‘Fire and Rain’ became a hit when I was only three years old. As such, I was cheated of hearing it for the first time, or at least having any memory of having heard it, specifically, for a first time. Like ‘Happy Birthday to You’ or ‘I've Been Working on the Railroad’, the song was ubiquitous most of my young life. I could hear the chorus repeated on mainstream NY radio stations like WNBC or WYNY without ever giving thought to its meaning. I could hear it sung on TV variety shows (I'm so sure Cher sung it on her post-Sonny show, yet I have no proof), in barber shops, and department stores. James Taylor, the man who was made famous by singing and recording the song, himself parodies the way it overwhelmed his career in two of his own songs: his hilarious pantheon to selling out – ‘Money Machine’ - in which he declares triumphantly "I've seen fives and I've seen tens" and more tenderly in his later song ‘That's Why I'm Here’ where he muses about why "perfect strangers" would want to "pay good money to hear 'Fire and Rain' again and again and again." He also sang it on The Simpsons. My favorite allusion to the song is in Jim White's "Christmas Day" where he sets the scene of a heart-rendering breakup at a Greyhound station on Christmas against "a bad Muzak version of James Taylor's big hit called 'Fire and Rain'". So perfect: canned angst played off against real sorrow: mocking it. The commodification of art until it's a meaningless grotesque of itself.

"Fire and Rain" is a song about suicide, depression and addiction written by a man who was in the grips of a heroin habit that would stay with him for years to come. It chronicals the reaction to the death of the songwrite’s' friend Suzanne by her own hand, and the time he spent in mental hospitals as a teen and the struggle with his demons he was facing at the time of his earliest brushes with success. It's a very finely-crafted pop song, a late-20th century folk song in the purest sense: something one finds oneself whistling aimlessly while working. It demonstrates the best type of songwriting. When I stopped hearing the song as something that just was and started listening, I related it to every sad moment in my life: every family illness, every hurt feeling, every pointless crush.

I remember singing it in junior high chorus. Not as a song being taught in the actual class for any performance. Waiting for the chorus teacher to work out the girls' parts, my friend and I would sing it quietly on the other side of the room. He was a very good singer. I was a terrible singer who just squeaked into chorus. We weren't really harmonizing in a literal sense, but it was a way to communicate through what was already an oldie. High school was filled with heartache - real or imagined - and it was just very difficult to express those emotions or talk about them honestly. Here we sat, all of 14, claiming we had seen fire and rain, stormy days that we thought would never end. Certainly we had seen lonely times where we couldn't find a friend. And we would again. And at times, we'd come barreling towards disaster on the level of what James Taylor was really writing about and somehow we'd make it through. It was a time for me, when I realized that there would be no such thing as a sad song, as long as it was honest and true, that I wouldn't love.

‘Fire and Rain’ wasn't the only great song on 1970's Sweet Baby James. It may not have even been the best one. And, despite its iconic stature, Sweet Baby James may not even be the best James Taylor album. (That for me would either be 1977's JT or 1991's New Moon Shine.) It is an album, however, with a reputation. And that reputation seems to be the launch of the phenomenon of the 1970s singer-songwriter. It stayed on the Billboard charts for two years (despite peaking - curiously enough - at number 3) and shared the charts with the follow-up Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon the next year.

Sweet Baby James is seen by some as the killer of rock and roll in the 1970s much in the same way that Rocky, Jaws, and Star Wars are often claimed as the killer of cinema in the age of Cassevetes and Coppola. Suddenly, the radio was filled with the likes of Al Stewart and Gerry Rafferty and a commodified mellowness took the edge off of music while making it a mega-industry that could only be saved from the pit of despair by the coming of punk (or Springsteen depending on who you talk to.)

I'm here to tell you that James Taylor was not the reason the Velvet Underground never hit it big and he was also not the reason for the Eagles coming into existence. This Yankee from Massachusetts did not take a shovel and dig Laurel Canyon and I find it telling that as an older man, with his past behind him and a zen-like peace to his stature, he moved away from LA and settled in Nantucket, away from the glitter of stardom and back to the setting of the first song on Sweet Baby James. The title song and the one I probably do consider my favorite.

