Music – Regular Guy

My Last R.E.M. Show

brian — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 01:02:58 +0000

(I have probably written about this before, but I don’t care)

When I was in my seat (or, more accurately, standing in front of it) at Merriweather Post Pavilion 13 years ago tonight, I had no idea it would be the last time I saw R.E.M. in concert.

The show came at a crazy time for me. I was super unhappy at work, but had significant responsibilities for a huge event happening the day after the concert. I couldn’t turn off work mode until an hour or so before the first opening act took the stage. In the long run, the distraction probably helped.

I spent the show surrounded by strangers like I did for several other shows. My wife didn’t enjoy the band so I never really planned on having a concert buddy. I had bought two tickets and gave one to my niece, but her brother also had an extra ticket so she hung out with them.

I didn’t mind. While I will talk incessantly about the band, I sometimes just like to be alone with their music. I get so into the shows that I don’t need anyone I know around me.

The set lists for this tour – I would obsessively follow what had happened on previous nights – gave me great hope for something special. They had dappled in Sitting Still, Pretty Persuasion and 1,000,0000 among the songs from Accelerate, plus songs that had become concert staples.

My greatest dreams didn’t come true. The songs they dropped in were fine – Little America, Rockville (hilariously featuring Peter fucking it up massively) and Pop Song 89 – but didn’t meet the bar I had set.

So I left the show a little bummed even though I had a great time. It certainly didn’t meet the level of the 2003 show when my friend Dave Lifton and I walked out of the Patriot Center in a daze from that performance and screamed in joy. (James and Caroline were there too, but I distinctly remember Dave’s reaction after the show and forgot to mention them. James shamed me on Twitter so I have added this.)

When they broke up three years later, I definitely looked at the show in a different light.

Instead of missing a song from Murmur, I remember the time I was singing along to the pre-chorus to These Days, and the guy in the seat in front of me turned around and double high-fived me since I knew all the words.

Instead of lamenting that Worksong was the opener for the second or third time I saw them, I marveled at the spring of Worksong/Living Well/Bad Day/Kenneth in the first four songs.

I remember Mike shrugging as Peter apologized for messing up on Rockville – he skipped the pause during the “waste another year” part after the first chorus. The band caught up and made it work.

I remember Peter seemingly telling Johnny Marr the chord changes when he joined the band for Fall on Me and Man on the Moon.

The show is definitely a favorite memory for me. In the end, I got to see R.E.M. live. All the rest is just gravy.

11 June 2008 - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD
support: The National, Modest Mouse
set: Finest Worksong / Living Well Is The Best Revenge / Bad Day / What's The Frequency, Kenneth? / Drive / Ignoreland / Man-Sized Wreath / Little America / Hollow Man / Walk Unafraid / Houston / Electrolite / (Don't Go Back To) Rockville / Pop Song 89 / Horse To Water / The One I Love / Driver 8 / Until The Day Is Done / Let Me In / These Days / Orange Crush / I'm Gonna DJ
encore: Supernatural Superserious / Losing My Religion / Mr. Richards / Fall On Me / Man On The Moon
notes: Johnny Marr guests on guitar on 'Fall On Me' & 'Man On The Moon'.

Free Thoughts on ‘Hamilton’

brian — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 15:35:47 +0000

Here are “free thoughts” on the cast and performance from Hamilton, which I recently saw in NYC:

