Songs With Which to View the Solar Eclipse

"It's The End of the World
As We Know It" / R.E.M.

Suppose you hadn't read a dozen newspaper articles about the solar eclipse, or heard about it 22 times on TV, or seen endless Facebook and Twitter references. Suppose you'd never studied basic astronomy in school.  If you looked up in the sky one day and saw the sun disappearing behind a black disc, wouldn't you freak out?

On Monday, when that happens, birds and animals and insects -- who haven't read all those articles -- are going to go a little haywire.  Centuries ago, solar eclipses threw people into apocalyptic panic.

Mostly we imagine the apocalypse in terms of fire and fury. But what if it's just a meaningless scrum of off-kilter details? That's how R.E.M. offers up apocalypse in this track from their 1987 LP Document, released as a single nearly 30 years ago in November 1987.

It's anxiety-riddled, with that hectic tempo, the ping-ponging melody, the frenzied stream of consciousness patter. Michael Stipe's vocal lunges at us, almost breathlessly rattling off a weird checklist of disconnected images. It's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing -- and that's the point. It seems to spit out the flotsam and jetsam of our pathetic culture, projecting a hopelessly splintered reality.

Guitarist Peter Buck has said in interviews that this song is in the tradition of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and yes, I can see it in the churning instrumentals, the flurry of internal rhymes. If anything, "The End of the World As We Know It" goes way beyond Dylan's social satire. Right from that first line -- "That's great! It starts with an earthquake" -- it's stuffed with natural disaster and cataclysm. There's a hurricane in there, a combat site, and "the furies breathing down your neck." Planes seem about to crash into buildings, a TV tower bursts into flame, cars blow up, books are burned. In the third verse, I swear I see goose-stepping soliders ("Watch a heel crush, crush"), and in the fourth verse, mountains seem to topple.

By the end of the song, it's like a fun-house full of mirrors, populated by an oddball assortment of cultural icons -- "Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs" -- who share nothing but the same initials. (Michael Stipe claims these people all appeared in a dream he had.) By that point, everything seems ominous and evil, even "Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly beans, boom!"

And what's the ultimate irony? That while humanity is going down in flames, the singer isn't all that concerned -- as the chorus insists, "It's the end of the world as we know it, / And I feel fine." Is it because he feels helpless to stop it? Or because things have already become so rotten, it's not worth saving? 

And yet, there's something curiously buoyant about this song. It's full of pumped-up energy, as if bungee-jumping over the chasm -- and there's something exhilarating about that, isn't there?

Another Shuffle for Holt

Because that playlist just has too many great tunes not to go for another round.

1. "American Tune" / Paul Simon (1973)
"I don't know a soul who's not been battered / I don't have a friend who feels at ease / Don't know a dream that's not been shattered / Or driven to its knees" -- yep, that's life, and Paul Simon's never been afraid of facing that down. My brother the minister got that, too. Best part of this song -- where he dreams that he's dying, and he flies, freed from his mortal bonds, over the Statue of Liberty. The song breaks free of its gentle melodic patterns (stolen from Bach, I feel compelled to note) and soars into another realm of consciousness.

2. "The Weight" / The Band (1968)
Surely I'm not the only one who finds something Christlike about the singer of this song, wandering into town to "take a load off Fanny / And put the load right on me." And after meeting all the characters in town, he takes his wistful fare-thee-well -- "My bag is sinking low and I do believe it's time." Holt had this album, Music From Big Pink, though it took me years to figure out why these guys were worth listening to. They may have been a Canadian band, but they took their cue from Appalachian folk music, and from thence all the great Scots-Irish folk songs, in which the spectre of death is ever-present.

