Tag Archives: R.E.M.

My Introduction to Vic Chesnutt

First heard Vic Ches­nut­t’s “Pan­ic Pure” on the b‑side of R.E.M.‘s mediocre ver­sion of “Sponge,” which sounds indis­tin­guish­able from any of the hard rock­ers on New Adven­tures in Hi-Fi. Her­sh’s ver­sion of “Pan­ic Pure” absolute­ly bewitched me. Here Hersh sings with Vic Chesnutt.

Been think­ing about Ches­nutt quite a bit late­ly. Part of it is that these songs meant so much to me my fresh­man year of col­lege and I feel guilty for not hav­ing explored his music fur­ther. Now that he’s gone I’m look­ing him up on YouTube and find­ing all these great clips that exem­pli­fy what a great pres­ence he had.

Lis­ten to R.E.M.‘s take on “Sponge” below.

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Had this song stuck in my head on Tues­day morn­ing. Odd, because I learned that the man respon­si­ble for writ­ing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” George David Weiss, had died the night before.

As I thought about it, I looked up Matt Per­pet­u­a’s exhaus­tive Pop Songs ’07-’08 and found this entry for the song. So maybe that’s not the most illu­mi­nat­ing piece ever writ­ten about an R.E.M. song, but it remind­ed me that Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple was such a down­er of a record.

I know I’ve said it before else­where, but I can’t even try to lis­ten to this absolute pill of a record any­more. Maybe it puts me back in a weird spot, remem­ber­ing all the awk­ward moments it sound­tracked while I was a gawky teen, but it’s so one note that even tracks like “Sidewinder” and “Ignore­land” can’t shake me from my sleep. Going back to that place is one weird trip, let me tell you.

This album is to me what I think an album like Lucin­da Williams’ Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road would be just six years lat­er: a sol­id adult con­tem­po­rary record that lulled peo­ple into a false sense of sophis­ti­ca­tion. (How I avoid­ed buy­ing that Williams record I may nev­er know.) As much as I used to think Auto­mat­ic was a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on death, I real­ize today that that had every­thing to do with me know­ing noth­ing about the sub­ject mat­ter. It’s the muzak disc Stipe cursed the Bea­t­les for mak­ing. How he can even sing “Every­body Hurts” with a straight face at this point in his career is beyond me.