Oooh, you make me live.

I was going to write a lengthy post about ‘not drinking’, something I’ve been doing for a little while now. In my head it was a wonderful little essay about how I thought I’d do something to do - seemed healthy, etc., but now it’s a little weird because I feel like if I drink something it suddenly means I have a problem. And all night as I’ve sat here writing and wishing I had a glass of wine, I’ve thought, ‘Oh no, since I’m thinking about it so much, maybe I’ve got a PROBLEM’. Anyway, I didn’t have the glass of wine, but I did make this comic that I thought was pretty funny. Then again, my comix are always funnier (to me) after a few cocktails, so maybe I AM learning something.

Anyway, it’s just funny to me how people deal with drinking in our society. Enjoy.

I’ll teach my eyes to see

This has always been one of my favorite Springsteen songs, but christ, can you imagine if you were married to Bruce when he wrote this? That’d be a real self-esteem killer, huh? Happy Wednesday.

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Could it be that one small voice doesn’t count?

Murmur. Great album title. Overall, though, this has never been my favorite REM album. I tried to ignore that as I listened to it over the last week or so. But, I think I stand by my assessment that this is an unever album where they try just a little too hard.

The first two songs - the sluggish slowed down version of Radio Free Europe and Pilgrimage get the album off to a rather dense start, and I could do with out them. Right when you’re ready to turn it off though, that bass line for laughing comes in, and they seem to redeem themselves. It’s a lighter song with a solid hook, and a great chorus. Then comes ‘Talk About the Passion’. It’s a great song, there’s no doubt, but one issue I’ve got is they way R.E.M. is so oblique, yet hits you over the head. Have you seen the video for this song? Sheesh, we get it. Not EVERYONE can carry the weight of the world - the subtext of course meaning that perhaps this band can.

The next half of the album, Moral Kiosk, Perfect Circle (heavy handed, but lovely) Catapult, and Sitting Still all hit their mark perfectly, and deliver on the hints of greatness from Chronic Town. There’s also less dicking around with weird intros and overdone reverb, which I appreciate.

9-9 is a funny one - sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. I think this is in the ‘trying to hard’ category. The speak song behind the guitar opening guitar riff (so artsy!) the crunchy guitar (so punk!). I don’t know, I just usually don’t care for it.

Now, I consider Shaking Through and We Walk to be crowning achievements on this album. Shaking through is light and poppy, but has a deeper meaning to the lyrics and a great piano riff that gets me every time. Stipe, as most of you know, had a penchant for slurring his words together on early albums. so the question was always, ‘what is he SAYING?’ and there are millions of versions of lyrics out there. The thing about Shaking Through is you actually care - you want to know what the lyrics are, vs. 9-9, where I could really give a shit. Conversatoin fear? Ok, fine.

We Walk, in addition to being one of the best canvassing songs ever (thanks Bobby - as an aside, whenever I’m canvassing I get ‘Reason to Believe’ stuck in my head, but that’s a different entry) is just such a fun bouncy song WITH THUNDERCLAPS! Kudos gentlemen.

West of the Fields always felt terribly tacked on to me - like they needed to make the album three minutes longer.

So, bottom line, I think Murmur should’ve been another EP. Laughing, Talk about the Passion, Moral Kiosk, Perfect Circle, Catapult, Sitting Still, Shaking Through, and We Walk. A long EP, but significantly better, I think, without Radio Free Europe, Pilgrimage and WOTF.

Overall Grade - B/B-

I would say, if you’re an REM fan you know this record. You’re all good. If you don’t know REM’s older stuff that well, don’t start with this one. The good songs are great, but the mediocre songs detract from the album for me. Next week : Reckoning, which to be fair, has been my favorite REM album since 1986.

It Was 19 Years Ago Today, Mr. Stipe Taught the Dan To Play

Too cheesy a title? Perhaps. Just a quick word that the review of Murmur is in fact coming out later today. Today being the 19th anniversary of the first time I saw R.E.M.

That’s right - April 11, 1989 at the Onondoga County War Memorial in Syracuse NY. I was in Row HH, seat 14. If I remember correctly, the rows went A, AA, B, BB, etc. so I’m pretty sure I was in the 16th row.

The setlist was :

set: Pop Song 89 / Exhuming McCarthy / Welcome To The Occupation / Pilgrimage / Turn You Inside-Out / Driver 8 / Orange Crush / Sitting Still / Feeling Gravitys Pull / Cuyahoga / World Leader Pretend / Begin The Begin / Pretty Persuasion / Low / Stony River / Tired Of Singing Trouble / I Believe / Get Up / Auctioneer (Another Engine) / It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
encore 1: Stand / With A Girl Like You / Dark Globe / You Are The Everything
encore 2: Finest Worksong / King Of Birds / See No Evil
encore 3: Harpers / Summertime / Crazy / Perfect Circle / After Hours

It was amazing. That’s all I can say for now.

I know you don’t love that guy, cuz I can see right through you.

You don’t really love that guy you make it with now do you?

The title is a throwback, in honor of the REM project. God love you Godzilla.

In 1992, when I was 17, my father came back to live with me for the first time in four years. We were strangers, and not even on the same road. For his birthday that year, December 1, I took him to see Tobias Wolff speak. I was trying to win my father’s love by turning him onto the things I was interested in, which were all books - Tobias Wolff being a champ umong them. That night, Tobias read a story called ‘Snowstorm’, about being stuck in a storm with his father, who’s love he was trying to win. I don’t think my father was convinced, though he said he enjoyed himself. It’s sixteen years later, and I’m still working on winning dad’s love. Tobias Wolff is doing a reading tomorrow night in Denver, and it’s really important to me that I go. Enjoy the 85th Dirtbag comic.  God lord willing, and the crick don’t rise, 86will be out later this evening.