3. "Drive South" / John Hiatt (1988)
I've bragged here about how I knew Johnny Hiatt, growing up in Indianapolis, but my brother knew him better than I did, and was just as astonished as I was when we discovered he'd become not just a rock star but a genuine artist. I took Holt to see JH for his birthday a few years go, and he saw him a few more times after that. So you know there had to be at least one Hiatt tune on the playlist. I love this one for three reasons: 1) It's about driving, and Holt loved driving (Indy, natch); 2) It's a sexy seduction song ("Don't bother to pack your nylons / Just keep those pretty legs showing / It gets hot down where we're going")  and my brother, he loved the ladies; and 3) "drive south" may be a metaphor for going to hell. My brother worked a powerful lot of good in his life, but he was no saint, and who knows how tough the grading system is at the pearly gates?  But if he's headed to hell, then hell's a reasonable option for us all.

4. "The Cape" / Guy Clark (1995)
The first time I heard Guy Clark sing this song, all I could think of was my brother, and how much he loved to dress up in costumes as a kid. And yes, like the hero of this song, even when he was old and grey, people still thought he acted like a kid. But as Guy puts it, "he's one of those who knows / That life is just a leap of faith / Spread your arms and hold your breath / And always trust your cape." Brilliant song that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

5. "Don't Forget Me" / Marshall Crenshaw (1995)
Here's a two-fer: Marshall Crenshaw AND Harry Nilsson, who wrote this tender wry song. I don't know if Holt shared my Nilsson obsession, but I know he loved Nilsson's oddball animated movie The Point when it first came out; in hospice, Holt smiled when I played him my Nilsson playlist. Although this is basically a song to an ex-wife, we can extrapolate the sentiments to any loves from the past. Even the spookily apposite verse three: "And when we're older / Full of cancer / It doesn't matter now / Come on, get happy / Cause nothing lasts forever / But I will always love you." Amen.

6. "Miles From Nowhere" / Cat Stevens (1970)
Tea for the Tillerman was an inescapable album that year, full of folky riffs and mordant black humor. Perfect soundtrack for Harold and Maude, a movie Holt loved for its warped fascination with death. Many songs on this album are about fathers and sons (I watched that battle from a front row seat) and taking journeys. But the line that really resonates here? "Lord my body has been a good friend / I won't need it when I reach the end." And so we told Holt in the hospice -- time to turn in the loaner car, it's reached the end of its usefulness.

7. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
For a Methodist minister, having "Losing My Religion" as your ringtone was a pretty gutsy move, doncha think?

8. "Don't Forget About Me" / John Mellencamp (2010)
Our other homegrown Indiana talent, Johnny Cougar nee Mellencamp always held a special place in our hearts. From his stellar back-to-basics album No Better Than This, another ex-wife song that can, if you squinch your eyes just so, be re-interpreted to apply to an old beloved friend who's moved to another plane of being.  

9. "Over the Rainbow / Wonderful World" / Israel Kamakawiwo Ole (1993)
One song we all agreed had to be played at Holt's memorial. Because, no matter how often it's played, this lilting ukelele rendition of the old standards transforms them into something new and hopeful and uplifting.

10. "Warmth of the Sun" / The Beach Boys (1964)
It was Holt, not me, who owned all our Beach Boys albums. (Note that possessive "our," because I listened to them just as avidly as he did.) In the face of the British Invasion, he never gave up on their American counterparts. In 1966, our family took a cross-country train trip to California that gave us our one taste of golden SoCal surf summer, before the Monkees and the Summer of Love happened. In my mind, this glorious Beach Boys ballad sums it all up -- how we keep the warmth of the sun inside us, to survive grief and loss. Interesting to note that Brian Wilson and Mike Love began to write this song on November 22, 1963, but didn't finish it until the tragic events of that day -- the Kennedy assassination, for those of you too young to have been permanently scarred by this event -- had happened. So the elegiac tone of this song was no accident. Those exquisite chord changes, the vocal counterpoints, and above all Brian's heart-melting falsetto -- they make me weep, make me smile, make my heart swell in my chest. Magic.

Cleaning out my brother's apartment, I found his iPod and put it in the dock to play on shuffle while I folded clothes and emptied drawers. How lovely it was to hear his own curated inventory of music! It was as if he were in the room with me. Expect to hear more from that source....

