REM

My first exposure to REM was hearing Stand as the theme to the short lived television series, Get a Life. I was probably eleven, maybe I was twelve. My Dad loved this show. It featured Chris Elliot as a thirty year old paper boy who lived with his parents. At the time I thought that thirty was extremely old, you’d have to be a total loser to be a thirty year old paper boy, and that Stand was annoying (my preteen ears were still accustomed to listening to New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson). All three of these opinions would change. I now think thirty is pretty young. I think that being a paper boy at any age is pretty hip compared to, say, working in a gray cublicle for some random corporation, and I love Stand.

When I was eleven my family moved to a suburb of Chicago that did not have a whole lot of culture. Fortunately it was next to another suburb, Elmhurst, Illinois, where there was a small college, meaning that that the coffee shops and art house theatre I would discover as a teenager where not that far away. Elmhurst also had a better library, as my mom soon found out. Whenever she would take us to the library I would explore the music department and check out cassette tapes that “looked cool”. Some things I remember checking out were classical music, all sorts of ethnic music, new agey meditation tapes that were mostly synthesizers, The Dead Milkmen, and Document by REM. I liked Document. I dubbed it with my double cassette boom box.  It got lost in my dubbed tape collection and I forgot about it.

I became an REM fan in 1991 when I was a freshman in high school. Out of Time had been released and Losing my Religion was a radio hit. I bought the album (we’re still talking about cassette tapes here). The album felt like autumn. It had a haunting sadness to it at a time when I was just starting to discover haunting sadness. I thought the liner notes with the cartoon about the marble staircase were really deep. I listened to it on my walkman on the bus. A lot.

My first real romance was set to Automatic For the People. I was a freshman in college and I fell in love with an REM fan. He kind of looked like a young Michael Stipe with his blond fro. His band did a cover of Drive. That said, my first major breakup was also set to Automatic for the People, followed by a period of extreme lonliness and depression where I would constantly listen to the song Try Not to Breath. To this day both Out of Time and Automatic are a little painful to listen to - but in a sort of bittersweet way. They both take me back to a time in my life when emotions were extremely intense, probably because they were new and I did not know how to deal with them. Teenagers don’t know that everything will (usually) be okay. Knowing that everything will be okay leads to an emotional boredom young people have the burden and luxury of not knowing.

I continued to buy their new releases, and got all of their albums from the 80’s when I was too young to be a fan. Why am I such a fan of this band? Here are some reasons:

1. REM is “arty”. 

While I often regard arty as being pretentious today, I became a fan when I regarded “arty” as being mysterious. The mumble mouth vocals on some of the early albums are arty. The fact that they did not print lyrics (until the late 90’s) because - to paraphrase Michael Stipe - printing only the lyrics is like printing only the bass line, is ARTY. The fact that Michael Stipe suposedely recorded the vocals to all the early albums naked in a dark room? Really arty. These guys lived in the basement of a church and only shopped at the thrift store. While my own thrift shopping eventually became an economic necceccessy, it started in a quest to be as arty as REM. This band is shrouded in romanticism and folklore. I don’t even care how much of it is true. It is my fairytale.

2. REM is intellectual. 

 Their songs speak of Andy Kaufmann (Man on the Moon, The Great Beyond), Lenny Bruce (It’s the End of the World as We Know it), Andrew MacCarthy (Exhuming McCarthy), environmental activism (Fall on Me), Jesus (Talk about the Passion)....I could go on and on.

3. REM is sexy. 

I think Monster is the sexiest album. Tongue and * Me Kitten are the soundtrack to seduction.

4. REM is romantic. 

What is sexy without Romance? The entire REM catalogue is full of love songs, often in clever disguises. My favorites? Nightswimming, and At Your Most Beautiful.

5. REM is folksy.

Peter Buck on the Mandolin, songs about the working class (Wecome to the Occupation, Odd Fellows Local 151, Day Sleeper), not to mention the general folklore that surrounds the band.

I listened to Green twice through on my wedding day while I was confined to a bedroom so that no one would see me. I hadn’t listened to the album in a while because I had lost the CD. My fiance had recently downloaded it on to my laptop. You are Everything is a song I will always associate with that day.

"I think about this world a lot and I cry
And I've seen the films and the eyes
But I'm in this kitchen
Everything is beautiful
And she is so beautiful
She is so young and old
I look at her and I see the beauty
Of the light of music
The voices talking somewhere in the house
Late spring and you're drifting off to sleep
With your teeth in your mouth
You are here with me
You are here with me
You have been here and you are everything"

I was given Collapse in to Now as a gift from my husband for my thirty fourth birthday. Our son was six weeks old. I felt like a teenager again, in that I was actually experiencing new emotions for the first time in a long time. I felt an intense love for this beautiful creature we had produced and I felt an intense responsibility to be a good mother and a good person and to treat everyone with with newfound feeling of love, since everyone is someone’s baby. I also felt what extreme sleep deprivation was like. I immediately loved the songs on this album and it became the soundtrack to new motherhood. I would take my son on long walks and listen to it on my ipod when he fell asleep in the carriage.

The last song on the album is a sublime and climactic ending to their discography. While I am disappointed there is not a farewell tour I realize that it is part of their mystique. They are going out in style and have left us with a beautiful final installment, Collaspse in to Now.  And that is what I intend to do.

"This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive.Living.  Blessed.  I understand.20th Century, Collapse in to now."