Anti-Climacus

For biographical reasons, I am incapable of being objective about R.E.M. They were my introduction to serious, non-top 40, adult music. For about two years--the summer before 6th grade, when I discovered Out of Time, to spring break of 8th grade, when I bought Patti Smith's Horses at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (for five dollars!)--R.E.M. was virtually all I listened to. Their songs remain aesthetic high points and their albums, up until 1995 or so, all classics.

And as it happens, I could not have stumbled across a band more appropriate for who I would become. They were people who read, who talked in interviews about books that had influenced them, possessed some awareness of symbolism and the role it plays in lyrics (my introduction to the basic meaning of most metaphors in western literature came first from Peter Buck), and were knowledgeable spokespeople for the history of punk and alternative music. Some of those suggestions proved more fruitful than others, but they were both artistic and intellectually engaged, but in a way that suggested the possibility of emulation, not just adoration from afar. (Patti Smith is also quite wonderful in this way)

"Kahoutek" is from Fables of the Reconstruction*, R.E.M.'s third full length album, and also the third I bought.** I did not especially care for it at first--it had a bunch of weird, minor key songs about strange-sounding people. It is, by reputation, both the band's most clearly southern album. It is also their least favorite: recorded during a miserable few weeks in London,*** the band is known to generally dislike the album, and no song more than this one. Naturally, it's my favorite.

The downside of having heard this song and album so many times, and having it so deeply ingrained in my musical sense, is that I have a very hard time explaining what I like about it. I can tell you what's ridiculous about it with ease: the lyrics are, for the most part, pure nonsense. No, really:

She wore bangles, she wore bells
on her toes and she jumped like a fish
like a flying friend

It always sounds to me like one of those songs the band has been playing for some time before the recording begins; it manages small deft moments of feedback and Michael Stipe singing to sound like feedback; it has one of those bridges which were the signature of early R.E.M. songs; and though it is about loss and emotional chaos and vulnerability, the song ends on a restrained note. In the end, it's just a song, though a nice one, with another nice song following it: not the grandest of tasks or ambitions, but a solid one, readily met.


*Or Reconstruction of the Fables, or, as the LP sleeve has it, Fables in the middle with Reconstruction of the and of the Reconstruction on each side. But there you have it: a band designed to be the subject of late-night arguments about what things are supposed to mean. What's not to love?

**On cassette, from a record store. And not even a good record store: the Sam Goody in our local mall. I am of the last generation to have bought music this way, and like everyone else for whom that is true, I blame the internet for destroying good music.

***By Joe Boyd, better known for producing Nick Drake and Fairport Convention.