Michael Luwoye is a great Hamilton, but I wasn’t as blown away as I was led to expect from stuff I had read online. He was reserved in some spots and talk sang the beginnings to a bunch of songs. Maybe it’s his style, maybe it was a slow start for a Saturday matinee. However, I think he was really crying during “It’s Quiet Uptown.” He just didn’t always have the energy Lin can bring.
This may be blasphemy, but Daniel Breaker may be a better Burr than Leslie Odom. He had the snark and bitterness that I imagine Burr actually had from the beginning of the show. He was outstanding.
None of the women can touch the original trio even though I loved their performances. Lexi Lawson is a great Eliza. She worked really well with Elizabeth Judd, who is the standby for Angelica. That role is so hard because Renee Elise Goldsberry is such a powerful figure. Judd is younger and brought great believeability to the two as sisters. She wasn’t as powerful with some of her singing, but you saw the connection between the actresses. Joanna Jones was a great Peggy/Maria. I will never not love Peggy.
Euan Morton may be my favorite King. I think I have seen videos of 3-4 of them. I think his face just is more expressive than Jonathan Groft.
Anthony Lee Medina does a great job with Laurens/Phillip. He has an excitement that is natural, just like Anthony Ramos. He plays Laurens more like a horndog than a guy who may be obsessed with Hamilton, which was fun, but I liked the layered performance Ramos gave a little better.
Bryan Terrell Clark’s Washington just oozes cool. He doesn’t have the gravitas of Chris Jackson, but he makes the role his own. Unflappable.
Not the biggest fan of James Monroe Iglehart as Lafayette/Jefferson. His First Act accent is all over the place. And I am certain they play “Guns and Ships” a little slower so he can pull off the rap. Not horrible, just a curious choice for the role.
Andrew Chappelle played Mulligan/Madison. He was in the Public Theater ensemble and he been understudying on Broadway for a little while. He was good. He is not as imposing so he loses a little in Mulligan, plus it is hilarious watching him (he’s 31, but looks a lot younger) saying “I got ya’ll knuckleheads in loco parentis” to Igelhart, who is 43. I loved his Madison. He played him kind of foppish and effeminate, which I think underscored the weakness the character is supposed to have. He seemed more like Jefferson’s sidekick there so the casting worked well.
The ensemble member who played James Reynolds (Ryan Vasquez) was spectacular. You could tell he knew he had about a minute to be the biggest asshole he could be and loved every second of it.
I think the thing that goes unnoticed when watching the bootlegs is how active the entire cast and ensemble is throughout the show. You don’t see all that activity from a video.
“Battle of Yorktown” is just mindblowing. It was so hard to not stand up and fist pump along with them.

A Fable Worth Re-Telling

brian — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 16:37:52 +0000

Thirty years ago, R.E.M. released Fables of the Reconstruction. The album has taken almost mythic qualities among the band’s canon over time, mainly because no discussion can avoid the problems the band had during the recording process.

In short, they were stuck in England where the weather was horrible and producer Joe Boyd pushed them in ways that they had never been pushed before. While the band has often talked about the difficult time they had making the album, it may have been the most important point of their career. The songs on Fables are either classics or underappreciated gems. After the album and subsequent tour, the band took a different tack and recorded their next album in Indiana with Don Gehman.

That produced Life’s Rich Pageant, my pick for their best-ever work, and they never looked back.

But we’re here to talk about Fables, which starts with “Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” a song which lets you know that it may not be an easy road ahead. That turns into “Maps and Legends,” which turns into the iconic “Drive 8,” making you understand that the guys that threw together Reckoning in just a few weeks had grown up into something special.

Fables has layers upon layers of greatness, the coyness of “Green Grown the Rushes” mixed with the haunting images from “Wendell Gee” and the bouncy goofiness of “Can’t Get There From Here.”

But the song that follows “Driver 8” on the first side of the record is the one that always stays with me. “Life and How to Live It” represents the greatness that R.E.M. started to achieve for many reasons.

The guitar line has the sound of something powerful, but is, in reality, pretty simple. I can even play a rudimentary version of it
The story behind the song is classic Michael Stipe – take a nugget of a weird story and turn it into something complex, yet catchy. He tells some of it on a live version of the song from 1987, but this Flickr page covers it pretty well.
The live version makes you realize the power of the band in concert. They have played it twice at shows I have attended. The first one, in Pittsburgh in 1989, escapes me. The second time came at the beginning of the encore at the Patriot Center in 2003 on their “Best Of” tour. It blew me away. Looking back at old clips, the song has always had this power. The first clip below is from 1985, the second from that 2003 tour (this time in Madrid). Sit back and enjoy.