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Round and round and round she goes, and where she stops --

1. California Girls -- The Beach Boys
From Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) (1965)
I swear, a sea breeze just stirred my hair -- and is that sand between my toes? An instant trip to Southern California. When this first came out, I rankled at the line, "Those Midwest farmer's daughters really make me feel all right," but I longed to become a California girl myself. White Levis, Sun-In in my hair -- I tried everything. And then of course there's the Beatles' parody in the bridge of "Back in the USSR" -- "well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out ..."

2. "Lately I've Let Things Slide" -- Nick Lowe
From The Convincer (2001)
One reason I love the Shuffle: Nick Lowe suddenly appears when I least expect it -- and it hits me all over again why I love him so. "Smoking I once quit, now I've got one lit / I just fell back into it . . ." -- how succinctly he nails this lovelorn loser, sloping around his messy flat, laundry piling up in the corners, a carton of untouched takeaway spoiling on the table. God is in the details, both lyrics and music (those Nashville horns!).

3. "Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)" -- Lostprophets
From Liberation Transmission (2006)
Welsh indie rockers! Mostly this got onto my iPod because it is just so much damn fun to proclaim that staccato chorus at the top of your lungs: "Standing on the rooftops, everybody scream your heaaart out!" One of the rare tracks where a crunchy metallic tangle of guitar is totally necessary.

4. "No More, No Less" -- Collective Soul
From Dosage (1999)
My dear rock chick buddy Sharon loves this band, just loves 'em to death. I hear the hooks, I appreciate the soulful metal quality, but in the end, they just don't light my fire. Too much open passion for me, and not enough irony. Can't help it; I'm an irony junkie.

5. "Sister Madly" -- Crowded House
From Temple of Low Men (1988)
Irony -- like this. That great skippy pop rhythm sets off a tart little character study ("sister madly, stepping on my head!). Wonderful bebop piano solo too. Thank you thank you thank you Inaki for hepping me to this band -- I knew the singles, but there's so much more to discover.

6. "Willie and Laura Mae Jones" -- Dusty Springfield
From Dusty in Memphis (1969)
There's not a bad track on this album, is there? Dusty shows Bobbie Gentry how it's done. It matters not one whit that Dusty never lived in a shotgun shack at the edge of a cotton field; she never slept with the son of a preacher man either.

7. "Nightswimming" -- R.E.M.
From Automatic for the People (1992)
Ah, the mesmeric powers of Michael Stipe. The piano reels off endless arpeggios, strings and clarinet mourn, Stipe scats the same melodic phrase over and over -- and yet somehow I'm back in Indiana, in the dark of a summer night, brooding over boyfriends lost. Who knew R.E.M. had so much sweetness and melancholy in them?

8. "Take Off Your Uniform" -- John Hiatt
From Slug Line (1993)
In which Johnny H. langorously strips a coffee shop waitress and makes sorrowful, sympathetic love to her, in his best soulful yelp. A true man of the people. Why is this guy not bigger than Bruce Springsteen? Oh, I know the answer. . .

9. "One Thing" -- Neil Young
From This Note's For You (1988)
Possibly my favorite Neil Young album, his one brief shining jazz moment (that achingly beautiful guitar line!). Whatever was going on in Neil's life at the time, he proved beyond a doubt that he had intimate knowledge of the blues. "I think we're heading for a heartache / That's my suspicion / I think we're heading for a heartache / That's how I feel." The quaver in Neil's voice never worked better.

10. "Sound and Vision" -- David Bowie
From Low (1977)
Glam meets funk, all gussied up with synths -- yes, the experimental 80s were upon us, with Bowie and Brian Eno leading the way. This album is most memorable to me as the inspiration for Nick Lowe's own e-less EP titled Bowi. But you gotta love this disco-ready musical collage, with Bowie alternately growling and wailing disconnected phrases, like snatches of conversation overhead at a bar. Strung along that brilliant rhythm track, it's a song that begs to be danced to. With drugs.

