Skip to main content

R.E.M. - Begin the Begin

Let's start 2018 with a bang.

R.E.M.'s Begin the Begin, a musical manifesto for personal activism, is a great place to start this year sonically. This was the lead song from 1986's Life's Rich Pageant and the first time that listeners could really discern Michael Stipe's lyrics. His eccentric mumble emerged from its abstract cocoon and transformed into something more pronounced, confident and explosive. Along with Stipe's strengthened howl, the band's music took on a more muscular tone. Bill Berry's drums rocked harder and Peter Buck cranked up the distortion.


The album was the first time that R.E.M. addressed political and environmental issues lyrically (Fall On Me, Flowers of Guatemala, Cuyahoga). Begin the Begin doesn't try to plant the seeds for a bloody revolution or take sides politically. Even Stipe recognizes his own inability to articulate solutions:

"Answer me a question, i can't itemize
I can't think clearly, look to me for reason
It's not there, i can't even rhyme, begin the begin"

Instead, Stipe warns of the danger of blindly following leaders and encourages us, as individuals, to recognize the power we have to make change.

"Silence means security, silence means approval
On Zenith on the TV
Tiger run around the tree
Follow the leader, run and turn into butter"

"Let's begin again like Martin Luther's zen
The mythology begins the begin...
Example, the finest example is you"

Maybe 2018 will be the year when many of us emerge from our cocoons and realize the power we have to create positive change in our communities, even as the world around us teeters on the brink of destruction. It's never too late to begin the begin.




Comments

Post a Comment

Trending Tracks

The Brains - Money Changes Everything

It's become undeniably evident that the president of the United States had a sexual fling with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. Right before the 2016 election, his lawyer paid Stormy Daniels off with $130,000. POTUS denies the whole thing. I'm so sick of money and the terrible things that it enables. It's pretty obvious no one in the GOP or Trump's base is going to bat an eye at this little hush money cover up. What it reveals about the soul of America is no surprise, but still troubling. Yeah, money changes everything. Even the core values of religious zealots and fiscally conservative nut jobs. But, we should have known that. The Brains called it back in '80. "You think you know what we're doing. We don't pull the strings. It's all in the past now. Money changes everything." The Brains were a hard rocking quartet from Atlanta, Georgia. For their 1980 debut, Steve Lillywhite stepped in to the production role, added a littl...
Post a Comment
Read more

U.K. - In The Dead of Night

In the late 70s, as punk and post-punk bands spiraled towards their new wave destinies, prog dinosaurs stood paralyzed in the shadows. Bands like the Sex Pistols were meteors, igniting a global firestorm that would trigger prog's extinction. The British music press (Melody Maker, Sounds, NME, etc.), once proponents of prog darlings Genesis, Yes and ELP, now bashed any band releasing songs in odd time signatures and singing about aliens and whales. The punk revolution had turned the U.K. music industry and press on its head within a year (1976-1977). For me, this is one of the most interesting times in pop music. Although prog groups saw their audiences rapidly dwindle (Yes audiences had dropped from 20,000 to 3,000 by 1980's Drama tour), many record labels had built fortunes on the works of prog artists and were willing to foot the bill for some interesting transitional experiments. Yes' Drama , ELPs' Works , Genesis' . ..And Then There Were Three... were p...
Post a Comment
Read more