Tuesday, October 30, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty One: These Days by R.E.M.

Do we look like Shiny Happy People
to you?
I'm surprised it took so long for another R.E.M. song to pop up in this series...the last time--the only time--I discussed the band from Athens, GA was in the very first 30 Songs, 30 Days series in 2009!

This is actually a live recording of this second track of Life's Rich Pageant, taken from a performance at the Olypmia in L.A. prior to the release of what would be their penultimate album, Accelerate. It features some banter by Michael Stipe where he mentions he wrote this song after emerging from a particularly dark time in his life when he was 25. It's interesting hearing him talk about this at that point where he was pretty well-adjusted, a few scant years before he and his mates decided to call it a day.

Life's Rich Pageant, which came fresh off the problematic sophmore album Fables of The Reconstruction, is a very political album, and I think some of this is political--but the true meaning lies in what Stipe tells us at the very beginning of this live recording. This is a song written by a man who was at turns angry and morose, and the lyrics can be seen as both an indictment of the laziness of the youth of the early Reagan era and a call to arms. Stipe is actively upset at the inactivity of his fellows, mocking them ('we have many things in common/name three'), threatening them ('I wish to eat each one of you') while also moving away from the listless masses, urging them to follow him into activity. After all, there is some hope in what he's saying, however dim--like him, his listeners are 'young despite the years' and he wants them to fly metaphorically to take this joy with them. I can't help but think that this is the morose, dark Stipe finding some purpose in activism and asking--nay, berating--his fans to follow him into this brave new proactive world.
It's a great song from a great album, one that I think marks the line between 'indie rock' R.E.M. and the 'mainstream arena pop' R.E.M. of their later years. Of course, the great trick of the band was how it slipped back and forth across this line several times throughout its career, which made them problematic to the mainstream who wanted just endless iterations of 'Shiny Happy People' and 'Stand' instead of the more nuanced, experimental and problematic stuff that made up Up and Automatic For The People and other great albums.

I don't miss R.E.M. now that they're gone; that would be silly given the massive body of music they left behind when they finally called it quits. But hearing songs like that makes me glad they were around.
 
Here's a video...

 

Saturday, October 13, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty: Peaches by The Presidents of The United States

Portrait of a band about to become a footnote...
Hey, look--it's a Seattle alternative band from the 90's that wasn't grunge!

The Presidents was part of that 'college rock' movement--you know what I'm talking about, power pop with odd, comedic lyrics full of double entendre, wacky videos and eccentric vocals, like Weezer only...not. I always suspected they were done in primarily thanks to the massive success of their first album, which spawned this song as well as 'Lump' and 'Kitty.' Based on that one album, they ended up playing for President Clinton at a 1994 fundraiser (man, those were weird years). And I'll even admit that I actually was one of a number of New Yorkers who pre-ordered their second album, II, so I could gain floor admittance to a free concert they played at the long-gone Virgin Records in Times Square; if you have their rarities and demos collection Pure Frosting, you might be able to pick me out in amongst the screams of the crowd (man, those were weird years). Somewhere around here is a guitar pick guitarist Dave Dederer signed for me at the autograph session that followed.

I don't doubt that Chris Ballew, Dederer, and the others in the Presidents were good musicians; just listen to the guitar playing on this single, and that wonderful bridge that signifies a time change toward the end. But I do wonder if the band suffered due to the path it chose to walk down musically. The problem with college rock is that it invites consignment to novelty...and novelty invites consignment to the ephemeral. And unlike other college rockers like Weezer, who seemed to have some deeper meanings in their goofiness, The Presidents seemed to think the lyrics were the thing in and of themselves. They kept embracing that strange little niche--we are talking about a band whose lead off single from it's second album was a paeon to smashing up toy cars in your backyard--and by the time they realized the Top Forty Bus had passed them by, they were unable to reconfigure enough to recapture the public's attention. To be fair, it also didn't help that the band broke up and reformed about three times in the last fifteen years--if you're not putting out music constantly, you're forgotten in modern pop.

I personally always liked this song, partially because of the time changes, and partially because of the sheer bizarreness that this became a Top 40 Hit at one time. This song's vague smuttiness does take a rather...frank turn about the minute and a half mark, with the whole thing about Chris mangling a rotten peach while fantasizing about a woman, but it doesn't really alter the not-quite-innocent fun of the song. And the greatest thing is that it is under three minutes (as are a number of the songs The Presidents released as a single), making them an acolyte of the true pop single. It's not as annoying as some of their other singles were--wanna try to listen to 'Lump' again ?--and it's a shame it's sort of forgotten.

Apparently, The Presidents are still together, albeit with the addition of guitbassist Andrew McKeeg to the line-up, playing Husky half-time shows and producing new music sparingly.

Here's the video for the single...and yeah, it's got ninjas...