Best TV Theme Songs

I've got this new Graham Parker album (yes, a new Graham Parker!) in my CD player, and it's quite a trip -- titled Imaginary Television, it's meant to be a collection of theme songs to hypothetical TV programs. Given Parker's snarky humor, you can just imagine how offbeat some of those shows would be if they ever were filmed.

Well, I promise to write about the CD in the next day or two, but I kinda got lost in musing over my favorite television theme songs. No, not the campy jingles from shows like The Addams Family and Mr. Ed, but theme songs that had the feeling of being real songs you might actually want to hear all the verses of, not just the 10-second snippet to open the show.

This is a purely subjective thing, I know -- there's a Pavlovian thing going on, in which it's easier to get excited about the theme song from a show you love. There's perhaps no other way to explain my fondness for The Patty Duke Show theme ("Meet Cathy who's lived most everywhere / From Zanzibar to Berkeley Square / But Patty's only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights / What a crazy pair") or the theme from Bewitched (even though they never sang the words, which ran something like "Bewitched, betwitched, you've got me in your spell). Why else should I prefer the theme from Laverne and Shirley over the American Graffiti-inspired theme for Happy Days?

Everybody loves "Everybody Knows Your Name," a.k.a. the theme from Cheers, and "I'll Be There For You," the inescapable theme song for Friends. But I've got a soft spot in my heart for -- I hate to admit it -- the ultra-suave Three's Company theme song ("Come and knock on my door....") and naturally -- NATURALLY -- the theme songs from The Monkees ("Here we come, walkin' down the street / We get the funniest looks from everyone we meet") and The Partridge Family. After all, if your show's going to be about musicians, having a decent theme song should be a no-brainer. (Advice that the producers of Hannah Montana should have taken.)

Way too often, TV theme songs were just a set-up for the show's premise -- that's the thing that always grates on me about The Brady Bunch and Green Acres and Gilligan's Island songs. Beyond the trivia contest value of being able to sing all the verses, are they really songs you'd ever want to hear? Immediately, though, I can think of a couple exceptions to this rule, the prime one being The Beverly Hillbillies song ("Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed / A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed..."). That one was saved by the pickin' and grinnin' of Flatt and Scruggs, who as I recall even made a guest appearance on one episode. Of all the rash of black sit-coms that came along in the 70s, the best theme song had to be Ja'net DuBois' gospel-drenched "Moving' On Up" from The Jeffersons (and while you're at it, check out this goofy fan video.) And you just can't deny the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's opening rap could charm the pants off anybody, but then -- Will Smith. Need I say more?

But what I'm really talking about are the theme songs written by honest-to-god songwriters -- songs you might sing along to even if you never watched the show. Songs like "Welcome Back" by John Sebastian, which was used as the theme song for Welcome Back Kotter. Or "Best Friend" by Harry Nilsson, the theme song for The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Chico and the Man's theme song, written and sung by Jose Feliciano. "Stand" by R.E.M., which graced a short-lived and truly oddball sit-com starring Chris Elliott, Get A Life. "You're Not the Boss of Me," the They Might Be Giants song that leads off Malcolm in the Middle; or the Bare Naked Ladies' theme for the current show The Big Bang Theory.

Occasionally -- just occasionally -- there'd even be an instrumental theme song so good, you'd have to sing along. Hawaii 5-O -- performed by the Ventures -- is the classic example, but what about the groovy urban vibe of Bob James' theme from Taxi, or the deliciously funky Sanford and Son theme by Quincy Jones? (Incredibly, a song that sounded exactly as scruffy as Redd Foxx looked.) And my sentimental favorite in this category is the theme from The Andy Griffith Show, known in reruns as Andy of Mayberry. The simplicity of that whistling and finger-snapping tells you most of what you need to know about the gestalt of that show. (Here's even a vocal version, with Andy Griffith himself singing lyrics I never knew existed.)

So many hours of my life wasted in front of a television set -- and it was those songs, like a snake-charmer's flute, that drew me in. I'm sure I'm forgetting some other great ones, too. And I'm sure you'll remind me of them!

