When I was young and full of grace and spirited, a rattlesnake

R.E.M. in Santiago last night:

("I Believe," from one of my favorite R.E.M. albums, the whole of which is very fitting today)

Yesterday, I voted for change, and today I am inspired, excited and full of hope for our country. As I poured my coffee, I found myself thinking about what I could specifically do to get involved in what lies ahead.

As one inspiring man was quoted as saying in our local paper, "I hope everybody can say, ‘What can I do?' instead of ‘What do I get?'"


[thanks c]

The insurgency began and you missed it

R.E.M. had a little help tonight at their encore in Philly; Eddie Vedder joined them (and Johnny Marr) onstage to sing the excellent "Begin the Begin." So many great shows happening from both artists lately, to see them together would be astounding. Until video surfaces (edit: here), I'm gonna have to imagine it went something like this:



[video from 2004, the mutual admiration society continues]

UPDATE: mp3 from last night!
Begin the Begin (live in Philly 6/18/08) - R.E.M. and Eddie Vedder

Monday Music Roundup

Ah, MySpace, why do you sucketh my time so?

Bleary eyed, I am emerging from a quickly-passed hour on MySpace to begin writing this post on Sunday night; I've been looking up people I went to high school with because my 10-year HS reunion is this Friday out in Campbell, California. Yes, our class (1997) was a little lazy and we didn't get anything organized until now, about 5 months after the actual anniversary date of the blessed graduation day. We all vowed to K.I.T. and never change and stay sweet (S.W.A.K. of course); I am pleased to report that we have all, in fact, changed.

Looking at people's profiles, sometimes it's shocking to stare at a face and then suddenly like one of those 3-D pictures where the image jumps out at you, go "Oh my gosh! That's ____!" All these far-flung jobs, babies, spouses, organizations, not to mention new haircolors, different sizes now, better fashion sense -- all these things should make Friday night a total mind trip. I am looking forward to it.
Well, that and the karaoke.

I feel like I should go make a 1997 high-school memories playlist, but won't subject you to it. New tunes:

Arm Twister
The Tripwires
Like a rough-edged Beatles track lost in the vaults, or something from a Sunday drive with Chuck Berry (who they also cover on their album) this pleasantly powerpopped-out track from Seattle's The Tripwires features a lot of connections to bands we love 'round these parts. Members of the Minus 5, The Young Fresh Fellows, Screaming Trees and REM cooperate here to make some mightily pleasing sounds. Count me a fan of the crunchy guitar, the layers of harmonies, and the pitch-perfect '60s rock sensibilities. Makes You Look Around is their current album, just out last week on Portland's Paisley Pop label.

Like A Vibration
The Whigs
Stream the new plugged-in album version: Windows [Lo] [Hi]
Quicktime [Lo] [Hi]
or if you need an mp3
Like A Vibration (live on MOKB)
Oooh, these guys rock. I wrote about The Whigs last year with their fantastic song "Technology", when they were a wee unsigned fledgling band. Now they've gone and hooked up with ATO and are prepping to release their first album with them, Mission Control, due January 22. Definitely stream the album version of this song -- kinda like a Replacements-meets-Pavement yowly-howly vibe here, all fuzz and aggression, but with a strong melody. In order to stretch and include them in the mp3 roundup, I got the acoustic live version above too from Dodge's awesome in-studio session with The Whigs earlier this year. The Whigs will be heading out on tour with Johnathan Rice and The Redwalls in the next few weeks.


We Don't Talk Like We Used To
Elliot Randall
This dude opened for Roger Clyne at the formidably barn-like Slim's this last weekend in San Francisco, and he's also on the new KFOG Local Scene CD along with Fuel-favorite Ryan Auffenberg
[KFOG's podcast on Elliot here]. My friend Brad Kava at the Mercury News said of Randall's 2007 album Take The Fall that it "flies below the radar but could take off at any minute... A little bit country, a little bit Elliott Smith." This cut is a slowburn little gem of bittersweet harmonies that reminds me of Ryan Adam's duet tunes with Norah Jones like "Dear John." In fact, whoever's doing backing vocals here sounds a lot like her. Lovely and sad, tear in your beer stuff. Note: Elliot is definitely not the same grizzled guy with a similar name from Steely Dan; according to this Elliot's MySpace, we share a birthday three years apart -- he just turned a mere 25 on August 19. Sounds like he's lived more than just those years, don't it?