‘Sweet Baby James’ combines a lullaby James was writing for his nephew with a remembrance of a "dreamlike" ride through a snow-covered road in the Berkshires on the way to Boston. Each half of the song is drenched with a spiritual loneliness: an isolation without anxiety and an inner peace. It is the simplest of nursery rhymes. And it recalls another journey once chronicled by Robert Frost as the singer, really at the beginning of his life and art, admits to "ten miles behind me and 10,000 more to go." In that same chorus, he defines the way I've come to feel about spirituality and the power of music:

There's a song that they sing when they take to the highway
A song that they sing when they take to the sea
A song that they sing of their home in the sky.
Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
But singing works just fine for me.

The last two lines of that stanza should be the slogan for the American Humanist Association. Strange coming from an album where Jesus is invoked more than once. But both ‘Sweet Baby James’ and ‘Lo and Behold’ (which is practically a spiritual), despite their contradictions, share something deeper, and that's something true for the entire span of what is a very short record after all. ‘Lo and Behold’ with its cries of "you just can't kill for Jesus" and claims of "glorious sights this soul has seen" are both born of cowboy poetry and a minstrel’s tradition. Unlike much of Taylor's later work, there seems to be a distinct, definite focus on creating work that seems to escape time.

"Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose" Taylor sings in ‘Sweet Baby James’ and the album is, as such, a work inspired by nature ... country roads, simple pleasures and introspection. In ‘Anywhere Like Heaven’ he declares "There's a natural pillow for my head the grass has overgrown. I think of that place from time to time when I want to be alone." The answers are in the world around us and then ultimately in us. You might call on Jesus, but you do so in order for your own self to make a stand. You might think that all this introspection equates to navel gazing but in one of the slyest songs on the record, a man named Sunny Skies finds a way to "ease down slow and everything is fine in the end" only to find - in fact we're told we'd be "pleased to know" - he's friendless, alone and left behind. And ultimately you don't have to go it alone, as expressed in the completely joyful ‘Country Road’ where Taylor makes his case for love (even if has to be "some kind of natural born fool" to want to love again) with someone to whom he declares "your way and my way seem to be one and the same." It's all so simple and yet nothing is simple. We all have to be going down a road, measuring consequences, going through the craft of living a life.

It all has felt like a whole for me ever since I heard the entire album for the first time. There a fantastic easiness to it resulting from the stellar lineup of musicians who would end up defining the California sound for better or worse for years: Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Randy Meisner, Leland Sklar among others. Always precise and catching the right note and yet never drowning out Taylor's guitar or his voice or the aspect of the piece that I haven't touched on yet, namely his simple melodies and his ability to write an acoustic guitar lead that takes you right into the setting of a song. And underneath: Carole King, another east-coaster, grounding the work with her piano, her voice and her common sense.

And maybe it's that easiness that allows me to listen from beginning to end despite having to hear the corny reconstructed version of ‘Oh Susannah’ or the goofy blues of ‘Steamroller’ (which I would come to find as an irritant as Taylor's live version started stretching and stretching in length) or the awfulness of the end part of ‘Suite of 20G’ (hard to argue that JT didn't kill rock and roll with lines like "when I get a common cold, wanna hear a saxophone”). But for the way the songs feel together, including gems like ‘Blossom’ not covered here, I have a soft spot in my heart for James Taylor and Sweet Baby James even if I don't visit it as much as I used to. I may not notice it every day, but it's there, under the skin, every time I go down in my dreams.

There are so many reasons that Washington D.C.-based Slant 6 - and in particular their first full length release Soda Pop * Rip Off - keeps rattling around that part of my brain reserved for sentimental music favorites. First there is the band’s name. Slant 6 was named for a six cylinder engine made by Dodge in the 1960s and 1970s. (Speaking of nostalgia it is surprising that as Detroit rolls on with its auto making comeback and so many American car companies reintroduce their classic muscle cars, that Dodge doesn’t produce a special edition charger with a slant 6.) The band’s lineage also justifies a fond recall of Slant 6 since guitarist and vocalist Christina Billotte was a former member of the seminal all female band Autoclave. Future Helium lead singer and solo artist Mary Timony was an Autoclave band mate.