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 96-100

THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

I'm going to start at the bottom of the list and work my way up, five songs a day. Down here at the end of the list, I'll admit, guilty pleasures rule -- they're on here as much for nostalgia as anything else. But before I hang my head in shame, I ask you, if you're really being honest -- What's on your list?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

96. "Spinning Wheel" / Blood, Sweat & Tears (1969)
In 1969, both Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago hit the airwaves, a jolt of contrast to the reigning vibes of acid rock. Instinctively I knew they weren't my kind of music -- I loved the funky horns and riddling lyrics, but their sound was too big and glossy for me. (I see an arc here leading directly to the Eagles.) But on this second album, their big breakthrough, the musical genius of the recently departed Al Kooper still invigorated BS&T, now sweetened with David Clayton Thomas's juicy vocals, and for a season -- when it was being played everywhere -- I couldn't help succumbing to this song's slouchy beat -- "What goes up must come down / Spinning wheel got to turn round." How did I know that Clayton-Thomas's lyrics were meant as a put-down of psychedelic rock? In short order, BS&T churned out more hits -- we'd already had the ingratiating "You Make Me So Very Happy," to be followed soon by the faux-folk "And When I Die" and an overbaked rendition of "God Bless The Child," both of which horrified me later when I discovered the Laura Nyro and Billie Holiday originals. In the course of one album, the band had already jumped the shark for me. But could I leave "Spinning Wheel" off this list? I could not.

97. "When A Man Loves A Woman" / Percy Sledge (1966) No special stories here, just a vintage soul classic that's too great to be denied a spot on my list.

98. "Losing My Religion" / R.E.M. (1991)
Another band that eventually jumped the shark for me, as their songs became too samey and were grossly overplayed, not just on radio but on MTV as well. And yet, and yet, and yet . . . in the 1980s R.E.M. were the standard-bearers for that endangered species, intelligent rock music, with their oddball blend of hooky Southern rock and cryptic New Wave lyrics, and I can't deny I was seduced. In 1991 I couldn't take my eyes off this video, set in a gauzy side-lit bare room, Peter Buck plucking a winsome mandolin while Stipe sat morosely on a hard-backed chair, pining for love. What a poetic figure he cut, in that white linen shirt, sleeves rolled up, long arms crossed, the fine-boned hands drooping. (Despite all the shots of falling angels and stigmata, we could tell this song had nothing do with actual religion, although of course the Catholic Church protested like crazy.) "That's me in the corner / That's me in the spotlight, I'm / Losing my religion" -- it's like an updated version of "Tears of A Clown," only ten times more neurotic. Obsessive, vacillating, self-conscious, despairing -- here was a love song all us losers could relate to. "Oh no, I've said too much," Stipe agonizes; or, wait, "I haven't said enough." And then Stipe starts to dance, all spastic and geeky -- somehow that endeared him to me even more.

99. "Show Me The Way" / Peter Frampton (1976) My ultimate guilty pleasure.

100. "Different Drum" / Stone Poneys (1967)
Okay, so Linda Ronstadt squeaks onto my list. I'll confess, I was an early Ronstadt fan, snapping up this 1967 hit single from her original band, an L.A.-area folk-rock trio called the Stone Poneys (mid-60s cute misspelling and all). The Stone Poneys weren't long for this world, as the record execs were already pushing her bandmates out the door to highlight the girl singer, with her bold, expressive contralto. Linda was a great popularizer of other people's songs (how I wore out my audiocassette of Linda Ronstadt's Greatest Hits until I discovered the original artists' versions!), and this one's no exception. It was written by Mike Nesmith, who'd become famous a nanosecond later when The Monkees blazed onto television. But when a guy sings about needing his freedom, it's not the same as when a girl says the same thing. "Don't get me wrong, it's not that I knock it, / It's just that I am not in the market / For a boy who wants to love only me" -- that was practically radical feminism in 1967 pop music, and something about it plugged right into my little pre-teen heart. "Yes, and I ain't saying you ain't pretty / All I'm saying is I'm not ready / For any person place or thing / To try and pull the reins in on me." Reins, get it? Stone Poneys? I really thought that was clever. And who knows, maybe the girl-power oomph of this song is what eventually sprung me out of Indianapolis years later. We are the music we've listened to, and when all's told, even "Different Drum" accounts for at least a few sinews and corpuscles.

