Walking Off the Passion

Some new developments in R.E.M. geekderm:

Stereogum recently reprised their all-(indie)-star tribute to OK Computer from a while back with a new downloadable comp, commemorating the 15th anniversary of Automatic for the People.

Not nearly R.E.M.'s greatest moment, to me, but a few classic tunes ("Sidewinder", "Nightswimming", and -- up 'til I'd heard it for the 10,000th time -- "Man on the Moon"), with surprisingly good taste in the bands Stereogum chose. (Plus, they got Mike Mills to provide liner notes for each track.)

I posted a note about this tribute comp on the internal mailing list for WHPK, where I sometimes host a radio show, and I was kinda happy in realizing that, what with the new, indie-friendly HPK of late, it might actually interest at least a few of the young'uns, who by and large missed the heyday of '80s college rock, and thus for whom alt-rock generally equates to treachery.

(See, a few years back, the then-MDs threw a hissy fit about my wanting to check R.E.M.'s 'Bad Day' single into the station library, and got treated to a "If R.E.M. never existed, this room would be a broom closet" lecture, when I showed up with the disc in question.)

On a different but related note, Matthew Perpetua of the superb FluxBlog has a new joynt, the goal of which is to write about every R.E.M. song ever recorded. (Unfortunately for him, this also seems to include all the cover tunes R.E.M.'s recorded... not an easy task. Or a fruitful one: what is there to say about their half-assed "King of the Road"? Such are the travails of the professional blogger.) He discusses his project and spins some of his faves on a WFMU show, which you can check out here.

Finally, a chapter from my Murmur book is included in the 33 1/3's Greatest Hits Volume Two collection, published by Continuum a coupla weeks ago. This new compendium includes excerpts from the second twenty books in the series. (It's available via Amazon here.)

J.

posted at 1:57 AM