iJamming.net

Every time I visit Athens, Georgia, I lament that it’s been too long since my last visit. There is something incredibly special about the place, something that extends beyond its fame as R.E.M.’s home town and permeates seemingly the entire populace. It’s a notion of civility, friendliness and hospitality, and even though these are attributes all supposedly applicable to the American South in general, they’re that much more sincere in Athens, that much more heartfelt, that much more egalitarian in their nature, and therefore that much more appreciated.

I was in Athens for barely 36 hours for the occasion of R.E.M. In Perspective: An Athens History hosted by the Athens Historical Society, a symposium of sorts that took place Sunday October 21 at the town’s Seney-Stovall Chapel. I had readily accepted the all-expenses paid invitation to be part of a panel – who wouldn’t? In fact, I was so grateful that I also accepted the invitation to be keynote speaker without thinking of the implications, namely that I would be getting up in a front of a room full of Athens natives and residents and musicians and politicians and somehow trying to tell them something they didn’t already know.

I don’t normally fret about public speaking, but this one had me absolutely shit-scared, and if it hadn’t done, I probably wouldn’t have pulled it off to the extent that I did. I asked if I could talk for ten minutes maximum; I ended up doing so for almost twenty-five. I offered my observations the only way that I could so, honestly: zooming in on Athens very very slowly, initially from the perspective of the London music scene upon Murmur’s release back in 1983, then on the American “college rock” scene of the mid-eighties, then honing in on Georgia, and finally talking about Athens itself from the view of both a tourist and a music journalist. People seemed to appreciate hearing about their town from such a global perspective, and it did strike me that R.E.M.’s presence in Athens in the early 1980s was so damn normal that many in the room had not really thought about the fact that both band and town were famous overseas. Certainly, no greater compliment could have been paid, given my fears, than having Michael Stipe’s mother introduce herself afterwards to tell me she’d actually learned something from my talk.

The Seney-Stovall Chapel from outside.

I too learned from the two panels, one on R.E.M.’s Musical and Artistic Roots in Athens, the other on R.E.M.’s Social, Civic, Political, Preservation and Economic Impact on Athens. (Hey, they like telling stories down south; you can’t expect to keep panel topics to just a few words!) The former included several people who had been witness to R.E.M.’s first show at the Oconee Street Church back in April 1980, including its host, the then birthday girl Kathleen O’Brien, Pylon drummer Curtis Crowe and Side Effects drummer Paul Butchart who, in 1989, ran for mayor of Athens on, and I quote, “a platform of environmental protection, recycling and bike paths.” The fact that he and another independent candidate amassed a third of the vote between them indicated the extent to which Athenians were frustrated with politics as usual and encouraged the townspeople to think deeply about the possibility of effecting long-term change.

On the second panel, we saw and heard the results of this thinking, most notably in the form of former Mayor Gwen O’Looney, who with R.E.M.’s support and encouragement, became Mayor of the newly Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County, heralding something of a new dawn for the town’s socially conscious populace. Although this second panel could have done with some shorter speeches and a little more interaction, it was fascinating not so much for just hearing the long list of R.E.M.’s contributions and achievements to the city of Athens, but for understanding what moderator Milton Leathers called their influence on the “tipping point.” That was a moment in the early 1990s when the generation of punk kids, those who had once partied their way through college on their way to forming rock’n'roll bands, matured enough to institute real change in the politics of their home town – a change that has led to vital historical preservation and a sensible attitude to everything from recycling to big box stores.

I made the point at the end of my keynote speech about how there had to be something in the Athens water supply that made people so damn decent, and how, given the extent of the current drought that had the Georgia Governor declared a State of Emergency while I was there, I hoped it would not dry up. Clearly, attitudes can be self-perpetuating, and a town that is known for being a musical and social hotbed has every incentive to stay that way. But as much as anything, I noted that the most important connection between R.E.M. and Athens was not that they formed there – bands form in every college town every day of the week – but that they stayed there. The income that R.E.M. brought to the city, both directly in terms of royalties and indirectly in terms of tourism, gave them a power base that enabled them to truly effect change on the place. As we learned from the second panel, they’ve contributed to more charities and foundations than you may have thought could exist, but they’ve also ensured that old buildings have stayed standing, and that new ones have been erected with respect to the environment around them. The Seney-Stovall Chapel itself is perhaps a prime example: the group were filmed there for the Athens Inside Out movie in the mid-80s, back when it was a crumbling shell. Now fully restored and redecorated as the home of the Athens Historical Society, it has just served as a studio for the group to finish recording their fourteenth studio album.

