.E.M. album, a perfectly realized collection of songs that best represents the "classic" R.E.M. sound, when they were still decidedly Southern, and still completely Independent.


Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 100

For this, the 100th installment of S4TW, I thought I'd do something a little extra, and cull a song from each of my ten desert island discs...Simple as that...

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10: Pink Floyd: Animals: "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" [mp3] It was a girl that introduced me to Pink Floyd...It happened in 6th grade music class, when each of us had to present a 15 minute radio show LIVE in front of the class, and this girl, Suzy R_ played two or three Pink Floyd songs, which she had borrowed from her older sister's record collection...Long story short, my crush on Suzy faded fast, but my love for Pink Floyd, and the Animals album in particular, has endured...I have way too many memories of this album to recount here, but after 30 years I still listen to it with regularity, and it still mesmerizes...


09: Frank Zappa: Zappa In New York: "The Torture Never Stops" [mp3] I couldn't be deserted on that island without some Zappa, but I had a fuck of a time trying to decide which ONE Zappa album outta 78 official releases (as of 30 seconds ago) I was gonna bring with me...Sheik Yerbouti was the first Zappa album I ever bought, and I have a great fondness for that double LP, but in the end, I had to go with this one...It's LIVE, and that seemed important...It's got sophisticated narration by Don Pardo, and that's dynamite...It's got several filthy songs for my filthy mind, and it's got other songs for the perpetually young sophisticate in me...Plus+++Plenty of Frank shutting up and playing his guitar...

08: Sonny Sharrock: Ask The Ages: "Once Upon A Time" [mp3] Some of the most furious guitar shredding I've ever heard in my life is on this album, courtesy of Mr. Sharrock, and it's a Jazz album, not a rock album! Ask The Ages also has the single most beautiful guitar playing I've ever heard on the song "Who Does She Hope To Be?" which you can hear HERE...I chose this particular song because it features a lengthy drum solo introduction by the legendary Elvin Jones, and sometimes, ya just gotta give the drummer some...RIP, Sonny...RIP, Elvin...

07: Talking Heads: The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads: "Memories (Can't Wait)" [mp3] This album is also about a girl, at a party, up against an armoire, while the Talking Heads pumped and pulsed from the floor below...I love the Talking Heads, and this double live album not only documents some amazing performances by a stellar band, but works as the definitive greatest hits collection from those first four classic Talking Heads albums...

06: Elvis Costello & The Attractions: This Year's Model: "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" [mp3] I was twelve years old, and Creem and Rolling Stone magazines were telling me that I just had to listen to Elvis Costello, cuz he was the newest thing, and the realest deal, and so I listened, and I've been listening ever since...This Year's Model is his most perfect album to my ears, and anyways contains the most amount of EC songs I absolutely love...This song is one of 'em, and it's the last song on this list with parentheses in the title...

05: The Clash: London Calling: "Lost In The Supermarket" [mp3] I came to this album through the song "Train In Vain", which remains an all-time fave, which is exactly why I'm streaming "Lost In The Supermarket" here...LOL...What needs be said about London Calling? A perfect album?

04: The Kinks: Are The Village Green Preservation Society: "Animal Farm" [mp3] I came to The Kinks relatively late...Sometime in the mid-90's, I'd say, and I regret I didn't explore and embrace them sooner...I bought the Lola Vs. Powerman album first, cuz it had their biggest hit, and I found myself listening to the entire album from start to finish with some regularity...Same for the Arthur album, which came next...But it's the Village Green album that I have the most fondness for nowadays, and the one that makes me happiest when I want to listen to a Kinks album, and believe me, I have them all...

03: The Vapors: New Clear Days: "Spring Collection" [mp3] Again, it was a song, "Turning Japanese", that convinced me to buy the entire album, and it was one of the greatest decisions of my life...I've probably played New Clear Days more than any other recording in my entire life...I still listen to it at least once or twice a month...Everyone knows "Turning Japanese" but not nearly enough people know this entire album, and they really should...Their second and last album, Magnets, is pretty damn good, too...

02: R.E.M.: Life's Rich Pageant: "Begin The Begin" [mp3] I always say that R.E.M. are my "sentimental" favorite band of all time, and what I mean is that they may no longer be my absolute favorite band (That would probably be The Kinks these days), but once upon a time, and for several years, they meant more to me than any other band or musician has ever meant to me...I ate and slept and smoked and fucked and drove and wrote and showered to this band, and I believed that if I could unravel the mysteries of the band - Stipe's lyrics, Mill's bass, Buck's chords - I would discover something important. What that was, I had no idea...I'm still wondering, still searching...

01: Minutemen: Double Nickels On The Dime: "Two Beads At The End" [mp3] My favorite album of all time, another double LP, and didn't I get a super bang for my buck with this list of DESERT ISLAND DISCS???? This one's got 40, count 'em, 40 songs, PLUS+++Four car jams of exhaust...Breathe, babycakes...This is three dudes jamming econo, ranting about war and politics and partying, and it's sharp spiked songs at the brilliant intersection of Punk and Jazz, and I idolized D. Boon (RIP) cuz he ripped his Telecaster much faster than I could ever hope to...Me, with a slower hand than Clapton..."Do you want New Wave, or do you want the truth?"...This album is the definition of EPIC.

Hotcha! Hank

Supernatural Supersideways Maneuver

There was a time when an REM video like this - a night in the life of REM - would totally rock my world. Nowadays I just find it boring. Here it is anyways.