Happy Birthday, ‘Life’s Rich Pageant’

brian — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 17:42:25 +0000

On this day in 1986, something very special happened. I had no idea at the time.

R.E.M. released Life’s Rich Pageant on this day 28 years ago, the band’s fourth album. I had yet to discover the Athens (Ga.) quartet at the time even though I saw them open for The Police a few years earlier. I paid no attention to them.

Pageant came out right before I went to college, and it didn’t take long for me to discover “Superman,” the hidden 12th track on the album. The song – a cover of the 1960s group The Clique – was a popular party song during my freshman year at college. I didn’t need long to find a used cassette of Pageant from Record and Tape Traders the following summer and begin my obsession with the band.

I don’t know if I would have had the same reaction if I hadn’t immersed myself in this album from the beginning. Reckoning may have done the same thing, but that’s about it at that point. I love Murmur and think Fables is underrated, but my favorite songs come from Pageant. I remember the moment at the final R.E.M. show I saw in 2008 when the guy in front of me turned around and high fived me because I knew every word to the “I had a hat …” segment of “These Days.”

Yeah, I can be that guy at an R.E.M. show.

I went full-long into the band when I saw them play on the Green tour in 1989, the first album I bought right after it came out. I don’t recall a ton from that show in Cleveland, but I remember how mesmerized I was at their performance of “I Believe.” They always took it up a notch live. So, I’m celebrating the birthday of Pageant with one of my favorite songs from the album.

Music in 2012

brian — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:12:44 +0000

So all kinds of people have started to come out with their end-of-the-year lists. I took a look at a couple of ones related to music and realized just how old I am. On Pitchfork’s Top 100 songs for the year, I recognized one. Uno. And since “Call Me Maybe” really existed as a pop culture touchstone instead of just a song, I don’t even know if that counts.

Part of my problem comes from a distaste of overly electronic music. I don’t like the trends which have pervaded music (from my spot) for a while now and only really delve into new things when I know for sure that plenty of guitars and drums make up the backbone of the song. The other part comes from the fact that I have thousands of songs from a wide range of styles available to me so I don’t feel a compulsion to seek out too much new music. It’s a little sad, but it’s the way things are.

But I love music and didn’t want to completely turn my back on the year so I went through Grantland’s look at the most “notable” tracks of 2012 since they had full videos of each song to see what I was missing. I like the website, but don’t always mesh with their pop culture sensibilities so I didn’t have high hopes. Boy, was I right. Without further ado, here are my impressions.

