Murphy's Earbuds

(fyi: that is one of my fave quotes from "Sassafras Roots" from Green Day's album Dookie - one of my absolute faves in high school. yeah, I know it was one of yours too. Go ahead and give it a spin)

It's election day. I am at school. The kids are not. I am attempting to do grades. I am trying not to waste time. It's not going well. Here's what I have listened to today:


Deerhoof, Apple O'
R.E.M., Green
Aesop Rock, None Shall Pass
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky

I will try to update this soundtrack to my procrastination as the day goes on.

...and i guess that's the great thing about the blogosphere: so long as you don't click through, you will be forced to read whatever I write. But that quote also comes right out of track five from the "album of the day", if you will, R.E.M.'s Green.

I never cared much for the video for "Stand." Sure, it spawned a cute, yet ill-fated, dance craze, but seriously?, the video was lame and painted a less than stellar portrait of this Athens, GA early-college-radio archetype. As an eleven or twelve year old Guns n' Roses fan, I had no preexisting pretentions or knowledge of R.E.M.'s modest and hip, underground roots. For all i knew, they were the "next big thing." It's funny to look back at these facts in light of the following:

a) if a band with such indie roots as Michael Stipe and the boys were to make such OBVIOUS stabs at mainstream popularity as the video for "Stand" and opening their album with "Pop Song 89" (however tongue-in-cheek it may have been) amidst my current pretensions about pop-culture crossover, I would have immediately and, most likely, permanently written them off as poseurs.

b) I would not have been alone in my snotty casting-off as many early R.E.M. fans saw this album as a final nail in the indie coffin they started crawling into on their album previous.

Whether R.E.M. made a conscious grab for acceptance or if the general public of listeners just caught up to them would be an EXCELLENT topic for another post here, but it's merely an interesting sidebar to this discussion of 1988's Green. Moving on...

In addition to "Stand" getting considerable airplay on MTV, many of the songs from this album were featured in an episode of 21 Jump Street, one of my favourite shows at the time. I don't remember the full plot of the episode (and am waaay too lazy to search tvtome or imdb for it), but I know there was some skiing. In a weird way, this use music from an indie band on the cusp of popular appeal as the soundtrack for a TV show clearly-aimed at the teen demographic predated what is now being hailed as a creative way for bands to get discovered, see "Tree Hill, One" or "O.C., The". In reality, TV's "recent" predilection for using "up and coming" artists as the soundtrack to their shows is really just boob-toob producers shilling for the big boss now in control of both the TV network AND the record company which is putting out (and pushing) the new James Blunt (or whothefuckever) record featured in said TV show.

y'know what... I think I am harboring some strange bitterness about something right now, 'cos I really did not intend this as a rant of any kind. Hmm. Let's just pretend the first part of this never happened so I can quickly move on and say what I want to say.

R.E.M.'s Green was my first situational album - the first record I ever owned that fit a certain mood or season or type of weather. Much like my last post about The Trials of Van Occupanther, there is a time and place for this album: the soggy day. Not to be confused with rainy, there are some days that are grey and wet without the precipitation ever really amounting to anything. They seem to happen mostly in fall. They start out ugly and end the same, and I don't feel like doing a damn thing when I wake up and see one. At some point after getting this album, I listened to it on a day like this and it all made sense. The colors were clearer. The lyrics were stronger. The guitars and mandolins and drums sat right in my lap and it sounded like Michael Stipe was whispering in my ear. "Stand", "Pop Song 89", and "Get Up" break the mood a bit before the record really settles, but by the time you hit track five, you can't help but be entranced. I remember as soon as a I experienced this I ran to share it with my then-music buddy, Jeff Soehnel (I wonder where that dude is now). He thought me a weirdo at the time, but he tried on the first soggy day available, and then told me it had changed his life - heavy shit for seventh grader. I wonder if my seventh graders do this sorta thing? I think you should give it a spin before the sun comes out today - or it starts raining.


p.s. - in Paste Magazine's recent "Fave R.E.M. Album" poll, Green was tied for dead last. : (