The three women line-up of Slant 6 recorded for one of those great small/regional independent record labels so prevalent in the 1990s. Sub Pop would probably be the gold standard in terms of commercial success because of their early work with Nirvana. Due to sales and label consolidations Sub Pop has since ceased being a truly independent label. The Pacific Northwest also gave us CZ records who gave bands like the Gits and 7 Year Bitch an outlet for their recordings. Currently CZ only offers very itinerant releases. Portland’s Kill Rock Stars is still going strong though they have not repeated the high visibility their relationship with riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear earned them. In the Midwest, though originally founded in Washington State, there was Amphetamine Reptile records featuring artists such as The Cows, Hammerhead, and Janitor Joe. Unfortunately AmRep today offers very infrequent releases. Simple Machines was founded in Arlington, Virginia and offered bands like Lois and Scrawl a place to record. All of these labels and the countless others not mentioned shared punk’s “do it yourself “(DIY) ethic. Perhaps the regional label that is the biggest standout in this regard is DC’s Dischord Records. They produced their albums in-house and distributed their recordings without the help of large distribution channels. Happily Dischord is still standing today. Slant 6 was a Dischord artist.

Slant 6 has widely been considered a riot grrrl band, though that may be more a consequence of the fore mentioned DIY ethic as well as gender and era. This band was far less political and not really the embodiment of riot grrrl postmodern-feminist values the way bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile or Heavens to Betsey were. It is probably more correct to consider this band as a sort of musical hybrid combining elements of foxcore, surf punk, pop, new wave, rock, and DC hardcore. On this record you can hear shades of everything from the Ramones to L7 to The Buzzcocks to Kim Gordon. Seemingly the biggest debt of influence gratitude however belongs to Penelope Houston and her work with the Avengers. Likely it is all of this variety that results in a record that still sounds fresh today.

Soda Pop * Rip Off is heavy on short, upbeat tracks. Amazingly the release containing 16 tracks comes in at just over 30 minutes. This is a straight forward rock record, generally featuring your traditional line up of guitar, bass and drums. While musically sparse, the sound is still up-tempo; big as well as raw and powerful. The songs are melodic and catchy. Soda Pop * Rip Off has that frenetic almost urgent sound that makes punk pop great. Simplicity also reigns lyrically. This musical directness lead to an album without any standout tracks but also lacking any stinkers. In my experience, each track at one time or another has been a personal favorite.

Soda Pop * Rip Off was basically a collection of 7-inch releases and other separate recording sessions. More or less this is a compilation record. However for me it works better than their later album, Inzombia. That record tried to be a bit of a concept album with a nod to B-movies. The problem with Inzombia is it goes off the rails a little bit with the overly goofy ‘Retro Duck’ and extended jam title track. It also offers fewer songs than the earlier release. Soda Pop * Rip Off on the other hand finally brings to fruition the promise of an all-girl band playing rock and rebellion to its hilt, offered us by The Runaways so many years earlier. This is particularly evident with the fast moving, down stroking guitar on tracks like ‘What Kind of Monster Are You’ and ‘Night X 9’.

Another fantastic aspect of this album is while it offers straight forward rock riffs; they are not so simple and fundamental that you feel like you have heard then over and over before. Instead it is a fresh twist on classic punk pop, particularly evident musically on ‘Love Shock’ and ‘Invisible Footsteps’. Lyrically Soda Pop * Rip Off is uncomplicated but still effective in conveying whatever the theme of the song may be. The fed up lover on ‘Time Expired’ expresses with ease that things are over: “Time expired, violation. Your presence is a real invasion.”

In so many ways Soda Pop * Rip Off is the perfect record. If you have a short attention span the quick hit of short, sharp Soda Pop tunes will keep you interested. Also the punk simplicity makes it a sound choice if you are looking for background noise. On the other hand if you need to gear up for a fantastic night of partying the feverish pace found on each track will certainly put you in the mood. This record definitely deserves to be remembered and played in heavy rotation. It certainly makes me long for a time in the early-mid 90s when girls picked up guitars in droves, applied a DIY vibe, and really rocked.

