WNEW | Where Rock Lives

Video Classics: 'The One I Love' - R.E.M.

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

The One I Love was R.E.M.'s first legitimate hit, just making the Top 10 at #9 in the U.S., and hitting #14 in Canada and #16 in the U.K.  It comes in at spot #284 on the 1991 Firecracker 500, though it failed to make the 1996 list.  Oh,and on a side note, for all you Food Network fans out there, show host and chef Alton Brown was the director of photography for this video ...

The One I Love, which appeared on the band's 1987 album Document, also has an interesting distinction as possibly being the most mis-dedicated song in the history of rock. Given the title, and the first line of the lyrics "This one goes out to the one I love ...', it was dedicated countless times from one person to another they thought of fondly.  Of course, had they bothered to listen to the very next line, 'a simple prop to occupy my time', they might have rethought their dedication.  According to band member and lyricist Michael Stipe ...

"I've always left myself pretty open to interpretation. It's probably better that they just think it's a love song at this point." However, in an interview in the January 1988 issue of Musician magazine he said that the song was "incredibly violent" and "It's very clear that it's about using people over and over."

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

Video Classics: 'Losing My Religion' - R.E.M.

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

If R.E.M. had wanted to be more literal with their lyrics, their highest-charting hit in the U.S., Losing My Religion should have been titled 'Learning to Play Mandolin'. More on that after the video ...

Sometimes a happy accident creates a hit song, and for R.E.M. that's the case for their biggest hit, which comes in at #208 on the 1991 Firecracker 500 and #141 on the 1996 list.

One day, in 1990, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck decided it was time to broaden his skills as an instrumentalist, and just have a little fun, so he bought a mandolin. Rather than immediately trying to learn to play the them from The Godfather, he instead just fiddled around with it a bit and developed a riff, which he recorded, and the rest just grew from there, accoding to him:

"When I listened back to it the next day, there was a bunch of stuff that was really just me learning how to play mandolin, and then there's what became 'Losing My Religion', and then a whole bunch more of me learning to play the mandolin."

Throw in some trademark R.E.M. minor-key chord progression and lyrics by Michael Stipe, and you've got yourself a hit.

Interestingly enough, the song really isn't about religion at all. According to Stipe, it is based on the old southern U.S. expression which refers to someone losing their temper or civility by saying they've 'lost their religion'.  Stipe swears the song is about unrequited love, but really, given the rather abstract nature of the lyrics (and the video), people can pretty much make what they want of it. Or, they can just enjoy the music.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

Misheard Lyrics: Loyal Gel From Nose Is Rose, Down

Here's the scariest part: my transcription of the lyrics to Can't Get There From Here by R.E.M. ain't so far from what the lyrics pages say. Remember the movie Being John Malkovich? I'm starring in Channeling Michael Stipe:

When the world is a mobster
About to swallow you whole

Kick the plate that holds your teeth in
Throw your trolls out the door

If you need an inspiration
Follow math is where I go, a gun

Loyal gel from nose is rose, down
It's not a bat visit Mom, om, om....

(I've been down) Can't get there from here, etc., etc.

In your hands are feeling empty
It kept jumpin' off the ground round

Dressing sharks shave your beard down
Put it in between my bong, song

(I've been down) Can't get there from here, etc., etc.

Forgotten Favorites: Lifes Rich Pageant

Some albums are just too good to let slip away beneath the sands of time, so each week Bill Melville pulls one out, dusts it off and offers it up for your renewed consideration ...

While tempted to pick an R.E.M. album from the past 10 or 12 years because they've been largely ignored, there's a few developmental years in the band's early history that receive scant attention.

I tussled between Lifes Rich Pageant and Fables of the Reconstruction for a while, both occupying the gulf between Murmur and Document.

But Driver 8 still haunts modern rock radio and the cover tacked onto the end of Lifes Rich Pageant doesn't accurately represent the moody, poignant songs that precede it.

Lifes Rich Pageant finds R.E.M.  blossoming into an anthemic band, while balancing those tendencies with its small-room sound. By the mid-1990s, at the height of their popularity, that balance largely slipped out of their music.

While R.E.M. might have gone off the tracks, its early work remains the heavily-traveled path for folk-based indie rock.

This is a tough one for me, since the album also includes my least favorite R.E.M. moment outside of Shiny Happy People - their cover of The Clique's Superman. I wonder about Michael Stipe's love for the song, since bassist Mike Mills earns vocal duties.

However, the rest is beyond reproach. Begin the Begin signals a more muscular R.E.M. - not only does the rhythm section get more play, but  Stipe's voice sprouts some rough edges.

On These Days, the album breaks into a sprint, with a chugging bassline holding up those jangling guitars.

The album's other big single, Fall on Me, is among their best material, yet goes unheard in favor of Superman and everything after Document.

The Clevelander in me always remembered this as the album containing Cuyahoga, an environmental ode named for the river splitting downtown Cleveland. Cuyahoga quietly forms the core of Lifes Rich Pageant, with the band's earth tones and vibrant instrumentation at their peak.

Hyena strays a little close to the formula of These Days, the occasional piano notwithstanding.

