REM
Music
I see where REM broke up. To tell you the truth, I had no idea they were still together. I have a soft spot in my heart for them. They were the first so-called “alternative” band that got my attention back in the early ’80s. Based on songs such as “Driver 8,” and “Radio Free Europe,” I found college radio stations playing great stuff like the Pixies, The Replacements, The Smiths, and many others. Then I moved to the Washington D.C. area and found the wonderful WHFS playing all the great stuff (what ever happed to Weasel?). So, hats off to REM. Here’s a song:
Last Updated on September 23, 2011 by Ron
I must say I was never a fan of R.E.M. After seeing the “Losing My Religion” video that pretty much killed it for me. I could never take Michael Stipe seriously. He flails about like he’s about to dive head first into an epileptic seizure. After that it seemed to me that he was trying way to hard to be way to different and cool. DAMN you MTV!!! So Dad, tell me what AM radio was like??? Also, way am I the only one that replies to your posts? Don’t you have any friends?…….(sigh) me nether….
MTV – bah! MTV ruined dozens of songs for me. Some videos were so terrible that even though I liked the songs, I couldn’t listen to them anymore due to the hideous mental images they evoked due to MTV. Happily, I never saw an REM video.
AM radio – the good: wide demographics. You would hear everything on a station – top 40, R&B, country – anything. I remember the Beatles getting knocked out of #1 by Louis Armstrong. I heard lots of R&B on the Detroit AM stations. I heard & even bought a few country singles. No stations today do that. Everything is very segmented. DC 101 plays music designed to lure single males 18-25. That’s all they want.
The Bad: obvious shilling of songs due to payola. “Wow! Those Monkees are so much better than the Beatles! Let’s hear that one again!” Horrible sound. AM is not “Hi-Fi.” Even on a good system it sounds pretty bad. It’s full of static. Plus it drops out when you drive under a bridge, which always occurs at the worst possible time. That’s why there’s no music on AM anymore, it’s just sports talk, right-wing knuckledragging fascists, and the Jesus.
Yes, you are the only one. I don’t know where your brothers, sister, or mother are. I invited them.
No friends. I live in a cave…alone…the lone wolf. So lonely… I gotta go.