Mercy – I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because I’m white and 44, but I just don’t understand why this is popular. I’m not appalled by the graphic nature of the lyrics. I just think that it’s nothing but shock over top of an unimaginative beat. I’m not saying it’s bad, per se, because I think the people who put it on a list do so because it’s fun, not ground-breaking. I can see some gangster, kitschy appeal. I just prefer my fun in upbeat doses like “Call Me Maybe,” not glorifying guns, treating women like crap and having fancy cars.
Die Young – Ke$ha is easy to make fun of, but I like this song. It’s upbeat even if the title and chorus focus on dying. But I believe music exists for positive reasons and this makes me bounce in my chair. Sometimes you have to get past the goofy makeup and stuff to find really enjoyable music. The lyrics may be as vapid as Mercy, but they are an upbeat vapid.
Running – I can see the quality in this song and enjoyed it, but would probably only listen on occasion. It’s just too, I don’t know, heavy for me. I like guitar and cymbals, and this just doesn’t have enough of them. Her voice is very good, but nothing makes me want to come back for more. The song did grow on me the more I listened though.
Pop That – This makes Mercy sound like “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I wanted to cry in the shower after listening to this one.
Get Free – I think I fell asleep a couple of times in it’s five-minute duration. Like Mercy and Pop That, I just don’t get it, but on a completely different level. Those first two don’t speak to me, but I know there is a market for people who want to be gangsters/rappers/porn stars and live this high-rolling life. Get Free just sounds lifeless and has no apparent point.
Hot Knife – I liked this one, but really thought they could have cut it short by a minute or so. It’s a pretty ambitious song in a minimalistic sense which helps it really catch your attention, but also makes four minutes seem like a lot more. I thought I had heard three or so minutes, but the song had barely reached the two-minute mark.
Climax – This is a nice song. I can see why people would groove to this. Again, a little downbeat for my tastes, but that doesn’t make it a bad song.
How They Want Me to Be – Meh. No real reason to get excited about this one. It didn’t bring any emotional response from me, which is a bad thing when it comes to music. It’s the musical equivalent of a movie with characters I just don’t like.
His Pain II – This is a pretty striking song. So much going on with so little in a completely different way than “Hot Knife.” I can pick out things I didn’t like – the meandering bass line bugged me – but the sum is way more than the value of its parts. The old-school feel, the horns and, most of all, the gripping vocals, make this a really damn-good piece of music.
Bad Religion – What a powerful emotional performance. Another soulful song that I completely appreciate, but would definitely not choose over something with more positive energy. That said, Frank Ocean reels you in and won’t let you go during this one.
Shivers – Again with the notion that sad and grinding = good. Not a bad song, but just made me want to sit in an empty coffee shop on a rainy day and talk to myself about all the girls who left me. And that guitar at the end was just way too much.
Hands on the Wheel – The prominence of these types of hip-hop songs on these kind of yearly lists is like rock critics saying Poison, Motley Crue and Def Leppard were the most memorable musicians in their era. This is the 21st century Pour Some Sugar on Me or Girls, Girls, Girls. Just not as much fun for me.
Forest Whitaker – A fun little song that left my brain as soon as it entered. I had to listen to it again to write something since I was busy when it ended the first time. The low-fi production gives it some character, and I’m a sucker for most songs with whistling in them. But I wouldn’t seek this one out again even though I enjoyed it.
And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going – This is a powerful live performance obviously bolstered by the strength a show like “The Voice” can provide. It’s kind of hard to judge this on its own because of that, but it’s hard not to love this performance.

I’m sure other things I would like more came out in 2012, but if this is what a pop culture website chose to let people know what mattered over the past 12 months, I’ll stick with the music I already have.

An R.E.M. Memory

brian — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 23:53:04 +0000

Four years ago today, I faced one of the most important professional days in my life. I had to prepare for an event on June 12 which had to go perfectly. All the stress of that reality, however, gave way to something else.

I had tickets to see R.E.M. the night before my big day. Little did I know it, but this would be the last time I would see my favorite band perform live.

I feel conflicted about all of this. After all, I could have not gone to the show because of my work stress. If I had missed their last tour, I would not have forgiven myself.

But the show I did see did not meet my expectations. I know that sounds selfish, but I have seen the band enough and follow their tour exploits that I can’t help it.

The folks the night before got “Harborcoat” where I got “Finest Worksong.” My encore went right from “Fall on Me” into “Man on the Moon.” The nights bookending my show added “Pretty Persuasion” or “Sitting Still” between those.

But the further away from the show I get, the less it bothers me. I got “Little America” and “Driver 8.” I got to see Peter Buck screw up “Rockville” (in the video below). And I got possibly my favorite R.E.M. concert moment ever.

Near the end of the main set, they ripped into “These Days.” I love the song, especially live. As Stipe headed into the first chorus, he sang words I worked really hard to decipher over the years.

I had a hat, and it sunk, reached down, yanked it up, slapped it on my head*

I sang it along with him as loud as I could. As I finished the line, the guy in front of me turned around and had the biggest smile on his face. he gave me a big double high-five which clearly indicated our membership in the club of people so obsessed with this band that we’re impressed when someone else knows an obtuse lyric.

