Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #1728: R.E.M. – “(Untitled)”

January 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Green
Year: 1988

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File Under ” “

There was a lot of change in the air when Green came out on Election Day, 1988.

While it was, sadly, a foregone conclusion as to who our next President would be, it was going to be the end of the Reagan years, which had to be a good thing. The awful summer of 1988 finally ended, which was also a good thing. Even better, I started playing music with some of the people who I’m still playing music with, and — of course, because there was a new R.E.M. album — started a relationship that lasted until just before Out of Time came out, my longest one yet!

Certain Songs #1727: R.E.M. – “I Remember California”

January 15, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Green
Year: 1988

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File Under History

Some of you might have noticed that I skipped “Stand,” the massive hit single from Green with the silly lyrics and sillier video, and which proved that the success of “The One I Love” wasn’t a fluke: “Stand” is fine. “Stand” is fun. Yay, “Stand!”

OK. Good. Glad to get that out of the way.

Certain Songs #1726: R.E.M. – “World Leader Pretend”

January 14, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Green
Year: 1988

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File Under Freedom

While it was never released as a single, “World Leader Pretend” is a very important song in the R.E.M. canon for a couple of different reasons. For one thing, it’s the first set of lyrics that Michael Stipe was comfortable with printing on an album sleeve. This felt like a huge deal at the time, putting the spotlight on “World Leader Pretend” in the same way that Led Zeppelin had put the spotlight on “Stairway To Heaven” 17 years previously.

Certain Songs #1725: R.E.M. – “Get Up”

January 13, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Green
Year: 1988

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File Under Dreams

And then, as their final act of a decade where they made more great music than any other artist, R.E.M. released their major label debut on Election Day, 1988. And it was kind of a disappointment.

Not in a major-label sellout kind of way — not with R.E.M. — but rather in a somewhat failed transition album sort of way. Green started strong and it ended strong, but in the middle — from “The Wrong Child” through “Hairshirt” — it failed to connect to me. And as you can imagine, I tried.

Certain Songs #1724: R.E.M. – “The One I Love”

January 12, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Document
Year: 1987

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File Under Fire

“The One I Love” just might be my favorite R.E.M. song.

At the very least, it’s one of their most important songs, a big-riffed mean as fuck rock ‘n’ roll song that somehow stormed the radio and broke into the top ten, pretty much changing everything for R.E.M.

Certain Songs #1723: R.E.M. – “It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”

January 9, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Document
Year: 1987

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File Under Bernstein

“It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” just might be my favorite R.E.M. song.

Certain Songs #1722: R.E.M. – “Disturbance at the Heron House”

January 8, 2020 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Album: Document
Year: 1987

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File Under Followers

It was the autumn of 1987, and I was going through a pretty tough break-up, which left me drunk and depressed for much of the time, and so at some point, I made a cassette that had the recently-released Document — R.E.M. seemed to be putting out records that coincided with big moments of my love life (which I don’t think was on purpose) — on one side and the dB’s The Sound of Music on the other side.

As you can imagine, I listened to that cassette a lot, and I this memory: I was driving somewhere, listening to this cassette, which just happened to be on side one of Document, and and some point I started singing along with “Disturbance at the Heron House” and realized, for the first time in a long time, that I was going to be OK.

Certain Songs #1721: R.E.M. – “Exhuming McCarthy”

January 7, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Document
Year: 1987

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File Under Acumen

Hey kids, that sound you hear at the beginning of “Exhuming McCarthy” was made by a thing called a “typewriter,” which basically was a computer keyboard where the monitor was made out of paper instead of pixels.

Certain Songs #1720: R.E.M. – “Finest Worksong”

January 6, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Document
Year: 1987

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File Under Rearrange

In Major League Baseball, there is the concept of the “walk year,” the final year that a player has on a contract prior to becoming a free agent. As a player, what you want in that situation is to have a great year, because it will obviously increase your value on the market.

In 1987, R.E.M. was facing the equivalent of their walk year: the last album on their original contract with I.R.S. records, and while every record they’d made sold better than the previous one, they were still seen primarily as a critics band. Not so much after Document, which landed them their first Rolling Stone cover (a thing I’d been predicting since Reckoning), their first major hit single, and their first platinum record: the equivalent of a .312/.442/.563 slash line in their walk year.

Certain Songs #1719: R.E.M. – “Superman”

January 4, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Lifes Rich Pageant
Year: 1986

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File Under Pathway

From their very beginnings as an Athens, GA, party band, R.E.M. incorporated covers in their act. Obviously, it was always good to play songs that people were familiar with, and on the other hand, it also connected them to their roots, some obvious and some surprising.

For the most part, the covers were usually relegated to b-sides, and ran the gamut from the expected (the Velvets and their fellow Athenians, Pylon) to the unexpected (fuck yeah, Aerosmith!), and in fact they recorded covers throughout their career, though eventually they stopped being even b-sides and were limited to the Christmas fan club singles.