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

Sweet - Love Is Like Oxygen

I've always loved glam rock -- Bowie , The New York Dolls , Mott The Hoople ,  Queen , T. Rex . The flamboyant and gender-bending style. The attitude, sparkly and swagger. The first time I heard Sweet was Fox On The Run . It was my favorite song on the Dazed and Confused Soundtrack. I think it was the swirling, bubbling synthesizer that drew me in. At the time I had no idea that Sweet was a part of the 1970s glam world. Later, I found out that they sang Ballroom Blitz . That's the same band? Then, in college, I bought Action and fell in love with tunes like Lady Starlight and the title track . As I pieced together their discography (in a pre-Internet age), I noticed that the band's sound inexplicably wavered between hard rock, glam and bubble-gum pop. I could never put my finger on what Sweet was all about. I just loved a lot of their songs. This week, I picked up a copy of their 1977 album, Level Headed . The album is anything but steady (as the title would have yo...
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