The picture is not perfect. Atlanta has infamously grown beyond all reason in recent years, making for arguably the egregious example of suburban sprawl in America, proven both by the traffic – and indeed, by the clamor for limited water during the current drought. Athens, for all the local Government’s good intentions, has similarly doubled in size in under thirty years to a population of over 100,000, and everywhere I turned, there were housing developments and condominiums going up. The formerly “decreptit” college town (in Curtis Crowe’s words) now boasts many expensive restaurants, students drive around in BMWs, and the significant black population does not appear to playing a significant role in the town’s day-to-day running: the only non-white face at the Seney-Stovall Chapel was that of Dexter Weaver, whose soul food restaurant was made famous when R.E.M. took his “Automatic For The People” promise as an album title. Dexter was surely the funniest person on either panel; it was a pleasure to meet him.

Paul Butchart and Kathleen O’Brien: they were there at R.E.M.’s creation. In fact without Kathleen, R.E.M. may never have come to exist.

Indeed it was a pleasure to meet everyone in Athens over the course of that 36 hours. I have to give special thanks to the event’s organizer and my personal host, Blair Dorminey, who drove me to and from airports, took me out to dinner, and otherwise treated me way beyond my expectations. I was thrilled to finally meet Kathleen O’Brien Layson, whom I had talked to extensively on the phone while researching Remarks. I had a fine time out on Saturday night at Farm 255 restaurant with Blair and a bunch of people from the impending panels, including Maureen McLaughlin; without that meal as a precursor, and despite too much red wine (everyone drinks in Athens, and it’s pointless to try swimming against that tide; better to just run off the effects on a sunny Sunday morning!), I would not have had the confidence to stand up the next day and speak as I did. And I had an especially lovely time on Sunday evening at the event’s after-party at the Globe. I had been told that Esquire recently named the Globe the best bar in America and I initially scoffed at the very thought. Six hours later, having worked our way through a fantastic pub dinner, some lovely draft beer (including Belhaven and London Pride) and even a glass of Grüner Veltliner, I couldn’t think, offhand, of a better candidate for the title.

During those hours, I got to know Jeff Montgomery and his wife Shannah of AthensMusic.Net, Eric Zimmerman of remring.com, who had flown down from Chicago and has subsequently written up the panels in great detail, and made closer friendships with many of the people on the two panels. It was such a great time that I even took in stride the fact that I had to get up at 5:30am the next morning to make it to the airport – and though Blair did likewise to get me there, the traffic was so horrendous and, in particular, the airport was so damn congested, with lines for security weaving hundreds of yards around the baggage carousels on Monday morning rush hour, that I actually missed my flight and was stuck in the terminal, short on sleep and unable to think straight, for the next six hours! Still, it was raining buckets that morning, which meant that, just for a day, talk of the drought ceased. And at least whatever they’ve put in the Athens water supply looks like it is not about to dry up any time soon.
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R.E.M. In Perspective: An Athens History was filmed for future DVD release. You can read more about the event at Athens Historical Society, Remring.com, and R.E.M. HQ

Forty years after he taught the band to play, Sgt. Pepper came out of retirement to join the Phoenicia Halloween Parade, this Sunday October 28, entertaining fellow parade-goers with renditions of “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Rumors that his Rickenbacker once belonged to John Lennon proved unfounded.

I’m looking forward to writing up an account of my trip to Athens, GA last weekend, but being on a particularly crazed schedule, it will have to wait until next week. In the meantime, I’d like to recommend a couple of R.E.M. “covers” albums that have been dominating my music system all week.

At the end of Sunday’s event – R.E.M. in Perspective: an Athens Perspective – athensmusic.net founder Jeff Mongtomery gave me a copy of Finest Worksongs: Athens bands play the music of R.E.M. It’s not your typical tribute album. It’s in fact a live album, a souvenir of an event Jeff promoted at the 40 Watt Club on 12 September 2006, for which he invited a number of local groups to play brief sets of their favorite, or most relevant R.E.M. covers. To Jeff’s genuine surprise and subsequent astonishment, all four founding members of the group – including the current farmer and former drummer Bill Berry – not only showed up to watch, but ended up joining several of the acts onstage and eventually played their own brief set. This is one of only three or four occasions the original quartet has played together since Berry sadly quit the band a full decade ago, and I imagine it must have been quite something to bear witness to. (I think Jeff called it the greatest night of his life, and who would dare argue?)