The Clash may not have been the only band that mattered, but they were the only band that cared.

They proved this repeatedly in many ways, large and small, throughout their quixotic existence, an adjective I do not tie lightly to The Clash for no other band’s actions more closely resembled that of Don Quixote. Like Cervantes’ famed fictional conquistador charging at windmills, The Clash repeatedly charged their record company, winning small but costly victories on behalf of fans. Over the course of eight years The Clash continually strived and gave their fans music at bargain rates and operated as if CBS Records was a socialist enterprise instead of capitalist.

Consider this, at their creative apex between December 1979 and December 1980, The Clash:

• Released a double album (London Calling) for the price of a single. (They had tricked CBS by arranging to have a free single included with the album. They never told CBS that that would be a 12-inch “single” with ten songs, including their hidden first American radio hit ‘Train In Vain’.)
• Engaged in a 6-month stand-off over CBS’ refusal to release ‘Bankrobber’ as the first 45 of project known as the Singles Bonanza, which was supposed to be a series of monthly singles meant to keep fans informed as to what was happening in the world. (Ironically, only ‘Bankrobber’ ever was released as part of this project so it turned out to a Single Bonanza.)
• Released a triple album for the price of a double by agreeing to receive no royalties for the first 200,000 copies sold.

That triple album was the controversial Sandinista! released 30 years ago on December 12, 1980 in Great Britain. But could be found in the cooler record stores stateside by the depressed rock fan looking for consolation in the wake of John Lennon’s absurd murder the previous week. I know because I was one of those depressed rockers. I bought it at Bleecker Bob’s, subwayed home, rolled six joints and then spun all six sides – a joint a side – and listened to all 2 hours: 24 minutes: 47 seconds the first December night I bought it. And it helped in many ways because for rockers of a certain age Joe Strummer was our John Lennon despite Strummer’s protestations against “phoney Beatlemania!” a year earlier.

(And in light of Strummer’s death in 2002, the likenesses are even more striking. I came up with almost two dozen similarities off the top of my head – and more substantial than both being photographed on the same recording studio couch by rock photographer Bob Gruen – but I’ll pursue that in a separate feature since I do want to concentrate here on The Clash’s last important album.)

Stranded in Manhattan at the end of the 9-date American leg of The 16 Tons Tour in March 1980 (and with bassist Paul Simonon off to Canada to play a bit part (as a bassist no less) in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains), the remaining members of The Clash convened at The Power Station on 53rd Street to record some covers, including The Equals’ ‘Police On My Back’ (written by Eddie Grant). The sessions were going so well that The Clash decided on extending them only to discover studio time at The Power Station already blocked out.

This necessitated a move 45 blocks downtown to 52 West 8th Street: address of abstract artist Hans Hoffman’s old haunt, then the Generation Club, and ultimately Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios. Two of Ian Drury’s Blockheads were flown over from London to assist: keyboardist Micky Gallagher (who had already supported The Clash at concerts for approximately half a year) and bassist Norman Watt-Roy, who quickly laid down the bassline that was looped for Strummer to crest as he tackled rap music, which no white band had yet attempted. It still seems like a strange move for a London-based band but with lead guitarist and occasional lead vocalist Mick Jones at the controls, The Clash – especially Strummer - were encouraged to experiment in the studio and try new things, which is how the opening track ‘The Magnificent Seven’ came about.

Jones was listening to black New York City radio stations and it was clear to him before it was to most that rap was more than a fad and had musical legs. He pushed Strummer to take Watt-Roy’s bassline – which is very punky in its own way – and use it as a vehicle to free associate about what was going on around him. And so ‘The Magnificent Seven’ begins Sandinista! by ringing in a new work day, another song in the long line of the “corporations are killing the worker” vein that The Clash regularly issued to their fans. It is an indictment of capitalism and even references Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Consider: there’s “knuckle merchants,” Japanese products that are “so cheap and real phoney,” “clocks go slow in a place of work.” And what is lunch?: “It’s our profit – it’s his loss” and the worker gets an hour to “do your thanng!” Back at work “it’s no good for man to work in cages/hits the town. He drinks his wages.” And for all the worker’s purchasing power, your vacuum cleaner sucks up your pet bird!

