STOP ME BEFORE I READ AGAIN

Incidentally, Banned Book Week kicked off in the US on Saturday.

I’ve posted before about why Banned Book Week is a good thing. If you missed it the first time, you can read it here.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d pass on this relevant passage from Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which I recently finished reading:

“Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: ‘Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop.’ Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them ‘for their own good’ — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.”

I can’t add anything to that.

BONUS TRACK: Some interesting stats from the ALA:

Over the past ten years, American libraries were faced with 4,660 challenges.

• 1,536 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material;
• 1,231 challenges due to “offensive language”;
  
• 977 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”;
  
• 553 challenges due to “violence”
  
• 370 challenges due to “homosexuality”
  
• 304 challenges due to their “religious viewpoints.”
  
• 121 challenges due to being “anti-family”

For yr own good,

This is dF

THE END OF RAPID EYE MOVEMENT

You know by now that REM has called it quits. So, given that music is a fairly frequent topic here, a blog post seems inevitable – despite the fact that actually, I haven’t been a big fan of REM’s output since the early 90s.

The 80s is another story.

I don’t know if it’s because of Nashville’s proximity to Athens, GA, or just dumb luck, but I caught REM early in their career. Right around the time I started listening to college radio, REM’s second album Reckoning came out, and got quite a bit of airplay. I liked them, and it’s fair to say they were as responsible as anyone for hooking me in to what was emerging as “alternative” rock (before it became Alternative™) and the whole college radio scene that gave it the platform no one else would until Nirvana happened.

Ironically, by that time REM was on a major label playing stadiums, and while I think they earned their fame and deserved it, they also became a lot less interesting and essential as a band, at least for me.

I don’t think it was because they were too popular. I remember when Document came out – it was the last REM album to really excite me, and I was thrilled that mainstream radio took notice of them. But even then, I don’t think I could have predicted they’d go on to be one of the biggest American rock bands ever.

In the end, I’d put it down to my own restlessness. I was discovering so much new music during those years, and so many different kinds of it, that I’d usually ended up focused on the Big New Discovery at the time. REM helped open the gate, but the gate was getting farther and farther behind me as I moved on to other things. I didn’t stop liking them – I’d never change the station when a new REM song came on, and even up through the 00s they were better than a lot of bands. It was good to have them around. But it wasn’t essential listening, either.

Still, for awhile there, REM was a big part of my musical education. Respect.

So, to commemorate that, here’s the inevitable music video of one of my favorite REM songs.

From the old Letterman show, no less.

ANECDOTE: When I was in the US Army and stationed in Germany, the jukebox in the base rec center cafeteria had “So. Central Rain” on it. But for some reason, it only played the B-side: “Walter’s Theme” and a cover of Roger Miller’s “King Of The Road”. I probably spent about $75 playing that song during my two-year hitch there – not least because it was the only decent song on the menu. 

BONUS TRACK: For those of you that enjoyed their post 90s output, bedsitter23  has just the post for you.

Don’t go back to Rockville,

This is dF