For understandable copyright reasons, R.E.M. do not show up as performers on Finest Worksongs – it wouldn’t make sense anyway, given that it was intended as a tribute event. But individual members do show up on some of the credits, Mike Mills and Peter Buck joining Five Eight on “Radio Free Europe,” and Michael Stipe then jumping in for the subsequent mass finale of “It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

Finest Worksongs is every bit as enjoyable for the various band’s personal anecdotes, tributes. My personal highlights come right up front, with Liz Durrett’s delicate introductory rendition of “The One I Love,” which brings the song back down to its core meaning, Claire Campbell’s banjo-and-tap interpretation of “Wendell Gee,” almost unrecognizable from the original, and Tin Cup Prophette’s rousing “Leave,” with twisted electronic effects throughout. But I also like the Observatory’s lovably tuneless “Pilgrimage” and Patterson Hood’s marvelous story about seeing R.E.M. back in 1985 and the relevance to his subsequent performance of “Second Guessing.” Five Eight rewrite “Driver 8” to narrate their own story, and also play the most recent R.E.M. song of the night, the excellent “Leaving New York.” If only the rest of Around The Sun could have matched it for quality.

Indeed, R.E.M.’s own late-career crisis has resulted in the first live album of their career, released this past week. There’s no doubt which is the more polished, better recorded and better performed album. There’s also not much question which one better encapsulates R.E.M.’s original small town roots and creative sense of adventure – and better yet, Finest Worksongs benefits local charities. You can buy it here.

Though it’s not available on CD, Drive XV comes complete with album cover.

Drive XV is an altogether more ambitious project; as arranged and distributed by online magazine Stereogum, it finds different artists covering Automatic for the People on the occasion of that momentous album’s fifteenth anniversary. The results have just been put up online, for free streaming and download, no strings attached. Isn’t the Net a marvelous thing?

Tribute albums are always a difficult business; the re-recording of an entire studio album is even harder. So, understandably, not everything on offer is classic – and there are no versions I would take over R.E.M.’s own, given that I think Automatic For The People is one of the great albums of modern music. But that’s not the point. The point of a good cover version is to respect the original while bringing something new to the arrangement, and for that reason I have fallen in love with several tracks, most notably Rogue Wave’s fantastic reinvention of “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,” in which the west coast band, whose album Descended Like Vultures was one of the best of 2005, twist the melody and the rhythm, creating an almost entirely new song in the process, while never threatening to insult the original.

As a power pop fan, it’s no surprise that I also like the Shout Out Louds’ heavily harmonized and electronically conga’d “Man On The Moon,” and The Wrens’ almost impossibly delicate and creative “Nightswimming.” But I also dig the dirty covers too, such as the Meat Puppets’ (they’re still going?) messy version of “Everybody Hurts.” And I especially love what The Forms, as produced by Steve Albini, did to Ignoreland, keeping the arrangement simple and harsh and bringing the political (if arguably dated) lyrics right up front so that we can finally hear them. In the notes that accompany their MP3, the group’s Alex Tween writes, and I concur:

“There is much talk these days about the death of the album and singles being the future, but Automatic For The People is one of the best arguments to be made for preserving the album format. In theory, an album is supposed to be something more than a mere collection of songs, something with an overall theme or coherence, and you would be hard-pressed to find a more hard-hitting example than Automatic.”

Stereogum wisely asked for more music than they received, though it’s disappointing to see just how many acts went straight for “Everybody Hurts.” A bonus series of free downloads find this song covered by Frida Hyvnonen, Elk City and Bodies of Water, the cumulative effect of which is pure overkill. But who am I to complain? As previously stated, the entire package is available for streaming, standalone music player, and both individual or collective download, complete with essays, liner notes, individual comments from each band on each song, and accompanying comments from Mike Mills. There’s even an option to embed the MP3 player in one’s own website, an offer I will gladly accept. Here’s your free Friday music. Thanks to Stereogum for supplying it.

you should see the stereogum.com drive xv player here if you have flash

Paul Fox of the Ruts passed away last week from cancer. His death was not unexpected and, back in July, before the illness completely incapacitated him, he was able to arrange a Cancert Benefit show headlined by his old band. (And featuring many other great punk bands too.) As original Ruts singer Malcolm Owens himself died many years ago, that great American, Henry Rollins, stepped into the role of lead singer – and judging by the YouTube footage that has shown up from the concert, did a typically good job. Check Rollins here, singing “Staring At The Rude Boys,” and follow through for more songs from the same show.