Wave of Mutilation (Pixies cover)
Joy Zipper
There's a fantastic new Pixies covers jamboree out on the very cool, always vinyl-loving American Laundromat Records. These are the same folks that brought us the 7" vinyl series and the High School Reunion soundtrack covers album. This new covers album Dig For Fire: A Tribute To The Pixies features artists well-known and otherwise, but the variety just serves to highlight how well the original songs were constructed. This version of "Wave of Mutilation" loves being done by a girl-fronted band, all loud and fuzzy like the Breeders' second coming. Joy Zipper is a guy-girl duo from NYC and I dig em like The Raveonettes -- absolutely go check out their song "Go Tell The World" on their MySpace. Yum. Other artists on the Pixies comp that I've written about before are OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mogwai and Dylan At The Movies. ALR also has an interesting-sounding album of female artists covering Neil Young due in early 2008. I am never let down by their offerings.

Changing Your Mind
Bob Schneider
Lest you think I gave ole Bob the short end of the nasty stick with my recent show review, allow me to suggest this soul-flaying unreleased tune from him. This just goes to show that when he's good, he's really good. This pure, achingly vulnerable track is one that he performed in Denver, and listening again to the full studio treatment of it just does something to my heart. I also located a live mp3 of that song I quoted at the end of the show review, I'll be adding that up shortly. So worth delving into.

New songs from R.E.M. rehearsals in Dublin, 6/30/07

R.E.M. gave Irish fans a fantastic treat this last week by playing five shows at the historical Olympia Theatre (the oldest theatre in Dublin), calling the shows working rehearsals of new material for their next album. All in all, ten new songs were debuted in this first night's show (June 30, 2007) and they sound really strong to these R.E.M.-loving ears.

One of the best of the new batch is "Until The Day Is Done," because it's reminiscent of one of my all-time favorite R.E.M. songs, "Sweetness Follows." Several of the new songs ("Horse to Water," "Staring Down . . .") have a sort of a fervent Monster-era feel to them; this is good in my book, Monster remains one of my favorite R.E.M. albums.

Continuing this theme of Heather's Favorites, the encore also contains two of my favorite songs from New Adventures in Hi-Fi: "New Test Leper" (man, what a fantastic, gorgeous, sad-sounding song) and "Electrolite" is simply magnificent -- a pure and wonderful singalong.


R.E.M. IN DUBLIN
Olympia Theatre, 6/30/07
Living Well (new)
Staring Down the Barrel of the Middle Distance (new)
Second Guessing
Mr. Richards (new)
Houston (new)
1,000,000
On the Fly (new)
Letter Never Sent
Man Sized Wreath (new)
Little America
Until the Day is Done (new)
Maps and Legends
Disguised (new)
Accelerate (new)
Horse to Water (new)

Encore:
These Days
New Test Leper
Electrolite
I'm Gonna DJ At The End Of The World

ZIP: R.E.M. IN DUBLIN NIGHT ONE

Photos credit remhq.com and this gal. Also check out this review from The Independent (UK).

Country feedback

I went on a girls' weekend in the gorgeous mountains of Colorado (some of them; we have many) and I was happily tasked with being the mixmaster for the affair. It was an event rife with some possibly questionable choices in the name of fun on my part (Journey), but I wouldn't have it any other way.

But that was in the car and for the going out. This stunning gem was just mine, from a moment of solitude. Very early Saturday morning I couldn't sleep for some horrid reason, so I got up and went out on the porch of the lodge for some sitting and music-listening and looking, a favorite hobby of mine when I have time for it. As the sun rose over the mountains, this perfect song (one of my favorites) came on and it was a near ten minutes of flawless, bittersweet perfection:

Country Feedback (live) - R.E.M.
(with Neil Young on second guitar, at Bridge School Benefit 1998, also released as fan club single)

Admittedly I have been on something of an R.E.M. kick lately, but this one just popped up on my iPod on random out of the 11,000. Michael Stipe says at the beginning that (out of all the fine offerings from their 20+ year career), this is his "particular favorite R.E.M. song" -- it's easy here to see why. Gorgeous. I love the opportunity that solitude affords to really *listen* to a song, and I couldn't help but think as this one played (a few times on loop) how a song like this is a perfection example of Stipe's cryptic lyricism; the juxtaposition of the seemingly meaningless alongside the profound.