The political nature of The Clash’s lyrics has monopolized the attention of lazy journalists, but - if you really listen - their most consistent message to the public was not revolt; it was to not waste life working for others. As Joe Strummer asks later during Side 4’s ‘The Call-Up’: “Who gives you work? And why should you do it?” It’s the age old question.

Curiously, despite his exhortations to Strummer to experiment, Mick Jones mostly plays it safe on Sandinista! Almost all of the album’s rockers are his vehicles, including ‘Hitsville U.K.’, the album’s second track. The song is actually an off-handed, organ driven, Motown homage about DIY bands in England featuring harmonized vocals courtesy of Jones and his then girlfriend Ellen Foley (Meatloaf’s vocal foil on ‘Paradise By The Dashboard Light’ and later a featured actor on NBC’s Night Court). It is, unfortunately, the most ineffectual song Jones ever sang while with The Clash. It’s not bad – like Paul McCartney, Mick Jones always had his way with catchy melodies - it just lacks oomph.

Next up is a reggae number recorded in April 1980 at Channel One studios in Jamaica, a session that didn’t go very well because of threats and extortion attempts from the locals who thought a famous rock band should be spreading their wealth around. The Clash fled with only an unfinished version of ‘Junco Partner’ (but that is the infamous studio’s piano you can hear Strummer striking throughout). Back in 1980 I thought this was Sandinista!’s first amazing track, partially because it’s the first track with Simonon on bass and not Watts-Roy.

‘Junco Partner’ takes on even greater relevance now that the Strummer’s race has been run and we understand how the song was dear to him. At every stage of his career, Joe Strummer sang this traditional blues song with its New Orleans roots. He sang it with the The 101’ers, he sang it with The Clash, he sang it with Latino Rockabilly War, he sang it with The Mescaleros. (It was actually the last song I ever saw him sing at St. Anne’s Warehouse on April 6, 2002. It had morphed into a rockabilly shuffle by then.) I bet there’s even a bootleg recording out there somewhere of Strummer doing it with The Pogues during a sound check. The dub version on Side 6 is the most terrifying track The Clash ever recorded. I still get chills listening to it. With an echo rivaling midnight in the Times Square of the 1980s (that true New Yorkers mourn: Patti Smith was so right on New Year’s Eve when she called today’s Times Square “Little Tokyo”), Strummer’s mixed vocals careen wildly and the desperation of a man who’d pawn his “sweet Gabriella” for a bottle of whiskey comes through loud and clear.

So wot have you got at the end of Sandinista!’s first three songs? A rap song, a Motown tribute and reggae fried blues. Not exactly a New Waver’s pint of beer. The fourth track - drummer Topper Headon’s ‘Ivan Meets G.I. Joe’ probably should’ve followed ‘The Magnificent Seven’ as it does on The Essential Clash (2003). With its lyrics about being “on the floor at 54” and lasting “at Le Palace,” the dance friendly rocker with all its sound effects fits better behind the unexpected rap song. It’s as if ‘The Magnificent Seven’ had just played at one of the clubs this song namechecks. Coming up second on Sandinista!’s first side, it would’ve given the white crowd something to warm up to, especially if you still follow with ‘The Leader’, one of Strummer’s few rockers on Sandinista! Giving the fan base a little of what it wanted, they might’ve been more accepting of the album’s black tracks: the rap, the funk, the dubs, there’s even gospel (Side 3’s ‘The Sound Of Sinners’, of which Elvis Costello once said was the Clash song he’d like to cover someday.)

I mention alternate programming because the most common criticism of Sandinista! is that it is too long and should’ve been a double, even a single album. Forgotten now, however, is the fact that Sandinista! was at one time The Clash’s best selling product in America (thanks ironically to the black stations broadcasting remixes of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘The Call Up’: the same stations The Clash had listened to when making the album). It peaked at #24 on the American charts and was picked as the best album of the year in The Village Voice’s annual Pazz And Jop Poll. A weeklong engagement at Bond’s International Casino in Times Square in May and June 1981 swelled to 17 dates to accommodate the fans from all over America who flocked to “old New York” to see punk’s most popular band. The band and record were successful despite their American distributor’s refusal to finance the 60-date American tour The Clash had planned to promote their mammoth offering; the tour another causality of The Clash’s jousts with record company executives.