It must be time for penitence

Chronic Town. Released Augst 24, 1982.

Five simple songs:

1,000,000

Stumble

Wolves, Lower

Gardening at Night

Boxcars (Carnival of Sorts)

I’m attempting to eschew nostalgia in these reviews. We’ll see how I do. Listening to this album again, almost non-stop for three to four days, I’m amazingly impressed.

It’s a lot darker than I remembered, with only Peter Buck’s (I refuse to say ‘jangly’) light guitar riffs to pick the album up. Otherwise, I’d think this was a Joy Division rip-off.

Listening to ‘1,000,000′, the opening track, I was struck by how much it sounded like a cheap copy of early R.E.M. It’s the boys working it, doing their best, but you get the sense that the fills and breaks in the song came in because they were thinking, ‘uh, what GOES here?’.

Next comes ‘Stumble’ which JM Stipe famously kicks off with the word, ‘teeth’ as he bites his chompers down. An ok, but sort of boring song that doesn’t live up to the potential of Bill Berry’s opening beat.

Wolves, Lower is where the record gets GOOD. The super clean opening riff, Stipe’s little scream. ‘Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don’t get caught’. Brilliant.

From here out, the nature of the band is pretty clear. They have the drive and the desire. They have the hooks and the beat, but they don’t yet have the talent.

For you regular ‘Dirt’ readers, it will come as no shock that I enjoy a little time alone. Thankfully, I’m left handed, so nobody shaking my hand ever has to wonder. The right one is pristine.

Chronic Town is a lot like a wonderful jerk off, but without the grand finale. You feel the pressure build all through the album. And the suspense gets greater and greater. You tense up. You feel the pressure build. You want to take it over the top. Thankfully, Chronic Town leaves off in that wonderful millisecond after release but before climax - the exact moment of zen when it comes to self love.

You sense that Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe want to take it further, but simply can’t. They don’t have the ability yet, and each song is born of the frustration of not being able to finish what they started. But it’s beautiful.

It’s a brilliant debut by any standards and, had I heard it in late summer of 1982, I’d be pretty fucking psyched about what was to come next. What was beyond the moment of epiphany? Murmur. Coming up soon.

Suspicion Yourself. Don’t Get Caught

Full report on Chronic Town coming in the morning. My apologies for the delay, but after twenty plus listens in thirty plus hours I’ve got some thoughts. Just not right now, dear.

Really Easy Money

Back in 1987, I read an interview with R.E.M. in Rolling Stone in which one of the boys, obviously tired of answering the question, ‘But what do the letters STAND FOR’, said, ‘Really Easy Money’. And sure, why not? They were on the cover of Rolling Stone, hailed as the best band in America.

And yes, I love(d) R.E.M. with pretty much every fiber of my being at the tender young age of 12. In eighth grade, when I got glasses for the first time, I wore my pink REM bicycle shirt to give me strength. My best friend in middle and high school poured over liner notes, studied J.M. Stipes clues expecting to find a treasure map leading us to wry sophistication.

I’ve collected their albums, their singles, their shirts, and been an on-again off-again member of the fan club for ages. I once called ‘Peter Buck’ in Atlanta (circa ‘87, pre-Rolling Stone cover) and spoke to Peter Buck’s dad, a gracious man.

I can’t deny a feeling of being let down over the last 10-12 years by the boys. A short list of concerns:

- Broken Promises - Bill Berry left the band, and the remaining members soldiered on despite promising they’d break up if that every happened. Similarly, the promises to break up on Dec. 25, 1999, and to never print their lyrics

- Declining output/declining quality From 1983-96, they released 10 albums, the worst of which (in my opinion, ‘Monster’) was still pretty good. From 1996-2008, they’ve released 4 albums (if you count tomorrow’s release of ‘Accelerate’)

- Rock Star-ism - According to Jim DeRogatis of ‘Sound Opinions’, at this year’s SXSW festival R.E.M. also taped an episode of Austin City Limits, and the taping was held up over an hour because someone brewed J.M. Stipe the wrong kind of espresso

- Greatest Hits - 2003’s ‘In Time (88-03) & ‘And I Feel Fine - The IRS Years (82-87). Yeah, not a fan of the GH packages/tours

Ok. Here’s the thing though, I really really dislike those guys who’re like, ‘Oh yeah, they used to be great, but now they suck.” I hate those guys, because when I was getting into R.E.M. (1986), everyone was saying that ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’ was no ‘Chronic Town’. Fuck those guys.

So, in an effort to give my old heroes a legit chance, I’m going to, starting today, listen to every R.E.M. studio album, in order, and give an honest review. I’m not going to tackle the B-side or greatest hits compilations. I will kick it off with their first EP, and work my way up through ‘Accelerate’. I will do my best to weed out nostalgic pap and give an honest review of their work.

As a quick refresher, here’s how it’ll look -

1982 - Chronic Town
1983 - Murmur
1984 - Reckoning
1985 - Fables of the Reconstruction
1986 - Life’s Rich Pagent
1987 - Document
1988 - Green
1991 - Out of Time
1992 - Automatic for the People
1994 - Monster
1996 - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
1998 - Up
2001 - Reveal
2004 - Around the Sun
2008 - Accelerate

Wish me luck!

THE event of 2008

So, a friend turned me on to Hulu recently. For those of you not in the know, it’s basically a website that gave reason to the WGA writer’s strike. You can watch loads of TV shows and movies, but they all come with commercials. So tonight, as I started to watch The Usual Suspects, I was offered the option of watching a movie preview, and then the film sans commercials, or the film with commercials. I took the preview, and holy christ am I glad I did. We’re in for a treat people.

Fuck yeah Tina Fey in a starring role.