There aren’t many people manage to arrange their own memorial while they’re still alive: kudos to Paul Fox for being one of the exceptions. A thread concerning his life and death is over at the iJamming! Pub, here. (Thanks to Pub Landlady Shona for the YouTube link.)

I was stuck for six miserable hours at Atlanta International Airport yesterday. What to do but break with habit, buy the latest Rolling Stone, and trace a theme between the various stories, interviews, reviews and news stories. My conclusion? The music industry is doomed, in fact the whole planet is doomed, but don’t worry, there will always be Lily Allen to make us look smart.

“I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of the Earth.”

James Lovelock, founder of the Earth-as-Gaia theory, believes the human species is f***ed.

“It’s a beautiful country: It’s non-nuclear, with no genetically modified foods, an authentic populace, a real democracy and a progressive health-care system. There’s a very small population, and they’re ecologically the most progressive country in the world.”

System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, born in Armenia, has found a place to prove Lovelock wrong: New Zealand.

“The American idea still has enormous power in its best manifestation. And ten George Bushes cannot bring that idea down- a hundred cannot bring that idea down. What we’re going through now, we’re going to be out the other side at some point.”

Bruce Springsteen, born in the USA, keeps his faith in the homeland.

“My faith in human nature is not such that I would leave it up to consumers to decide how much to pay for music.”

Mike Mills of R.E.M. will not put his faith in the Radiohead route to record sales.

“All of it rocks; none of it sounds like any other band on Earth; it delivers an emotional punch that proves all other rock stars owe us an apology.”

Rob Sheffield paid $5.27 for the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows, and clearly believes he got a bargain.

“This is a huge injustice.”

Jammie Thomas, a 30-year old mother from Minnestota, after losing a $220,000 judgment to the RIAA, which represents the major labels. Thomas was found guilty of sharing twenty-four tracks; her penalty works out at $9,250 a song.

“To the extent that anyone had any ambiguity about the law or about the strength of the cases that we do decide to bring, this verdict may help provide some useful insight.”

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy believes justice has been served.

“It’s hard to see what the RIAA suits against file-traders accomplish, except further alienating the kids who already regard the majors with greater contempt than they do Big Oil or Halliburton. (It’s more personal – Halliburton doesn’t sue their friends.)”

Joe Levy, RS Executive Editor, offers a critical opinion on the RIAA’s policy.

“Madonna is leaving her longtime record label, Warner Music, to sign with concert promoter Live Nation. Under the $120 million deal, Madonna would receive $50 million for performances; a total of $50 to $60 million for three new albums; and a $17.5 million advance.”

Madonna leaves the RIAA behind, jumping ship from Bugs Bunny to the company formerly known as Clear Channel.

“The Rolling Stones took in $557,255,524, crushing the previous tour record of $389 million, which U2 set on their 2005—6 Vertigo Tour. The Stones sold 4.68 million tickets while playing 144 concerts on five continents.”

Figures from the Rolling Stones tour indicate why Madonna would choose to sign a new record deal not with a record company but a tour promoter.

“Face value tickets cost $22 to $66 dollars, but prices blew up within hours on StubHub and eBay. After the Miami show sold out in seconds, scalpers offered top seats for as much as $4,000.”

Figures from the Hannah Montana online scalping scandal indicates that the real money in the music business is not, in fact, made by record companies or tour promoters but by the scalpers – ticket touts. Scalping, in the form of “ticket brokers,” was just legalized in New York State.

“The Eagles, now running their own label, have chosen Wal-Mart as the album’s exclusive retailer (for their new album Long Road Out Of Eden). There is an inevitable contradiction in buying a record that attacks corporate greed and blind consumerism from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care.”

David Fricke should just go right ahead and call The Eagles for what they are: a bunch of self-satisfied rich hyprocrites who say one thing and do another. It’s acts like this that give liberals a bad name.

“You don’t choose how much to pay for eggs. Why should it be different for music?”

Lily Allen refutes the Radiohead option. I guess no-one raises their own hens in LDN?

“I would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of the Earth.”

James Lovelock, founder of the Earth-as-Gaia theory. It bears repeating.