This flower's scorched
This film is on
On a maddening loop
These clothes,
These clothes don't fit us right and I'm to blame
It's all the same, it's all the same

You come to me with a bone in your hand
You come to me with your hair curled tight
You come to me with positions
You come to me with excuses
Ducked out in a row
You wear me out, you wear me out

We've been through fake-a-breakdown
Self hurt, Plastics, collections
Self help, self pain,
EST, psychics, fuck all

I was central, I had control
I lost my head
I need this, I need this

A paper weight, junk garage
Winter rain, a honey pot
Crazy, all the lovers have been tagged

A hotline, wanted ad
It's crazy what you could've had
It's crazy what you could've had
It's crazy what you could've had
I need this
I need this

Even the times when I don't exactly know what Stipe is saying, I kind of know what he means.

A killer live R.E.M. show from Hollywood, 2003

The induction of R.E.M. into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night got me all sentimental about just how deep my love flows for this band, which I have logged thousands of hours listening to since high school. Yet there are times when I still feel like I have only scratched the surface of their careers, knowing there are dozens of tunes from them that are so deserving of my love, but that I have not yet discovered. What a great predicament.

This is a fantastic soundboard-quality set from the Avalon in Hollywood, 2003. It was a two-disc promo distributed to radio stations, so now you can be as cool (and with ears as happy) as the big dogs. Features Ken Stringfellow (The Posies) and Scott McCaughey (Minus 5) as band additions for this set.

R.E.M. live in Hollywood
The Avalon, Oct 29 2003

Finest Worksong (what a way to start)
These Days (ooh yay! love this album)
The Wake-Up Bomb
So Fast, So Numb ("This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see" -- one of my favorite driving & singing songs)
Exhuming McCarthy
Animal
Sweetness Follows ("live your life filled with joy and wonder"; introduced by Stipe as "a beautiful song from 1991" and it is indeed a masterpiece)
Bad Day
World Leader Pretend
Strange Currencies (a vastly underrated love song)
Losing My Religion (even after hearing this song so many times, don't you just feel happy at those opening notes?)
At My Most Beautiful (another vastly underrated love song; "I read bad poetry into your machine, I save your messages just to hear your voice")
She Just Wants To Be
Walk Unafraid (I loved Up)
Man On The Moon
Life And How To Live It
Welcome To The Occupation
Nightswimming (can't even talk about how flawless this one is)
Final Straw
Permanent Vacation (unreleased)
Imitation Of Life (fantastic last song choice)

The whole show: ZIP IT UP
(zip only re-upped 6/13/07, individual links are expired)

Regarding the induction last night, I got a few play-by-play emails from friends but I missed seeing it. Anxiously awaiting an mp3 of Vedder's duet with R.E.M. on Man On The Moon.

Man On The Moon - R.E.M. with Ed Vedder
Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame induction, March 12, 2007

God bless the Pearl-Jam-crazy Italians! [more mp3s]

ADDENDUM: In his heartfelt induction speech, Vedder said, "How do you explain the dialogue between Michael and the listener -- a dialogue that grew up and we grew up with it? Such wisdom in the feelings in these songs that -- I think they helped us find things that we knew were inside us, and I think they helped us find things that we didn’t know we had inside us. And I can say, there are things that I hold and feel [hand on heart] very deeply about inside here that Michael Stipe put in there himself. What’s really incredible about this is, is that while this is happening … this all happens without ever being able to understand a fucking word he is saying. . ."

Read the full transcription here

New Christmas tune from Mike Mills (R.E.M.) and Sally Ellyson (Hem)

With everyone's top lists popping up all over the place and Hem's album Funnel Cloud on many (and R.E.M. always on mine) I thought this new Christmas single for charity could use a little shout-out:

Mike Mills of R.E.M. and Sally Ellyson from Hem have recorded as new song as a benefit for kids this holiday season. It’s available right now on iTunes for 99 cents, all proceeds benefiting the Red Apple Foundation.

You can hear a sample of the tune on their MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/redapplehelpskids. It is a cover of a Big Star song ("Jesus Christ"), so you know you've got some great power pop right there. Check it out, I think you'll like it.

Happy birthday John Lennon

John Lennon would have been 66 today (had he not been shot by obsessed fan Mark David Chapman in 1980). He was only 40 when he died, and I've sometimes wondered what other wonderful music he had still within him.