Only in the latter half of the decade did the voices calling Sandinista! a debacle prevail in the now accepted view. Critics who embrace their calling as being one of criticism over one of championing art complained: “Why does it have to be a triple album?” (‘Why did they have to complain?’ I always wondered. It’s not as if fans are paying for the third album. They’re getting 50+ minutes of music for free.) But no, critics really railed against the sixth side. It was their Exhibit A as to where The Clash had erred on Sandinista! Admittedly having Gallagher’s sons sing a MOR version of ‘Career Opportunities’ was a filler move, but everything else on the side was better than anything The Bush Tetras – the then darling of the purveyors of hip press – ever produced.

But don’t take my word for it. Judge for yourself. You can find a used copy on Amazon for ten bucks – still a bargain. Even new it’s $15.81, cheaper than just about any other multi-disc collection out there and complete with the original liner notes, lyrics and art work. (iTunes has it for $16.99.) Discover for yourself how Side 1’s closer – ‘Something About England’ – serves as a mirror for Side 4’ closer – ‘Broadway’. I’ll let you catch all the cinematic references, spot the sporting terms, count the number of times that time is mentioned. Get it and I’ll bet that thirty years hence you’ll still be checking it out. Especially in the summer. It may have been released in December, but this is a record to swelter along with.

For many R.E.M. fans on-board in the 80s, nothing that came later compares to their early stuff, especially the first four full-length albums. For them, the collective Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and Life’s Rich Pageant, IS R.E.M. These albums represent R.E.M. in its most artistically vibrant state when Peter Buck's Southern jangle was still fresh, Michael Stipe's lyrics were still puzzles (even after (IF) you figured out the words), and, perhaps most importantly, you couldn’t find them on MTV all that much.

OK, so maybe that’s just my opinion. I can’t help it. As much as I love R.E.M., I love each of those albums with an intensity unmatched by any other album they’ve produced since. And almost all the other albums I’ve ever heard from other bands too. But of the four, Fables has always been my favorite. Why? I can’t come up with a substantial reason other than to say it’s quirkiness moves me.

I discovered Fables when I was twenty and going through an existential crisis, thus the connection it made with me was largely emotional. I read afterwards that the band was going through their own spiritual crisis when writing and recording Fables - tired from a grueling few years on the road, wondering if this rock ’n’ roll stuff was what they really wanted to do with their lives - so perhaps that is why this R.E.M. album resonated so much with me. Or maybe it was just timing: I discovered Fables just as I was looking for something to connect to.

So as the album has been recently re-packaged for its 25th anniversary, let’s re-visit this classic album and see if I can figure out why I love it so much. Or even if I still love it so much.

‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull’ opens the album and serves as a warning of what’s to come. Beginning with Buck’s slightly discordant three-note call (I can’t help but think this was inspired by the famous opening to Beethoven’s 5th), repeated once, and then inverted for a third before Buck attacks his muted strings like an engine grinding to a start. After a repeat, Bill Berry and Michael Mills add a mid-tempo beat to the verse. Then for the chorus, a surprise: the tempo actually slows, and Buck deploys a dark chromatic figure (the first of many chromatic figures on the album) as if to tell the listener: “Whoa! Don’t get too far ahead. This is not the listening experience you were expecting.”

Lyrically, the song is about falling asleep while reading … and it’s surreal: “Read the scene where gravity is pulling me around/Peel back the mountains peel back the sky/Stomp gravity into the floor/It's a Man Ray kind of sky.” But when listening I not only think of Man Ray, but also Dalí. At the song’s end a string quartet that had, to this point, created shadows behind the band emerges front and center, leading the song into its crash as the machine sputters to a halt.