I may not have heard “1,000,000” like the people the night before me, but I have this going for me. Which is nice.

* – The album lyric is I had a hat, put it down and it sunk, reached down, yanked it up, slapped it on my head but Michael Stipe has left out the “put it down” part for a while now.

Are Spotify Struggles a Surprise?

brian — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:42:29 +0000

This story from the New York Post caught my eye online today because I sometimes use Spotify. The music service intrigued me because I have struggled with finding something which lets me stream/play my favorite music on multiple devices. While I like Spotify, I’m not surprised their attempts to hook people into a paid service has mostly failed.

Right now, I have music playing on my work computer through Google Play. This is the player hooked up to their cloud service. I have 4,627 songs available with absolutely no restrictions. OK, now I have 4.626 songs available because something I had downloaded for my daughter just showed up in my shuffle play, the hazards of simply adding all the songs from your hard drive to the cloud. Regardless of how many Victoria Justice songs I have to delete when they play, I have all my music in one place, including my R.E.M. bootlegs. Before anyone screams “piracy,” the band has a pretty open policy in letting fans share live recordings.

Using Google Play does mean I might end up with spotty song information – I just listened to a version of 1,000,000 which I think came from their 2007 live rehearsals in Dublin, but I’m not sure what night – but I can deal with that. That also means I have variable audio levels, my biggest complaint about the Google interface, but hardly a dealbreaker. I first tried the Amazon Cloud Player, but hated how you had to go to the Cloud Drive to change information on a song, something I do when a file plays but doesn’t indicate the artist or song title. Google makes that function much more seamless.

With Spotify, I get all the correct song information, a stable audio level and access to some songs I may not have in my library, but that doesn’t quite cover things for me. Sure, I’m not going to listen to all 4,000 plus songs, but I like having them accessible. With Spotify, I can access “local files” from my hard drive, but I don’t have all my music on a hard drive at work and have eliminated music from my laptop hard drive since I can access it from the cloud.

I still crank up Spotify once in a while. I made some pretty fun playlists on there and don’t mind the brief ads, but I have found myself drifting more and more to the cloud where I have music I have paid for and/or curated. Some people may find Spotify something they want to pay for, but I have already put a lot of time and money into my music and don’t see why I need to pony up for their service.

ITEOTWAWKI: Garbage Time

brian — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:04:17 +0000

I finally broke down and bought the (supposed) final album from R.E.M. I say supposed because Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011 may be the last project the band works on together in the studio, but I really doubt the business entity that is R.E.M. will never release anything ever again.

I’ve blogged before about Peter Buck’s fascination with bootlegs and demo tapes – a passion not shared by Michael Stipe – and think nostalgia and money will eventually coax some more live shows or hidden studio offerings out into the marketplace. At least I hope so.

But just in case they never commit anything to vinyl or CD or MP3 again, I bought Part Lies recently. To be honest, I had gone to Amazon to buy something else and really wanted to get free shipping so I added the CD somewhat reluctantly. I will probably reference the liner notes more than I play the discs. Each song has some explanation from the band with each member weighing in on whichever songs they felt like.

Some of the stories shed no new light, but others gave those nuggets of minutiae that I love. This piece from Time checks in on each song and shows why the liner notes rock as the reviewer tracks immodest statements from Stipe within the notes. Not only that, but he does pull the curtain back on a few song inspirations/meanings. I had no idea they really considered not putting “Radio Free Europe” on Murmur. Since the song had helped catapult them to success as a single, they didn’t know if they wanted to release it again. But they did and the differences between the original (fast) version and the one most people have heard from the album indicate, to me at least, the ability the quartet had even in their earliest days.

I also enjoyed the nuggets, mostly from Buck, about who wrote what song. The quick and easy description of how he and Bill Berry put together “Driver 8” makes me like the great song even more somehow.