"Stand" / R.E.M.

Talk about earworms. This song came on the radio today, and I couldn't help singing it -- and singing it and SINGING it, long after it had played out its three minutes on the air. It's not just that it reminds me of 1989, when you couldn't escape this song on radio and MTV. (I'm not sure I want to remember 1989, anyway -- worst year of my life.) It's not even that it was the deliciously idiotic theme song of the ultimate slacker TV show, Get a Life, starring that underrated genius Chris Elliott. Hey, I even love Weird Al's parody version, "Spam" -- which, unlike a lot of Weird Al's devious take-offs, doesn't ruin the original for me at all. With its backbeat groove and upbeat melody, "Stand" is just a fun song. Period.

Now I've gone onto Songfacts (a really nifty site for background on various tracks of music) and discover that Michael Stipe calls this the stupidest song R.E.M. ever did. Intentionally so. He recalls that his guitarist (whom I always refer to as The Divine Peter Buck) came up with such a stupid guitar riff, Stipe decided to write the stupidest lyrics he could come up with, to match the riff.

But you know what? That stupid riff plugs into some vein of pop gold; it may be a cliche, but it works. And those "stupid" lyrics of Stipe's are so opaque (Stipe's trademark) that it's easy to find a message in them. "Stand in the place where you live," he begins, which I can't help reading as "make a moral stand in your hometown." "Now face north," he orders, the three monosyllables marching along sternly. Okay, that's about getting a new point of view, even in a familiar place. "Think about direction / Wonder why you haven't before," he counsels. Well, why don't we think about our directions in life? Are we too caught up in our daily routines?

Stipe goes on to advise the same for the place where you work, only here you're instructed to face west. Then, some tips for wilderness survival in the bridge: "If you are confused check with the sun / Carry a compass to help you along" -- and of course I end up imagining a moral compass, not just a dial with a magnetic arrow. Stating the obvious, he goes on, "Your feet are going to be on the ground / Your head is there to move you around." Simple? Yes. But true, and sometimes in life it helps to be reminded of the glaringly obvious. Keep your feet on the ground, and use your head to think clearly. We all need to be reminded of this from time to time.

Another cool thing about this song is the way that the lines alternate -- the first and third lines stay on the beat, like a kids' marching song, while the second and fourth lines hit the offbeats, styling around like a samba. Just as in life, you have to keep changing your rhythms, tripping over yourself. Not only that, the key shifts upward when the chorus repeats, like a truck changing gears as it roars uphill. It implies effort, growth, progress, modulation -- all part of the process of engaging in your own life.

Okay, I may be stretching this. But the thing is, R.E.M. have that anthemic vibe going for them -- Stipe's braying vocals sound preachy, no matter what he's saying, and their jangly, revved-up sound couldn't seem reflective or wistful even if it wanted to. And when a song sounds like a battle hymn or a protest song, you just naturally expect it to be about something.

Which begs the question -- if Stipe didn't envision a deeper meaning for this song, is it there or not? What matters: the writer's intention or what the listener gets out of it? R.E.M. have also gone on record as saying that the song is about people becoming involved in their communities (the video showed folks recycling and volunteering etc.), which may have been some after-the-fact back-pedaling. But if that's what the audience got out of it, why CAN'T it be the meaning of the song?

Stand sample

“The One I Love” / R.E.M.

