In 1986 I was a senior in high school. Late in the first semester my good friend's sister died in an accident. He turned inward after that, dealing with loss privately. But one thing he opened up with as part of the grieving process was music. He gave me a mix tape (remember those!) with an odd collection of indie stuff. One of the more mainstream songs in his somewhat hang-dog playlist was from this up can coming foursome from Athens, GA. They were no novices, having just released their fourth studio album, but they were fairly new to me at the time.
In you grew up in the Bay Area you listened to Live 105. I recall a couple older REM tunes from those days, "Radio Free Europe" for one. But the song on this friend's tape grabbed me and started me on a long journey. Fittingly, it was called "Begin the Begin".
That quick opening riff, built on a simple scale in D suddenly and jarringly lands a half step below where it should, on a C#. From there we're off and running, building a progression on the "wrong" chord. Michael Stipe seems to agree that something's not quite right: "I can't even ryhme". But we were good with that, right? We were 17. People we knew were actually dying. Music could really mean something. We didn't want tidy pop songs with cute rhymes. We wanted something different, something to reform and enlighten - like Martin Luther zen...
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I grounded my naive and optimistic adolescence in The Flowers of Guatemala and a pistol hot cup of rhyme. I knew where I belonged, and I liked it.
But it never lasts, does it? The early 90's were years of Seinfeldian cynicism and Yo, turn it to that station. (One could say I Lost my religion.)
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