On the downside, they threw three new songs on the end of the album. I have heard (and was unimpressed by) “We All Go Back Where We Belong” when it was first released and doubt I will intentionally hear it again. I haven’t heard the other two songs and feel no compulsion to ever do so. I’d rather hear yet another live version of “Rockville” or “Gardening at Night” so I hope Buck is getting antsy about breaking open the vault.

ITEOTWAWKI: Not Feeling It

brian — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:42:20 +0000

In a couple of weeks, R.E.M. will release what it calls a definitive retrospective on their 31-year career, “Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, 1982-2011.” The band’s website has started a number of initiatives to promote the release of the 40-song collection. They have a “Song of the Week” with various performances of a signature tune, including covers. They have videos for “We All Go Back To Where We Belong,” one of the new songs which will be released. They are pulling out all the stops.

I don’t really care very much. I mean, I will buy the album. Not right away, but I will get it because the 20-something versions of Sitting Still I currently have on my computer just won’t cut it. I know I already have the one which will appear in the collection, but this just means it might show up more often in Shuffle Play.

But on the whole, meh. I’m not that bummed that they broke up, but I wish they had waited a while before releasing such a blatant money-grab. To be honest, the only real anticipation I have is for the liner notes which hopefully will include some more cool stories to clutter my geeky brain.

ITEOTWAWKI: Getting There from Here

brian — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:59:30 +0000

Obviously, I have thought way too much about the R.E.M. breakup this week. A few friends contacted me to say that I came to mind when they heard the news, which is touching, but I’m not distraught or anything. Since most albums in the past 10-15 years have been hit or miss, I’m not that bothered they won’t be returning to the studio. I’m more disappointed that I have probably seen them live for the last time – and that show wasn’t as great as I had hoped.

Anyway, the news has since come out that the band came to the decision while working on (another) greatest hits collection, titled “Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011” and scheduled for a November 15 release. Unlike the last two greatest hits albums, this will span the band’s whole career instead of splitting the songs between the I.R.S. era and the Warner brothers era. The album will reportedly have some stuff they finished since “Collapse Into Now” came out.

That makes me wonder if they really did start working on something else, realized they didn’t have what it took to put a whole album together (probably based on an accelerated timeline from the record company) and decided to just end things. The theory of record label politics playing a role in the end has already been floated by murmurs.com founder Ethan Kaplan, who also used to work at Warners and begs the question: was this dissolution more contractual than creative?

I don’t think they will re-form or anything, but I wonder if they have something up their sleeve. Peter Buck admitted a couple of years ago that “(a)s far back as 1982 we have live 16- and 24-track tapes, and we have a bunch of shows that sound pretty cool.” He admitted there wouldn’t be a treasure trove of live shows coming out, but as they worked on what would accompany the Reckoning re-issue a couple of years ago, he said he wished the band could share their early history with their fans.

We’re already sifting through stuff from 1984, ’85, and there are also filmed elements… We’ve discussed putting all that stuff up on the web site, ’cos we’ve got copies of every performance that was ever filmed, and there’s a lot of ’em. I’d love to get all that stuff out there. The live thing is such an important element of who we were, and if you only know us from the records you’re missing out on more than half of what we were about. I’m sure the record company would have a nervous breakdown if they heard me talking like this, but it’s not the earning money thing that concerns me as much as the band entering history in as representative a way as possible. Come on, let’s see the weird Dutch TV performances with us lip-synching in make-up!

But when a band like Weezer (and I am sure others) makes CDs and digital downloads of their shows available through their own site, I wonder if we might see something like this from R.E.M. in the future. Commissioning the mastering and release of shows through REMHQ.com sounds like a lot less work than doing what a record company tells you to do and would make the die-hard fans happy. I’m sure there are all kinds of legal reasons that might make this dream of mine impossible, but it’s at least worth consideration.

If they do it, I think they should start with the tape of their first concert in April 1980 which I like to think is hidden somewhere in Peter Buck’s collection of bootlegs. If I’m dreaming, why not dream big, right?