Old Notes on R.E.M.
Ron Henry
crap the other day and I came across a couple pages of notes I made for
the j-card of an R.E.M. mixed tape I was sending to friends. This was
right after _Green_ came out, and a lot of my friends were suddenly
intrigued by the band, so I obliged them with tapes to try to proselytize
;) I just thought it was interesting to look over these comments written
years back before I had any contact with the bulk of R.E.M. fandom through
the internet (back then, it was just me and my then-girlfriend training to
deciper lyrics on the brand-new cool CDs on our brand-new cool CD
player...) Note: I'm not revising this to account for what I know now, so
if there are inaccuracies or misconceptions, blame them on the me of six
years ago!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
KEY to accompany REM MIX 17 AUG 89
Kohoutek. Though spelled wrong on the album (and so on my notes!)
nonetheless recognizable as the name of the Eastern bloc astronomer who in
the late 70s discovered the comet of The Same Name which -- though touted
as the biggest thing since sliced bread and disco, that would inspire
hordes of bright and ready-to-be-disillusioned youth into the sciences --
became instead the most disappointing P.R. failure of the Carter years.
What a metaphor for a failed relationship!
Maps and Legends. A meditation on the dual meaning of the word "legend" --
singer as a legend in his own time/his own mind? Or just that when one
falls out of correspondance with another one whispers "Is he to be
reached...?" semi-incomprehensibly, hoping to guide them across an
emotional landscape without a map...?
Perfect Circle. I tried to explain to M. the profound melancholy of this
song. I imagine dim rooms with people I will never see again, old
girlfriends, college roommates. Mist in the morning in the streets of wet
Ithaca, drowning the student slums, silent trash-strewn doorways, and a
single string of lights around the window of the video arcade, closed at
six in the morning Saturday, with the post-psilosibin sense that you
understand the way things work even though you're not sure you really
wanted to. A dead squirrel in the gutter and the itchy cuff of a borrowed
flannel jacket that smells like someone you spend a lot of time with but
can barely talk to (she is behind you now, sleeping alone somewhere) while
you ponder your too-clever, glib friends and their girlfriends.
Heron House. Well we all read Animal Farm in the ninth grade, right, so
maybe it struck us then with its exaggerated, animal-characterized
politics, or not. My copy had been mauled by someone's pet -- the way I
remember the wrinkles on the cover, crisscrossing the cartoony
illustration of pig horse and cow, it looks to my memory's eye like roads
on a map. Anbd when the animals are -- one step farther than the barnyard
-- undomesticated and zoo-caged (monkey, lion, heron?) the didaction
dissolves to surround a more surreal nightmare.
King of Birds. I am wondering if this song consists only of quoted lines,
or paraphrased quotes... "My Kingdom for a voice...," "Standing on the
shoulders of Giants..." and so on. "A hundred million birds fly away...":
the owner of the gas station down the road just cut down all the trees on
his property "for insurance reasons." I doubt I will forget the sight of
a frantic bluejay darting about the dying brush looking for its nest.
Memphis Train Blues. I don't know anything about Memphis, trains, or the
blues except that my first serious girlfriend in high school moved away to
Memphis, I have never ridden on a train pulled by a steam locomotive, and
I can pick out crude blues lines on my guitar's low strings.
Can't Get There From Here. I think it's true. Some places you can't get
to. I've used lines from this song in my poetry. If there were any justice
(or if popular music had anything to do with quality) this song would be a
hit single. While I think the public isn't ready for a pop song whose
opening line is "When the world is a monster," I wonder if they should get
ready. Drought. Gray skies. Earthquakes.
You Are the Everything. Memory as meditative key, personal reminiscence at
the core, the hollow, the still center in the turning hurricane world,
"Here's a scene..." self as the distilled essence of accumulated memory
drained to the central core where these liquors combine in a chaotic and
unpredictable way, as chemicals in a visceral organ.
Fall on Me. Post modern chicken little story. The child's self-indulgent
hyperbole. Vertigo is too real.
Hyena. Contemporary diplomacy is an art dying or one gone to the dogs,
the jackals, the hyenas. Sunglassesed CIA men, Ollie North, Hasenfus, the
caucasian rulers of this continent, brandishing their inscrutable selves,
bottled insane laughter and jealousies within themselves. Fade in: Picture
the great desert of some imagined world (world as stage) with cities
across it separated by nearly uncrossable distances. What type of
emissaries might these desolate city-states -- who of course have declared
war upon each other sometime lost in history -- send to each other?
Reason as sacrifical lamb. Martyr.
9-9. Some part of this, I think, is in 9 count time. Ninth cut on the
album _Murmur_ as well. I remember Adam painting the large, eyelashed "9"
on the wall of Rick's basement in high school. You know: "number nine...
number nine..."
So. Central Rain. Michael Stipe (so the legends of Rolling Stone and Spin
tell us) went to the Univ. of Ga. where he studied medieval illustrated
manuscripts, joined a band, and found himself in the usual string of bad
and short-term college relationships. I'm sorry.
Auctioneer. When I listen to this one I picture something like a tag sale
where people like me are buying, but mostly selling, the most precious
things from their various lives. A set of keys. A table strewn with love
letters. A ballerina doll with a cracked arm. A toy pistol, barrel clogged
with dirt, lost and buried in the woods behind my childhood home for
twenty years now. A notebook with diary entries. A 45 single of a
once-favorite song. A wedding invitation. A list of the names of all our
friends we have since forgotten, their fates, their losses, typed out and
neatly folded into a manilla file. These things, priced so high we cannot
afford to buy them back. We mill about gazing on the treasures, push hair
off our damp forheads with trembling fingers.
Pop Song 89. That post modern self-referentiality again! Post-modern as
in what is left to say when you have nothing except the message itself.
The gesture conscious of its own complicated choreography. The green and
gray on the orange and yellow. This may be the closest the West can come
to a Zen insight -- and it's really a feeble substitute, even if it is all
we have. "I think I thought you were someone else." An acoustic rendition
of a song whose function was to parrott/parody the electric bubble-gum pop
of radio hits? A condominium with no plumbing or electricity... We go in
the front door, find a bare, carpeted corner to sit down in (the walls are
empty and painted off-white) and stare out the window into the glare of
the summer sun. I -> me -> you -> other.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
rg...@cornell.edu
Send me email to receive rec.music.rem FAQ
--
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline.
julie
rg...@cornell.edu (Ron Henry) writes:
some amazing words-astonishingly beautiful-capturing the feeling
of each song-wow-brings up old memories-not only am i in awe of
your faq keeping ability, but now also impressed with your wordsmith
ability, too.
if you're willing, ron, i'd enjoy reading your poetry. perhaps by
email? julie <jawa...@uga.cc.uga.edu> thanks:)