Jul. 22nd, 2005

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It's Friday! It's three o'clock! It's time to Boogie At Your Desk!

You what? )

Today you were invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:

REM - It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

I have a very clear memory of an afternoon sometime in the very early nineties. I was in the Scout HQ (8th Darlington), leaning against a table in the back corner of the main hall. We'd just come back from a camping trip, and were talking about an exciting new band, REM, who'd exploded all over the charts with a song called Losing My Religion.

This drew yelps of indignation from a passing Senior Scout. Carl, and his elder brother, were our local musos. Festival-goers, followers of obscure bands, people who knew and whose indie credibility stuck out all over. Not that much older than us, but somehow entrenched in music in a way none of us were. REM, he spluttered, were not a "new" band. In fact, he'd been trying to get us to listen to them for years. I think we largely ignored him, and went out and bought copies of Out Of Time anyway.

My REM best-of, thought recently acquired, is an elderly affair released in 1991. At that point, still obscure in the UK, REM had already got a half-dozen or so albums under their belt. I'm firmly convinced that if anyone ever works out what music diplodoci listened to, it'll turn out to be early REM. One of the few tracks on my best-of which still gets a reasonable number of outings in the pubs, clubs and radiowaves is It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

As well as being eminently suitable for Boogying At Your Desk, this track is one of those songs with great piles of words. I love 'em. Huge, tumbling swathes of lyrics which have to be desperately crammed into the tune, and from which those without the dedication to learn can only pick out occasional phrases (all together now, "Leonard Bernstein!"). Besides, who can deny the songwriting genius of the man who crafted the phrase "Birthday party, cheesecake, jellybean, boom!"

I'm not really familiar enough with the band to recommend an album, but recently I've been rather enjoying the album from which It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) originally comes. Document is mostly a gentle, slightly melancholy album, owing a lot to the sound of The One I Love. Other recommendations welcome.

RIP Carl. Hearing REM still makes me think of you.

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