I figure the occasion of his entrance into this world (with a bang - he was born during a German aid raid over Liverpool the night of October 9-10, 1940) is a fine reason to post some covers off the Working Class Hero: A Tribute To John Lennon album (1995, Hollywood Records). It's an eclectic little snapshot of the musical environment of the mid-90s, with some spiffy covers & interesting interpretations.

Also speaking of covers, Coverville has a John Lennon covers podcast for free download as well.

Instant Karma! - Toad The Wet Sprocket

Nobody Told Me - The Flaming Lips

I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier - Mad Season
(featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, and Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees)

Power To The People - The Minus 5
(Scott McCaughey with members of R.E.M., The Posies, and Wilco & The Decemberists - in various incarnations)

Also, you may be interested in reading my post on the 25th anniversary of his death last year, which has an active download link to a demo version of my favorite Lennon solo song -- one of the most gorgeous recordings you will ever hear: earnest and yearning and raw and perfect.

Melodic perfection: "You Are The Everything"

I believe that there are a handful of truly flawless, perfect songs in this world. One of those songs which I love front to back and throughout each note and lyrical turn is R.E.M.'s "You Are The Everything" (from Green, 1988).

I love the feelings and senses that this song conjures up. From the lush sounds of crickets that start the song, you can almost feel the Georgia humidity on your skin. Whereas the song 'Nightswimming' conjures up summer from a teenage crush standpoint for me, 'You Are The Everything' is a collection of pure childhood memories, pristine and sad, confused and filled with hope all at once. I know of no other song that preserves so pitch-perfectly what it feels like to be a kid asleep in the backseat of your parents' car, secure with the "peace in absolutes," watching the stars through the windows (or, in my case, stargazing out the sunroof of the VW bus).


You Are The Everything - R.E.M.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t even sing
I’m very scared for this world
I’m very scared for me
Eviscerate your memory

Here’s a scene
You’re in the back seat laying down
The windows wrap around
To sound of the travel and the engine
All you hear is time stand still in travel
and feel such peace in absolutes
The stillness still that doesn’t end
But slowly drifts into sleep
The stars are the greatest thing you’ve ever seen
And they’re there for you
For you alone you are the everything

I think about this world a lot and I cry
And I’ve seen the films and the eyes
But I’m in this kitchen
Everything is beautiful
And she is so beautiful
She is so young and old
I look at her and I see the beauty
Of the light of music
Voices talking somewhere in the house
Late spring and you’re drifting off to sleep
With your teeth in your mouth
You are here with me
You are here with me
You have been here and you are everything

For you alone you are the everything
For you alone you are the everything


This song contains a few of my favorite lyrics ever, including: "I look at her and I see the beauty of the light of music," and "Voices talking somewhere in the house, late spring and you're drifting off to sleep," as well as the whole aforementioned verse about being in the back seat laying down. Sheer loveliness, lyrical perfection.

Over the years I have heard a few covers of this song, mostly tags in concerts, but just yesterday Fuel reader/fellow chronicler John (http://kingseyeland.livejournal.com/) sent me a copy of this song covered by Redbird. Within the first ten seconds I was blown away - this is an excellent cover. Whereas R.E.M.'s is sublimely sweet & dulcet, this is an aching and honest version with a touch more twang, and a female vocalist (Kris Delmhorst) harmonizing earnestly. I like it, a worthy effort.

You Are The Everything - Redbird

I thought I didn't know Redbird, but in researching them I saw that one of the members is Jeffrey Foucault, whom I recently posted about and whose rich voice I love. This was from Redbird's eponymous 2005 album, which is a folk-Americana songwriter's gem full of acoustic originals as well as a few other good covers. Recommended.

Bruuuuce live, and R.E.M. cover Chris Isaak

Hello dear readers. Two quick hits for you today:

1. "The Arms of God, Vol. 2." Zip file mix of Bruce Springsteen, solo acoustic from 1995. Twelve tracks of music and an interview. Thanks to Renee for uploading this gem. Details about the setlist (and even cover art!) here.


2. R.E.M. does a moody cover of Chris Isaak's Wicked Game live. I love Michael Stipe's voice, he can do this one justice.

"Wicked Game" - R.E.M. (live)

I have also heard that Giant Drag does a distorted cover of this song as well, but have had no luck finding it. Anyone out there have it? Annie from the band emailed me back and she doesn't have a live recording, but maybe some uberfan out there?

Be good, kids.