We Call This Friday Good

Murmur by R.E.M. is older to my high school son than the Beatles were when I was his age.  Released in 1983 it doesn’t sound the least bit dated to me.  Perhaps that is what I responded to as a 17 year old in the midst of rapid change.  Murmur was not like anything I had ever heard.  Stipe claims in the opening song (Radio Free Europe), “this isn’t country at all”.  It wasn’t “like” anything at all.  It wasn’t like the outlaw country that my dad listened to.  It wasn’t like the jazz and midwest rock that my mom listened to.  It certainly wasn’t like anything else I was listening to.  As diverse as my tastes were even at the age of 17, everything else I listened to (with the exception of The Beatles and New Order) was defined music.  It had borders, it had clear direction, it had intention and agenda.  This sound coming out of the speakers of my ’76 Nova was not rock, blues, folk, techno, jazz.  Lyrically it was not about love, politics, change, anger or passion even though it hinted at all of them.  No, this was my first encounter with music of my generation that was concerned with truth and that recognized that truth was somehow transcendent.

And, as central and influential as R.E.M. has been, I don’t think it sounds like anything I listen to today.  Which is why both my kids always ask me, “who is this?” everytime I play it.  It is not haunted like Reckoning but there is still a solemnity present.  And it is a debut album.  How did 20-somethings from Athens, Georgia create a work of art this powerful, this resonant, this transcendent?  I cannot answer, analyze, or even pursue that question.  To do so would be foolish.  Art that lasts is always surrounded by mystery.  That is why it lasts.  For me, mystery is the handmaiden of the Divine.  It exists by grace to give us a glimpse into the eternal.

When R.E.M. spoke to me in 1985, “Not everyone can carry the weight of the world” I knew it to be true.  An alcoholic father, a mother with brain cancer, Ronald Regan, the Soviet Union, nuclear war.  These were my burdens.  My theology teachers had all told me that Christ would lighten my burdens.  I understood the idea yet it remained elusive.  But those lines from Murmur  touched my heart and allowed me to release my trouble.  To acknowledge that I was allowed to feel powerless and afraid.  “Talk about the Passion”  I realized was speaking to me about the passion of Christ.  “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?”  I am not suggesting that R.E.M constructed a Christian allegory.  That would simplify and reduce the mystery.  I am suggesting that to my 17 year old heart and mind the central mystery of Christianity became real to me through this song by R.E.M.  Today I still struggle with the notion that, “Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.”  Today I still struggle with the central mystery of Christianity.  Today I know that the young people I teach struggle with the weight of the world.  Today I remind them and myself that as present and important as this world is, we must walk humbly “West of the Fields” in to the arms of mystery.

In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

–TS Eliot East Coker

Please have a listen to the following songs I captured from vinyl:

Radio Free Europe

Talk About the Passion

West of the Fields

For information on the files above go to last week’s post.

For more on music, mystery, and the old, weird America I mentioned last week, check out the amazing Old Weird America.

Listening to ghosts

I’ve been hearing ghosts all week.  From my speakers and my head phones has emerged the sound of an older, weirder America. The America hinted at by Bob Dylan and the Band’s Basement Tapes.  I was walking my dog this afternoon listening to Reckoning and watching a turbid, swollen Willamette River flow silently north and the following line came through in the opening song Harborcoat:

They shifted the statues for harboring ghosts

Reddened their necks, collared their clothes

When we ditched the books with the middles cut out

She gathered the corners and called it her gown

Who are they?  Who are we? Who is she?  Why are they moving statues?  Why are we ditching books?  Why don’t the books have middles?  Clearly there are no answers to these questions and instead only suggestions and impressions.  This stands in contrast to the bright, clear, lively sounds created by the band.  And here is where the ghosts find access.  That contrast speaks of absence.  There is an absence in all our lives.  For some of us it is a haunting.

From the album’s opening lines They crowded up to Lenin with their noses worn off to the final, Jefferson I think we’re lost, we hear ghosts speaking of loss, lies, beauty, regret, hope.  And then a short, strange coda at the end of the album where Stipe sounds like a medium at a seance.  These are mournful songs in a hopeful key.

“I know it might sound strange but I believe you’re coming back before too long”

Harborcoat

(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville

The two tracks above were taken from an original IRS 1984 vinyl pressing of Reckoning.  I captured the entire album from my turntable using Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro and saved it as one large Aiff file.   I softened the snap, crackle and pop using a  software program called Cd Spin Doctor, and then imported it into Ambrosia’s Wiretap Studio where I separated the songs in to individual tracks and eliminated the pause at the beginning and end of each track.  They were encoded with Itunes at 192 kbps.

Important Albums

A good place to start would be the past when music mattered to me more than anything else.  I still love music but as I’ve grown older that love has become saturated with too much choice.  There are still moments when a song, an artist, or an album rings true and speaks to me.  It is still a passion of mine.  However, I no longer spend hours of repeated listens to a single work.  Holding an lp cover and staring at the images as the mystery of each song unfolds is a familiar but distant sensation.  I would like to explore from time to time those albums that have held that sense of mystery and wonder.  Albums that have shaped and defined me.  Albums that changed me or that are intimately linked to powerful moments and periods of my life.

The first three albums I will visit are all by REM.

Chronic Town, Murmur & Reckoning are forever a single album in my mind. Until I was 25, the only copy of any of these albums I had was on a single 90 min. TDK that a friend gave me the summer before my senior year of high school.  Until I was 25, Murmur ended with a 40 second version of We Walk.  I didn’t know the titles of any of the songs and I didn’t know who these guys were I just knew that music didn’t get better.  I can remember vividly riding my brand new Peugeot 10 speed around the hills surrounding Silver Falls State Park listening to this on my Toshiba walkman and knowing that there was an enormous world out there waiting for me.  I can remember being terrified and thrilled that life was about to begin.

Over the past few years I have been converting old vinyl of mine.  I hope to focus on these three albums over the next few weeks and I may have more to say and maybe some sounds to share.  We will see.