‘Gravity’ would have certainly jarred a first-time listener in 1985, especially a fan of the band’s previous albums. So for reassurance there’s ‘Maps and Legends’, a song that perfectly fits the mold of an early R.E.M. song - all arpeggiated chords and harmonies - bringing the world back into alignment. But there’s still something not quite right here either. The tempo is kind of plodding (at worst), or workmanlike (at best). The verse bounces back and forth between an E minor and D, so the song seems unsure of its mood. And even though this time we get some momentum from the chorus, the same two chords alternate as Michael tells us: “Maybe these maps and legends/ have been misunderstood.” The dark tone remains dominant.

Whereas ‘Maps’ seems like the band going through the motions, ‘Driver 8’ is earnest in its desire to please. It begins with a bluesy riff by Buck, and then a verse so peppy it’s impossible not to hum. The energy comes almost entirely from the tempo though, as three of the four chords are minor. But still, the verse is so propulsive as to render the chorus barely distinguishable with its simplified repeated D/C chord figure. But then, to close the chorus, Buck slows us down with a chromatic figure that first rises, then tumbles for the last note while Michael explains “We’re still a ways away.” Indeed we are, but three songs in we have a song that would become a college-rock classic, so we’re at least getting somewhere.

The way the next two songs contrast each other is symbolic of the album in its entirety. After a slow intro, ‘Life and How to Live It’ shows itself to be the most danceable song on the album. This is a song that would have been right at home on an 80s college dance floor. We think we’ve broken free of the brooding only to bump into ‘Old Man Kensey’, a song about a dog catcher who drinks his ransom money away. It begins with a slippery bass line by Mills and some ponderous guitar-work by Buck before we’re back to a slow verse and another momentum-killing chorus. The bridge aspires to more, however, as it picks up the pace, but Michael’s plaintive calls keep it at bay. Then we’re back to the verse and wistful chorus for two repeats before the song seemingly ends. But no, Berry hits his toms twice to usher in one more repeat. Fittingly, the first side comes to an uncertain close.

So it comes as a surprise to hear the most overtly commercial song on the album begin the second. (This may be a stretch, but ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ reminds me of Sting’s ‘We’ll Be Together’ from …Nothing Like The Sun. Both were ridiculous songs that stuck out like sore thumbs on their respective albums, both were first singles, and both were the first songs on the second side.) Whereas “Gravity” began the album with lush strings to enhance its moodiness, ‘Can’t Get There From Here’ utilizes horns showcasing its joy and has a chorus that explodes in typical rock song fashion. For me, it’s the least interesting song on the album, but it turned out to be the ‘hit’ from the album that the band needed to grow off of Reckoning, and it wouldn’t be the last time R.E.M. used a silly song to garner chart success. (Anyone remember ‘Stand’? How about ‘Shiny Happy People’?)

Thankfully, we get serious again with “Green Grow the Rushes”, one of my favorite songs in the entire R.E.M. catalog. After a unique intro that slides, jangles, and accelerates us, Buck’s fantastic chord progression propels an otherwise mid-tempo song. At the end of the verse, Buck employs a happy double stop pattern on the D and open G strings, similar to the main riff of ‘Seven Chinese Brothers’ from Reckoning. For the chorus, the momentum is halted again as we settle back into the intro riff. But this time, rather than feeling unstuck by it, it feels more like a reboot than an obstacle. Stipe repeats “Green grow the rushes grow” before informing us that the “Compass points to workers home.” He is cutting his political chops here, transitioning to the overtly political album that would come next with Life’s Rich Pageant.

At this point it would be a good time to talk about the lyrics. The full title of this album is Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables. Alternately, the album could be called Fables of the Reconstruction or Reconstruction of the Fables. Fables of the Reconstruction points to the storytelling nature of the album and the band’s pride in its Southern roots. But in Reconstruction of the Fables, we also get a re-imagining of the mystique that had surrounded the band to that point in their career. They seem to be interested in telling us more about themselves through the device of storytelling, especially storytelling of the Southern variety. We’ve heard so far on Fables the trains of ‘Driver 8’, the drunken dog catcher in ‘Old Man Kensey’, the disgruntled farmer in ‘Green Grow the Rushes’. These are all slices of Southern life. But it’s from this point onward that I find the album most interesting because lyrical perspective seems more personal.