"Modern Love" / David Bowie

"Addicted to Love" / Robert Palmer

28 DAYS OF LOVE SONGS

Oy, sorry I'm posting this late -- got distracted by the Oscars. (Yay, Slumdog!) So it's appropriate that today's post, which was supposed to be yesterday's post, is all about videos -- specifically, a trio of 80s vids from the Golden Age of MTV, representing three songs that were absolutely inescapeable in their day -- and virtually impossible for me to get out of my head once they're in.

If MTV hadn't already existed, they'd have had to invent it so that David Bowie could re-charge his career, with perplexing visuals further mystifying his already mystifying songs (kinda like Bertolt Brecht goes disco). When I first heard Modern Love, on his 1983 album Let's Dance, I couldn't believe that he was actually singing "I catch the paper boy / But things don't really change / I'm standing in the wind / But I never wave bye-bye" -- but there is the Thin White Duke himself on screen, gaily waving bye-bye. This video is teasingly non-literal -- instead of acting out the song (too boring), it's a (staged) stage performance, shot in super-saturated colors. I keep trying to extract his "message" about the travails of modern love, from that plummy spoken word opening ("I know when to go out / I know when to stay in / Get things done") through the slightly anguished yelping of the verses ("There's no sign of life / There's just the power to charm"). Then I give up; whatever modern love is, it's too discombobulated to pin down. The second half of the song collapses into a call-and-response villanelle, Bowie free-associating against his back-up singers, "modern love" morphs into "church on time" into "god and man," going from Dionne Warwick to My Fair Lady to Milton to Sartre and back again. (My favorite line: "Church on time / Makes me par-ty"). The real purpose of this piece? To watch David Bowie jiving around in his beautifully cut suit, darting mascared glances, his cheekbones as divine as ever.

Then in 1985 Robert Palmer out-Bowied Bowie with this iconic video for Addicted To Love. Funny to think that now sex addiction is an acknowledged psychological condition (hello, David Duchovny!); when this came out in 1985 it just seemed like a joke. “Your lights are on, but you’re not home / Your mind is not your own / Your heart sweats, your body shakes / Another kiss is what it takes” – and there’s Robert Palmer in a suit and slick long hair, surrounded by a phalanx of the sexiest possible French models, with glossy scarlet lips and lithe hips, jiggling seductively behind their electric guitars. At first you think he’s singing about his own addiction, but no, he’s singing about how he’ll get this woman hooked on him – “Your heart beats in double time / Another kiss and you’ll be mine.” It’s all about the groove, of course, that prowling syncopation and the harsh, relentless electronic pulse of this song. “Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah / It’s closer to the truth to say you cant get enough, / You know you’re gonna have to face it, / You’re addicted to love.” It’s a pitiless piece of magic.

As far as MTV went, it was all downhill from there -- directors started using music videos as career springboard and songwriters paid more attention to their storyboards than on making a tight radio-ready track. R.E.M. may have started out as a Southern jam band, but then Michael Stipe got delusions of being a Serious Artist and Social Critic -- witness the surreal montage of this bloated rock anthem (cue up The One I Love, from 1987's album Document). How Stipe wrings so much passion from such weird, off-kilter material, I don’t know. If you just listen to it, it seems a haunting middle-of-the-night highway driving song, with that opening line – “This one goes out to the one I love”--evoking every disembodied song dedication you’ve ever heard on late-night radio. That minor-key melody is so melancholy, I’m aching already for these separated lovers, as he repeats, “This one goes out to the one I’ve left behind.” But when you get past the apocalyptic grandeur of those guitar riffs, what’s the scenario here? A musician on the road? A trucker? A college student on a road trip? A soldier’s lament (that would explain the chorus, where Stipe bellows “Fire” over and over, though for ages I was convinced he was singing the name “Diane”). One thing for sure; this doesn’t work as a love song – except that it does. If you’ve ever been separated from someone you’re involved with, Stipe's tortured wail captures exactly what it feels like. Who cares what the lyrics say, when you can confound your audience with an arty video?

"Fall On Me" / R.E.M.

