Re: Guerrilla Criticism

>Under the title, NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, a like-minded dj had scrawled:
>
>"...But an awful lot like it in terms of presumed brilliance."

When I was in college, someone at the radio station scrawled on the back of R.E.M.'s second album:

"The only band that mutters"

I haven't listened to a whole R.E.M. album since the 80's? Have I really missed out on anything?

Buck hired studio musicians and an auxiliary for the live shows.
Stipe stopped muttering poetry and started whining.
Berry stroked and bowed.
Mills went Nudie and then aloof.
The sound went mainstream.

Feel better now?

---

I wish my college station was as cool as these. I only remember "Born to Run" scrawled with 'Best Single of All Time'. I did get to playlist Roxy Music's soft-porn scrawled LPs though.



Post Edited (02-15-07 11:06)

No, I don't feel better. I still heard their lame singles on the radio before changing the dial.

I remember many of the records in the college radio station I hung out in had many remarks, both positive & negative, on the records. There was even one record that had a running dialogue between two of the DJs on its cover.

> I wish my college station was as cool as these.

Well, if it makes you feel any better, the biggest clique at the station were a bunch of house-obsessed dingbats who thoguht Mission of Burma were preppie because their first single had the word "Academy" in it.

That said, the program director was a great guy, without whom I'd have never seen the first incarnation of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic open for Skeleton Crew at a neighboring school. (Does anyone remember an 80s Chicago art-noise band called "Ono"? They were the opener).

Mission of Burma aren't preppy? Damn.

More preppy: Mission of Burman, Pavement, the Connells, or (ahem) Guster? I'll take Pavement, for ushering the rumpled blue oxford shirt and khakis into indie rawk.

erikalbany wrote:

> Mission of Burma aren't preppy? Damn.

Were they? I guess I've been living a lie.

Still, I was in prep school in the early 80s. My recollection is that any music that was even slightly unconventional -- The B-52's, Devo, Talking Heads pre-Stop-Making-Sense -- was considered fit only for ridicule (along with anyone lame enough to actually admit listening to such music). The really adventurous music fans listened to Emerson Lake & Palmer as well as Triumph and Rush. Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see how Burma's music could be considered representative of that worldview.

I'll never forget one year when we had City Thrills play a "punk rock dance", which was an opportunity for the jocks to give themselves pseudo-mohawks (i.e., using clippers to make hair on the sides of their heads short, instead of bald). The typical reaction was one clown who kept shouting "Play a Doors song, you losers!" until Johnny Angel got himself yelled at by a gym teacher for replying "Why don't you go fuck a corpse?" into the mic.

Galaxie 500 were the preppiest. HARVARD, forcryinoutloud.

Thurston Moore is the Posterboy for Alt-Prep.

"Buck hired studio musicians and an auxiliary for the live shows."

Yes, but the "auxiliary" is Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows, unless that's changed in the last few years. Not that it makes R.E.M. any less snooze-worthy (never a huge fan, I stopped caring when about half of Green annoyed me).

At a local Fellows show, during which McCaughey got good and sauced (and kept ramming himself into a wall -- during the show), he taunted his bandmates about the really nice guitar he got for free, "because I play in a big rock band!"

jglauner wrote:

> "Buck hired studio musicians and an auxiliary for the live
> shows."
>
> Yes, but the "auxiliary" is Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh
> Fellows, unless that's changed in the last few years. Not that
> it makes R.E.M. any less snooze-worthy (never a huge fan, I
> stopped caring when about half of Green annoyed me).

I saw them in 86 -- back when they were still good -- and I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the auxiliary was from the DBs (Holsapple?).

What was annoying was not that they had hired an additional musician, but the way Buck would only bring him onstage for certain songs. It all seemed very precious, as if certain songs would be ruined by a second guitar, but other songs had been arranged so perfectly in the studio that they were unperformable without the second guitar.

scratchie, I think you're right about Holsapple. McCaughey didn't start touring with R.E.M. until 1994.

At my college station the program director didn't comment much, just circled recommended songs. Except for one of the last post-Stan Wall of Voodoo albums, on which he wrote, "This band should seriously consider retiring."

The station was Hollywood punk out-of-control crazy. One dj yelled on air fuck the station, fuck the university, turned off the signal, and locked the studio door.

The station decided to change formats.

Kids at that age tend to latch onto one band as representation of their public selves (at least for a few months, which are years at that age). Which kid were you? I was a DEVO kid for a whole year.

The first rock concert I ever went to was DEVO back in '79 at the Orpheum in Boston. They were promoting their second album. They had no opening act, just something called "videos" of some of their songs. That was also the same time I first purchased a certain music magazine that was named after a certain Bonzo Dog Band song, the name of which escapes me.

Robert Quine: lawyer, guitarist.