Where It All Began (Almost) For R.E.M.

With more and more opportunities to buy music online, labels and bands alike are constantly looking for new ways to entice buyers to pony up for those shiny, round discs.

For example, back in 2005, Chris Rea released an elaborate 11 CD box-set of music and artwork called Blue Guitars. Originally planned as a retirement send-off, it turned out to be the first of two art and music adventures from the long-loved creator of (Fool) if You Think It's Over.

In 2007, he released another unique work, a 38-track package that included 3 CDs, two vinyl albums and a hardback book called The Return of The Fabulous Hofner Blue Notes, wherein he created a fictional band from the 1950's, the Delmonts. Later, he put together a band, The Delmonts featuring Chris Rea, to perform the music live on tour in Europe.

This November 25th, R.E.M. will follow suit with the release of a deluxe version of Murmur, their ground-breaking album that was originally released 25 years ago. Along with a remastered version of the Murmur tracks, the kit will include a second CD of live music recorded at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto just three months after the album's initial release. Included in the live set are 12 Murmur tunes, a trio from their Chronic Town EP plus a few that were to be recorded in the future (like Just A Touch).

REManiacs will take particular interest in essays from R.E.M. producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, who called R.E.M. "a product of the record store, the library, and the college classroom colliding with the ultimate counter-culture, nerd, dance, ambiguous sex party. They were a band in the most classic sense of the word. The perfect amalgam of the Velvet Underground and the Doors".

Long hailed by critics and fans as the beginning of the post-modern, jangle-rock alternative era, Murmur continues to sound like the ageless album it was intended to be. On November 25th, we'll get to dig even deeper.

Video Classics: It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

To honor WNEW's legendary Firecracker 500, every day we are highlighting the music that populated the 1991 and 1996 lists, with classic videos, live performances and little-known facts about the songs and how they came to be...

For a band that has had its lengthy forays into hand-wringing, with gloomy anthems expousing dire social and ecological concerns (Cuyahoga and Fall on Me, among numerous examples), R.E.M. could almost be forgiven for sounding like they are poking fun at themselves with It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine). The song's lengthy title tells you pretty much all you need to know about it's outlook, and the relentlessly upbeat tempo and patter finish the job.

The song was initially released as part of their 1987 album, Document. While Document was very successful, and moved R.E.M. definitively past their college-rock roots, It's the End of the World as We Know It was not a major hit in its own right, reaching only #69 when it was released a year later. Of course, part of the reason could be that everyone who wanted the song in their collection already had Document on their shelves: It was R.E.M.'s first-ever platinum album. The song remained popular with the band, however, and has been their show closer at most performances since its release. It made #339 on the 1991 Firecracker 500, and #226 on the 1996 version of the list.

While Michael Stipe has claimed that the song was meant to address the 'incredible social concerns of the time', the lyrics themselves seem whimsical and often nonsensical, stimulating debate not on social policy, but instead on what they even mean. One clue from Wikipedia states ...

It has been reported that Stipe wrote the song after dreaming that he was at a birthday party where all the other guests had the initials L.B., hence "Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom!"

The original music video below was directed by James Herbert, who worked with the band on several other videos in the late 1980s.

Have memories of this song or the Firecracker 500? Add your thoughts to the comments below or take a look at Video Classics past...

A.M. Nuggets: Weekend Videos - Sasquatch!, Summer Camp

Summer Camp festival was broadcast live on iClips over the weekend - including a late-night set with Umphrey's McGee on Saturday, and George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic on Sunday. Check back there this week for highlights (plus they have other great video of artists like Les Claypool, Iggy & the Stooges, and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals). iClips will be broadcasting live from Mountain Jam 2008 this weekend in Hunter, NY

Fans also captured great video this weekend - especially from the Sasquatch! festival, with killer clips from Cold War Kids (St. John w/Rogue Wave), R.E.M. (The One I Love) and this one from the Whigs (Right Hand on My Heart):

A.M. Nuggets: Festival Season Begins In Earnest

Memorial Day means the beginning of summer, and with that comes the beginning of summer festival season. There's lots of music going on in all corners of the country this long weekend - chances are there's something right in your backyard. Here's a look at a few notable fests going down this weekend:

Sasquatch! Festival - Gorge, WA with R.E.M., Death Cab For Cutie, Cold War Kids

Summer Camp - Chillicothe, IL with moe., Umphrey's McGee, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic

Ashville Music Jamboree - Ashville, NC with Gov't Mule, Bela Fleck, Burning Spear

Sonoma Jazz Festival - Sonoma, CA with Herbie Hancock, Al Green, Kool & the Gang

DelFest - Cumberland, MD with Del McCroury Band, Jon Fishman, Vince Gill

Strange Creek - Greenfield, MA with Max Creek, Strangefolk, Ryan Montbleau Band

But it looks like THE place to be this weekend is the Freedom Weekend Aloft gathering in Simpsonville, South Carolina. Huey Lewis and the News headlines this family fun fest which features hot air ballooning, carnival rides, home run hitting contests and a national frisby dog competition.