Finding REM

Thanks Abby

It is super fun for me to reconsider where a band came from. Recently the eminently cool

Abby Schleifer

made an REM confession, so naturally as the Alternative Nation Veterano I jumped right in and made this list above.

But, I am also drawn to the story of where REM came in. And REM comes in with a girl named Amanda. I was a punk and hip hop and tennis team guy. And Winona Ryder was my dream girl.

And Amanda looked like Winona. Amanda and I were in different circles in school. I was a physically agressive dude (in all the ways). I rode a skateboard, listened to punk rock, and spent all my time in the English department center. This guy Eric Frandrey blew me away with his sad bastard outsider high school poetry, so poetry had started to mix in with skateboarding.

But, Amanda was in choir, and drama, and band. She was two years young or maybe one, so we were a lifetime apart. She was in the trenchcoat wearing younger alternative nation kids. But, I FUCKING SAW HER. I absolutely was smitten. On a low level thing though. I was not mature enough to resolve the whole thing.

Entering the 12th grade a girl named Anna told me that Amanda would like a senior photo of mine. I assume this made my head spin for days. I think. I am not sure. I gave it to her, wrote a note. Then we started exchanging mail maybe, and somehow an opportunity came to meet in the world, and we did. I have no sense of how that was. I do know there was a time before Amanda, and after. I wish I remembered how that happened.

I know that Amanda, to this day, makes me feel like a savage brute. She is smaller than I am. Her skin is white, where mine is olive. I am a furry large brute of a person. She is a tiny ceramic thing. Her sensibilities are the same. She was the person who brought me to

Jane Pratt

and Sassy. Sitting in her bedroom talking, reading, listening to music. As a 12th grader. I wish I had any sense of how I navigated it. I have a specific memory of Amanda and I going to the top of a local mountain in foggy night, me wearing a Chicago Blackhawks jersey, and her in alternative nation uniform of loose fitting flowey skirt, and some layers on tops.

This is not about Amanda. Amanda is the gateway to REM.

I was a Black Flag and The Meatmen and LL Cool J. Along came a mix take with Joni Mitchell, and REM. I had a secret love of Edie Brickell for what its worth. The mix tape was absolutely a different tone than my musical palatte at the time. Then looking in Sassy or SPIN and seeing what REM looked like, and I just sort of could not get it.

Then Micheal Stipe talked about Patti Smith. And I could ABSOLUTELY get from Black Flag and Fugazi to Patti Smith. And if I could get there, then I could get to REM. And Poetry got me there.

Imagine being a Black Flag super fan, and then this photo is show to you.

Thats not a thing I could do. I was here, how could I get there.

But, I started spending time in Madison and MPLS. And seeing other things, other flavors were added to my chili. And Amanda became a more present part of my life. An actual influence that changed me.

And I settled into REM. Then I saw them in concert. Then Amandas friend George got a VHS of TOURFILM, then I went to Madison and hung out with Trowbs big brother who lived above the Nar Bar. Eventually poetry started winning.

I had made a change in my friends, lost a bunch, gained a bunch, started the transition to college thinking, and then poetry was there.

Those first REM records are an amazing connection between head and heart. Not the body for me, but it connected my head and heart in a cool way. The poetry was in the front, so I could hear it. My punk rock music had lyrics, but I have no idea what they were.

“Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse
Still, it's so much clearer
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge
The moon is low tonight”

I mean, that is poetry. Ontop of music.

Feeling that, my life changing, and it came rushing in. That something was possible. I remember sitting in my freshman dorm listening to the first Indigo Girls tape.

Then the B-52’s. Which I was way to young and hetero to fully embrace. Just being honest.

But, Amanda gave me REM. And REM gave me the song BELONG which might be one of the best songs I have ever experienced.

Stipe gave all of us “art fags” (we were called that) a path from The Misfits all the way to Richard Brautigan. From Fugazi to Walt Whitman. Stipe was that bridge for a lot of us. Take off the leather and spike bracelet, and put on the Guatamalan friendship bracelets hippies sold to visitors on campus.

REM let me change. How cool is that.