LISTENING PARTY: Green

I've mentioned before the magical summer/fall of 1992, when fueled by teenage hormones I decided to listen to every record in my father's collection in an attempt to discover music. For a large part of my life prior to this, I had almost zero interest in popular music, except for an intense Weird Al period when I was in third grade and a short-lived and peer pressured interest in the rap group the Fat Boys. I suppose a really terrible graduate level thesis could be written about why certain albums spoke to me (Rush's "Roll the Bones") while others didn't (Supertramp's "Breakfast in America", but I'm not going to talk about those ones. I'm going to talk about the Chris Elliot show "Get A Life" and its soundtrack, "Green" by R.E.M.
"Get A Life" was a short-lived sitcom in which Chris Elliot played a 35-year paperboy who still lived with his parents.

(Did you catch the pedophile reference? Pretty edgy for 1991.)
Now "Green" by R.E.M. was in no way the soundtrack to "Get A Life", but the show did use the R.E.M. song "Stand" as its theme song. And here is my entrance way into the world of Mssrs. Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe.

"Pop Song 89"- This is one of those songs that never mentions its title in the lyrics at all. It's really less of a title than a description. Imagine how confusing bands' albums would be if they just described the song instead of naming it? How would you know which was your favorite Fray track if they were all just named "Mopey Song 07"? Or if Randy Newman albums just were listed "Ironically Racist Song" numbers 1-9? I could probably spend all day playing that game, but now the song is over. It was pretty good. Here, check it out yourself:


"Get Up"-I hope Michael Stipe isn't yelling at me to "Get Up" in some kind of political fashion, like "get up and end the invasion of Nicaragua" and is instead telling me to "get up off the couch and stop blogging about our albums and go eat one of those fancy cupcakes you have in your fridge" but I'm not sure. Oh, I thought of another one. Going to a jukebox and trying to decide if you want to hear "Song with Beautiful in the Title 2000" by U2 or "Song with Beautiful in the Title 2007" by U2.

"You Are the Everything"- That's nice of you to say, Michael. Unless you're making a comment about my weight, which wouldn't necessarily be uncalled for. Maybe I should get up more. But seriously, this is a really beautiful song. I'm pretty sure some one is playing a mandolin, presaging R.E.M.'s decision to record every song with a mandolin forever. Or just on "Losing My Religion" which I've heard so many times that it just seems like forever.

"Stand"- Sweet jesus is this song terrific. I love how anthemic it sounds, including the "straight-on-the-eighth-notes" piano hammering that happens during the chorus. Also, amazing? The wah-wah on the solo. What is more amazing than that? The lyrics, you say? I should agree. I read an interview with Michael Stipe once where he said that "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies was more culturally significant than anything by the Beatles. And if that's true (and I might not totally disagree) than that must make "Stand" by R.E.M. the most culturally significant thing since the Renaissance. I'm only half-joking. Here's a clip of Chris Elliot riding a bike to watch while you think about it.

"World Leader Pretend"- I remember being 13 and struggling to understand the grammar of this title. Shouldn't it be world leader pretends? And then what is he pretending? Or she, although in 1988 I think the only female world leader was Imelda Marcos, and I don't think this song is about her, because the lyrics do not mention shoes once. So you do the math.

"The Wrong Child"- I'll just take a minute to express how impressed I am with R.E.M. "Green" was their major label debut for Warner Brothers after making five records with independent label I.R.S. and it's so weird. There are probably lots of songs you think came from this album that didn't. "The One I Love"? "It's the End of the World as We Know It And I Feel Fine"? Both from the album before. They get signed to a multi-million dollar major label record label,and you can picture the A&R guy rubbing his hands together thinking about all the hit singles R.E.M. are going to produce and they make this weird, weird record. It's beautiful and haunting, like the song "The Wrong Child" which sounds like Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, but man it's still pretty weird. The weirdest thing? The album is called "Green" but the album cover is totally orange. Did I just blow your mind? I think I did.

"Orange Crush"- This is probably the kind of song that Warners thought R.E.M. would be recording, and I like to imagine that they wrote 11 songs like this one, and then recorded a bunch of weirder songs, releasing those, but including this one, just so people knew that they could. I don't really know what this song is about, although I remember thinking that it was about Vietnam, probably because I had also just watched Apocalypse Now, and while I don't think they mention the defoliant "Agent Orange" by name in it, I made the connection none the less. Listening to it now, I can also hear helicopters in the background where you would imagine a guitar solo or something, which adds to the 'Nam effect. I would someday like to front a good rock'n'roll band, and I will have the drummer start each song with the rapid fire snare hits that Bill Berry uses throughout this song, no matter how poorly it fits with the song we're playing, or how sick the drummer or our audience gets of it. That's how rad it is.

"Turn You Inside Out"-I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a good thing to say to another person. I wonder if this is how Michael Stipe picks up guys or ladies at the bar? I don't know what I would do if somebody approached me and told me they would turn me inside out, although I might point out that it's probably pretty gross in there. I mean, the digestive system alone! Leave that stuff on the inside. Couldn't you just turn me upside down? Although that might succeed in making me turn myself inside out. How about you just buy me a drink and then tell me you like my smile?

"Hairshirt"- I have a hair shirt, if by hair-shirt you mean a hairy chest.

The first line of this song is "I am not the kind of dog who could keep you waiting for no good reason." Do dogs ever have good reasons for keeping people waiting? Isn't it usually "There was another dog butt over there" or "I'm a dog and I don't understand what you're saying, so I'm just going to keep standing here for a few more minutes until I get bored"? More mandolin, by the way. How did nobody not notice this before? People always talk about R.E.M.'s follow-up record "Out of Time" as being the one with all the mandolins, but they probably were thinking of this one. Man, it's hard to keep R.E.M. records straight. Imagine how much more difficult it would be if all the songs were just described instead of titled? Oh, wait, I already did this joke. Did I already mention that the album is called "Green" but the album cover is orange? I did. Man, it's a good thing the next song is the last song.

"I Remember California"- Which is a funny title, because have you ever tried to name all the U.S. states from memory? Because nobody ever forgets California. Or Texas. Or Florida. The weirdly shaped ones. You're more likely to forget Oklahoma. Or Missouri. Have you noticed how little I've talked about this record itself? It's because it's pretty good, although it would probably rank near the bottom of my favorite R.E.M. albums. But I really like R.E.M., much to the chagrin of my poor fiancee, so even one of their least-liked albums is still pretty good. But I'm glad this is the last song, because I've run out of funny and/or interesting things to say about this album.

Curses! An untitled, unlisted track! I know I've written about this before, but who was the first artist to include an hidden bonus track on a CD because I'd like to kick them in the face. I hate putting a CD into my itunes and it has like 47 tracks of silence before the bonus track which itself only starts after 3 minutes of tape hiss. Or when the last track on the CD is 35 minutes long because it has the really awesome last song from the album, twenty-two minutes of silence, and then a kind of lame jam type song. Sorry, I didn't realize I had all that anger in me. Although I will admit this hidden R.E.M. song is a separate track and there isn't a ridiculously long silence before it starts, and it's actually a pretty fun and cool little song, so I'll just pretend that the track information from song number 11 just fell off the back of the CD case. Which is orange, if I haven't already mentioned it.