Something 4 The Weekend # 62

From about 1983 to 1994 R.E.M. were absolutely my favorite band, and to this day I always say that they will always remain my all-time sentimental favorite. But I don't really have a favorite band anymore. The idea seems kinda silly nowadays, and I don't think I could narrow it down to just one band anyways...The Kinks? Minutemen? Pere Ubu? Super Furry Animals? Zappa? Nah, fuck that...

REM remains my sentimental favorite simply because I have sooooo many memories, really great memories, attached to the band and their songs...In particular, I listened to tons of REM on cassette while travelling pretty extensively around the States in the late '80's and early '90's...All the classic IRS Records stuff as the soundtrack of my misadventures, and most of my really good romances had plenty of REM in the air as well...

So here we are in 2008 and REM released their 14th studio album, Accelerate, this Tuesday, and yes, I went to Best Buy at my lunch break and picked up my copy because they still mean that much to me...

And yeah, I've been listening to the album, and trying to wrap my mind around it...I mean, I can't decide if they're brilliantly referencing their own music and imagery, or merely ripping themselves off...Nearly every song on this album contains at least one "riff" or melody that already exists somewhere in their musty catalog...Alot of critics and fans are calling Accelerate a "return to form", but isn't that just saying the same thing - the band isn't breaking any new ground?

R.E.M.: Accelerate: "Until The Day Is Done": 192k mp3

Take this song, for example...That very first riff you hear on guitar/mandolin is pretty much "King Of Birds" from 1987's Document LP (not to mention shades of "Try Not To Breathe" as well)...It's close enough to be a distraction for me, and that's a problem I've encountered with pretty much every song on this album...I keep hearing riffs and arpeggios and chord progressions and melodies and sometimes even lyrics, that I've heard before, and it makes me wonder if it's all quite calculated, or if it's simply true that most artists have a limited palette...

Yeah, REM are playing to their "classic" strengths on this album, but they're still doing it without Bill Berry, and if you don't believe that makes a difference, you're probably not a big fan to begin with...He locked in brilliantly with bassist Mike Mills - two guys who hated each other at first and for awhile, until they realized just exactly how great they played together...Yeah, Bill Berry's loss is pretty much the real reason why REM went from being my absolute favorite band to merely my sentimental favorite...

Of course, none of this matters...I guess a world with one more REM album is better than one without...And as always, Mike Mills remains perhaps the single most underrated/unregarded talent in the whole of the rock world...

Hotcha! Hank

R.E.M.

You're gonna have to take my word for it, but back when I was in high school (1980-1984) I told all my friends that REM was destined to be one of the greatest and biggest bands in rock'n'roll history...Of course, my friends were all metal heads and punks, and they laughed their asses off, and I can certainly recall the term "fag rock" being bandied about on numerous occasions, but I didn't care.

So, when it was announced several months ago that REM had been inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame, you can bet yr ass that I contacted the few friends I still maintain from those years and basically rubbed it in their fucking faces. And in hindsight, all those hair metal bands and their requisite spandex looked a hella lot more homosexual than the boys in REM.

Their debut EP, Chronic Town, was good, and I liked it, but it wasn't until the release of Murmur that I was convinced of their greatness then, and their potential to become legendary. That was also the album that made REM my favorite band, which they remained for the next decade. These days, REM is no longer my favorite band, but I always say they'll always remain my "sentimental favorite", and I still listen to 'em with regularity. And who knows, if Bill Berry had remained in the band, they may still be my favorite band to this day, which is my way of saying that they lost a hella lot more than anyone thought when Berry left. He and Mills were an ass-tight rhythm section, dig?

In hindsight, what's important to know about REM, aside from the great music, is what they meant to "indie rock", or as it was called back then, "college rock". You see, the indie scene as we know and love it today, didn't really exist the way it does now. It took REM, and a small handful of similar bands, to prove to the music industry as a whole that smaller bands could thrive, and labels could make money, underneath the radar of the mainstream media and the Billboard charts. This was the era when college radio coalesced and rallied around these bands, and conversely, when these bands began enjoying this newfound network of stations. One hand washed the other, so to speak, and everyone's profile increased. We're seeing the same dynamic at work today with the blogosphere, where "marginal" bands can find at least a certain level of success that can sustain them. Where would The Hold Steady, Arcade Fire, or The Decemberists be without the internet? Hard to say for sure, but I'd be willing to bet their successes wouldn't be nearly as noticeable. That's what college radio meant to REM back then, but in this chicken and egg scenario, college radio would never have exploded the way it did back then without REM. Name any other band you want from that decade, and I will tell you without hesitation that REM was far and away the most important band of that era. That they were a truly great band was just the icing. I could write all night about how and what they meant to me personally, but I've really got to get to bed.

Congratulations Mike, Bill, Michael and Peter. You've earned it all.

Hotcha! Hank

Wilder, Lower Wolves

Wolves that are actually FUCKING SQUIRRELS...I count NINE of them out in my front yard, every last one of them sitting on their hind legs, facing me. Looking directly at me with those cold, dark eyes...Don't they ever FUCKING SLEEP??????? I count NINE of them waiting to chew out my eyes...Burrow into my guts through my belly button...Gnaw on my nuts...

I've got enough smokes and sardines to make it to Monday, but then I gotta go to work...

I'm getting sick of this shit.

FUCKING SQUIRRELS!

Hotcha! Hank