Showing posts with label r.e.m.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label r.e.m.. Show all posts

Monday, February 2, 2015

"The One I Love" (R.E.M.)

"The One I Love" from Document (1987) was the moment I began paying attention to R.E.M.  And while there were many fine moments both before and after it, it still stands as my favorite track by the Athens, GA, band.  Frontman Michael Stipe intoning the word Fire! with bassist Mike Mills harmonizing She's comin' down on her own now gets me every time.  It's like some sort of Gregorian chant over one of the crunchiest, Byrds-esque riffs of the mid-80s.  It's angelic and ugly, all at once.
Which reminds of a conversation I once had with a wedding DJ.  He was venting about having to play "inappropriate music" at wedding receptions: U2's "One"; The Police's "Every Breath You Take"; and, of course, "The One I Love."
"Do people not listen to lyrics?" I remember him asking rhetorically.
Contrary to what some might think, "The One I Love" is not some romantic ballad about pining for love across the miles, as Mills told VH1 back in 2008.
"'The One I Love' is not a love song.  'The One I Love' is a very vicious breakup song.  It's very cold and cruel.  Which is, you know, I hate to break or burst anyone's bubble, but I always look out and see couples hugging and dancing to that song.  That's fine.  It doesn't matter.  Michael (Stipe) writes a song about whatever he thinks it's about, and then whatever you think it's about is what it's about...Whatever it means to us isn't nearly as important as what it means to you."

(Little bar trivia for you: Food Network personality Alton Brown of Good Eats fame served as director of photography on the video for "The One I Love.")



Monday, March 31, 2014

"How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us" (R.E.M.)

Ask many of my peers to name an album that was the defining soundtrack of their pre-teen/teenage years, and they'll point to something by R.E.M.
Although I personally never worshipped at the altar of Michael Stipe, I did/do like R.E.M.  I respected their ability to stay relevant while never chasing any other band/sound/trend out there.  As a matter of fact, it always amused me how the boys made running from the mainstream a sport.  If rock seemed to be making a right turn, R.E.M. not only turned left, but they torched the beat-up Chevy Nova they were riding in and hitched a ride on a mule cart with a wobbly front wheel, destination: elsewhere.  
Even still, their fans followed.  For awhile anyway.
In 1995, the band was touring in support of its blistering rawk album Monster (1994) and attempting to write/record music for a new album during soundchecks and between shows.  As lead guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Peter Buck told MTV interviewers in 1996, "Our whole goal was to get on the road (and) write a body of work that kind of reflects what the touring experience is like without necessarily being about, like, Holiday Inns."  
The tour ended up being the last time the four founding members of the band would tour and record together again.  While on stage in Switzerland, drummer Bill Berry collapsed from a ruptured brain aneurysm.  Although he survived and recovered, the tour and the eventual New Adventures in Hi-fi (1996) were essentially his last hurrah with R.E.M., as he decided to retire from music and enjoy a life of farming in rural Georgia.
Although Berry's exit didn't officially happen until 1997, I remember hearing New Adventures in Hi-fi and thinking, "This sounds like a band that's saying 'farewell'."
The song that struck me the most was "How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us."  Its decidedly lo-fi, Spaghetti Western sound is in direct contrast to the fizzy title of the record.  In fact, it opens the album on a decidedly melancholy note.  On the surface, it's a song about Manifest Destiny and pushing westward.  But just under that layer of fine desert silt is a song about a broken band--a band that had been the darling of critics and fans that skyrocketed to mega-stardom, and then, almost as quickly, was facing acerbic criticism from many of those same critics/fans for supposedly losing their compass.  
What's more, on that rocket ride, their drummer nearly died.
It's asking the hypothetical question, "Was it worth it?"
It's one of my favorite R.E.M. tracks because it is so evocative of a mood and sense of place--or, rather, lack of place.  Berry's nearly downtempo drums, Buck's grunting bass, and Mills's angular piano create a loping groove, setting the desolate backdrop for Stipe's lyrics, which are not so much sung but whispered like a sinner in a confessional.  
It's the band at its most vulnerable and yet, ironically, at its strongest.