Mea culpa: I missed posting yesterday because I was juiced all day about going to the Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. What a brilliant line-up: Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Philip Glass, Sigur Ros, Debbie Harry, Ray Davies, Michael Stipe, and Patti Smith (not to mention a glorious contingent of orange-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks). I adored Ray's a cappella version of the Kinks song "Days", and Lou Reed's extended version of his "Ecstasy" was electric. But one of the highlights of the evening was hearing Patti Smith duet with Michael Stipe on the R.E.M. hit "Everybody Hurts." Sitting in my seat, wrapped in the song, I felt seized with nostalgia, wondering why Michael Stipe had fallen so far out of my musical world.

Well, there are many answers. R.E.M. got so much airplay in the early 1990s that I gradually lost interest in them, especially as Michael Stipe became too ubiquitous a figure on the do-gooder circuit (I call this the Sting Effect). There's always a fine line, too, between a band that has a distinct recognizeable sound and a band whose songs all sound alike, and R.E.M. often teetered perilously on that line. It's an engaging blend -- folkie wistfulness married to a bashing garage-band beat -- but they could've borrowed more of a sense of humor from the punk movement; R.E.M. had a fatal tendency to build every song up to grandiose anthem level (I call this the Springsteen Effect).

And yet, during the long musical dry spell of the late 1980s and early 1990s -- years when I retreated into my old albums because very little contemporary music interested me -- R.E.M. was one of the few new bands that seemed to matter. I fell for the swelling majesty of those songs, their pensive minor-key poetry, those riddling lyrics -- and, of course, the slightly nasal earnest passion of Michael Stipe's vocals. Just think of the haunting loneliness throbbing through "The One I Love," or the punch-drunk alienation of "Losing My Religion," or the dazed jerky reflexes of "Stand." Yeah, maybe it was rock music for depressives (until Nirvana came along and made R.E.M. sound upbeat in contrast), but all that emotional sincerity was refreshing after the nihilism of punk.

This track from Life's Rich Pageant (1986) never got overplayed on the radio; in fact it never got near the attention it deserved. On this album, Stipe finally began pronouncing his words clearly, which made me realize at last that these lyrics were supposed to be baffling. "There’s a problem," he starts out, intriguingly, sucking me into the string of images that follow, in a hypnotic circling melody: "Feathers iron / Bargain buildings, weights and pulleys / Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air." Hunh? I'm not sure why I picture Galileo here, dropping the feather and the weight off the Tower of Pisa, but apparently I'm meant to because the next verse mentions "progress" and "conscience" and "building towered foresight."

But I also think of Chicken Little on the refrain, "Buy the sky and sell the sky / And tell the sky and tell the sky / Don’t fall on me" (notice how each substituted verb signals a moody key shift). By the time Stipe's voice soars into "Don't fall on me," it's almost a relief. It took me ages to sort out what the background vocals were chanting, their own Chicken-Little-ish squawks of "(What is it up in the air for) (It’s gonna fall)" and "(It’s over it’s over me) (It’s gonna fall)."

Apocalyptic tremors run throughout this song, no question about it, with the echoing vocals and jangly guitar and sledgehammer drumbeat, but those elliptical lyrics leave me groping in the dark -- without an action plan, without a road map, without any sort of fallout shelter. Hmmm. Just like life.

The one factor that balances the equation is Michael Stipe's singing, a beacon of human passion shining through the tangled melody, the dense arrangement, the cryptic lyrics. There are moments in this song (and in most R.E.M. songs) where his clear boyish tenor scales a melodic line and simply seems to burst into fireworks. He lays it all on the line, vocally speaking. I call this the Van Morrison Effect -- and it gets me every time.

Last night at Tibet House I saw Michael Stipe tear into "Everybody Hurts" with that same gut-wrenching passion, and I realize I missed it. I went home and dug out my old R.E.M albums, and it was like a high school reunion. I may not want to spend the rest of my life listening to R.E.M., but every once in a while it's great to get that old feeling back again.

Sample: http://www.mp3.com/r.e.m./artists/95663/songs.html?tag=tabs;songs&om_act=convert&om_clk=arttabs