19.1.22 Decide yourself if radio's going to stay

 Note to self: yesterday was about a single, it played at 45rpm, change the speed.

Full on John Peel "this one plays at 33" moment there. Which didn't benefit Michael Stipe in any way at all.

"We're REM, from Athens Georgia. This one's new."

They were all new, we knew nothing about them other than the whispers that were coming out in the music papers.

(Aside: J's on a video call in the living room, Daisy's in with me; she's currently hiding either under the banjo on its stand or behind the Rickenbacker in its case. Both are worrying me. i am, quite ironically, having kittens here. See what I did there? Dad jokes all over the place.)

REM were one of the groups that made me want to own a Rickenbacker. These and The Church more than The Jam or The Beatles strangely enough. 

Back to the point. The radio wasn't playing REM in 83. Not that I recall.

(Another aside, I'm writing this while watching/listening to PMQs - we've just had a Tory defect to Labour, which feels pretty massive - lovely timing. Though I'm always inclined to ask why anyone would actually be a Tory at any point and why anyone with the interests of Bury in their mind and in their role could possibly believe that the Conservative party would have any interest in anything that didn't bring profit to their paymasters is beyond me. Genuine question, can anyone point me at any moment in modern history that a right wing government has achieved *anything* positive for the world in general? Anything?

Starmer's about to list the litany of untruths that Johnson's pulled out about his parties, might take a while. Oh, look, Johnson is pulling his 'we'll have to wait for the outcome of Sue Gray's inquiry line' then playing to his gallery of cronies rather than answer a straight question in the manner that EVERY. SINGLE. SCHOOL. BULLY. IN. HISTORY. has. That's all he is. A slightly thick school bully who went to an expensive school and was never actually told that he wasn't much use to anyone so has spent his entire life getting away with anything he can and pretending that a floppy fringe is a comedy item. The fact he's clearly balding must be really upsetting to him.

I don't have any faith in Starmer but he's the leader we have so I support the party as I always have. And his current ridicule of Johnson appears to be the best way to get to the sad scruffy clown; it's the thing he can't handle - being laughed at by others with no defence.)

Anyway. REM. Again, this is the way I remember it. The album wasn't out in the UK yet, the performance at the top made me go out and get it. Bought it on import in Penny Lane records (top of Church Street, up a flight of stairs, small doorway, new releases in a slim window at ground level). 

(Ian Blackford's skewering Johnson now, Johnson's bobbing his head up and down like a nodding dog, the contempt this oaf has for the rest of the country is appalling. The people of Liverpool told this country what Johnson was years ago, told the country what the Tories were decades ago, perhaps they should listen to us, we tend to be right about these things.)

Anyway REM. The album came out in April 83, the Tube performance was November. So I'm wrong somewhere aren't I?

I remember seeing The Icicle Works play live and cover Radio Free Europe as an encore. No idea when that was now. I know me and our Keith were the only people around us singing along with it. That's a vital part of then love of music - elitism. The idea that you're ahead of others, that you know more than those around you, that you're ahead of the curve when t comes to taste.

That last sentence probably explains a huge amount about me.

(Johnson's now trying to claim the govt's approach to PPE as a triumph despite the very obvious fact that we all know nurses were having to wear bib bags as PPE wasn't available. A liar. Scum. Simple asa that. Remove him from office. Now.)

(The cat's in the bin under J's desk. How am I supposed to work under these conditions?)

I say that me and Keith 'sang along'. The description is flexible; one of us (me) can't sing a note and Stipe's words and the English language weren't always perfectly aligned. This isn't the REM that filled arenas with Man On The Moon, Everybody Hurts etc. This is a smaller, more fragile, more precious things. This is a secret moment, words that don't necessarily 'mean' anything to the listener bit possibly everything to the singer. This isn't a band with a career plan, this is a band making the music they need to make because it's in their hearts. There isn't a tour coming, though they will - saw them three times before they got to the Green tour. Saw them on the Green tour. The Royal Court again. Tired, not as they'd been before, the last days of a major tour. I didn't see them in arenas, in stadiums; as much as I loved them that version wasn't 'my' REM.

So this album, this album's about a new sound that you know harks back to older sounds but is fresh, startling, clearly something comfortable to you but also something you didn't know you needed. The first time you heard it though? That was when you knew you'd needed it more than you thought. Talk About The Passion with its bridge of 'Combine du temps' which we understand but will never understand if you know what I mean; Pilgrimage, Laughing, Sitting Still, Perfect Circle. The sound is bare, sparse, clean, magical.

This is the sound of being 19/20 and new music being the most important thing there ever was.