REM are "calling it a day," according to their website. After three decades, they are breaking up. The Athens, GA band, made up of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, was formed in 1980, but really hit it big in the 1990s with the albums Out of Time (1991), and Automatic for the People (1992).
A few years ago, while trying to expand my rock band knowledge, I picked up a copy of Out of Time. Mostly for Shiny Happy People, a song the band eventually hated, but I loved. I've also always really enjoyed It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) 1987, which is interesting to me because of it's James Joyce-esque stream of consciousness style and the interesting back-story of Michael Stipe's reason for the list of people in the lyrics with the initials of L. B. (He had a dream where he was at a party surrounded by people with all the same initials.) The comic Pearls Before Swine did a strip with Pig and Rat dancing around with beer hats on, singing gibberish until they both scream in unison "LEONARD BERNSTEIN!" (Homer Simpson does a great parody of this song too, and now I can't hear it without simultaneously singing Homer's version.)
Anyway, Shiny Happy People, reportedly, is a commentary on some loosely translated piece of Chinese propaganda with regards to the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989. "Shiny happy people holding hands" is the oft-repeated refrain at the end of the song. Making an appearance as a guest vocalist is Kate Pierson of The B-52's (another band from Athens, GA). Supposedly, Stipe's aim was to be ironic, but it wound up being just a happy, bouncy song. It was later parodied by Sesame Street as Furry Happy Monsters. The meter change by the mandolin in the beginning and the middle of the song was a way of making a bridge section. Peter Buck is the mandolin player, and he also plays it on Losing My Religion, of the same album.
No comments:
Post a Comment