For example, ‘Kohoutek’ ups the lyrical ante with Stipe brilliantly using the comet the song is named for as a metaphor for a relationship: “Courage built a bridge/ Jealous tore it down/ At least it’s something/ you’ve left behind/ Like Kohoutek/ you were gone.” And then at the end Stipe gets even more personal: “Michael built a bridge/ Michael tore it down/ If I stand and holler/ will I stand alone?” This is a young and already accomplished lyricist maturing.

‘Auctioneer’ is a driving rocker, notable for Buck’s jagged guitar riff and Berry’s driving snare. But it’s the lyrics you remember, as Stipe sings of getting to the train on time and taking a nickel to make a dime. The lyric - “Take this penny and make it a necklace when I leave” - was inspired by his grandfather who gave his grandchildren pennies before train trips from Atlanta. The children, Stipe included, would put the pennies on the track for the train to run over. The short but intense song ends with Buck wailing a battle-cry reminiscent of The Edge’s work and Michael’s plea to “Listen to the barter holler.”

The album then closes with ‘Good Advices’ and ‘Wendell Gee’. ‘Good Advices’ is a pretty basic song musically, with a standard 4/4 beat and the typical Buckian strum and jangle. Still, there’s enough of the descending chord progression evident (thanks to Mills’ heavy bass lines) to complement Stipe’s poignant lyrics and tie it all up into Fables’ penultimate song. As the title suggests, it’s almost valedictory in its narrative – “When you greet a stranger/ Look at their shoes/ Keep your money in your shoes/ Keep your hat on your head” - though, in keeping with the theme of the album, its advice you’d seem to hear on a dusty road in a small southern town. But as in ‘Kohoutek’, the song soars when Michael gets personal, as he does when he sings: "At the end of the day/ I'll forget your name/ I'd like it here if I could leave/ And see you from a long way away." My God, when I first heard those words I thought I’d discovered the Bible. I still believe it’s one of the most beautiful lines I’ve ever heard. If every moment of this album were plotted to show their connection to me as a listener, this would be the peak, the spot where the album became attached to me for the last twenty-five years. A song buried at the end of the album, probably forgotten by more than remember it, is the one I still love all these years later. (Of course, I have a tendency to go for the obscure pieces. ‘Masonic Funeral March’ is my favorite Mozart piece and I only know of it because it happened to be included in a CD of piano concertos I picked up about a decade ago. I’ve never seen it on any other recording.) This is the beauty of art, and especially music.

As it turns out, ‘Good Advices’ seems to be the first step in a long goodbye, as if Stipe’s had enough and is giving us advice as he walks away. ‘Wendell Gee’ certainly sounds like a walking away; it makes the listener want to raise their hand and wave as if saying goodbye to someone in the distance. ‘Gee’ closes the album in a fitting and not so fitting way. It’s fitting because it’s the most “Southern” song on the album, complete with a banjo break. But it’s also not fitting because it’s an almost happy song, doused with major chords and Stipe’s hopeful refrain: “Whistle as the wind blows.” They may be outta here, but they’re glad they came. When the album closes, we don’t feel down at all, but upbeat, as if that had been the band’s intention all along. And with the distance of a quarter century, we don’t see the song as a good bye as much as just a poignant end to a poignant album.

What’s the sum total here? Musically, as has been pointed out since 1985, it’s an uneven album. Half the songs sound as if they were recorded at the bottom of a murky lake or recorded at normal speed and then slowed down, i.e., `Maps and Legends', `Old Man Kensey', `Green Grow the Rushes', `Kohoutek', and `Good Advices'. The other half sound as if they were recorded in real time and then sped up, i.e., `Driver 8', `Life and How to Live It', `Can't Get There From Here', and `Auctioneer'.

The album is restrained and disconnected, with songs searching for an identity. Much has been made about the band’s misery during the making of the album: the furious pace of constant touring and recording was finally getting to them; their decision to break with Don Dixon and Mitch Easter to inject Joe Boyd’s new blood into the mix, which precipitated the need to record in London, England; London itself, which was depressing, rainy, cold, and many miles from home. (How did they record such a “Southern” album in London?) All of this conspired against the band, and it was evident in the final product.

But, perhaps because of these challenges, there is a barely obscured emotional intensity that ties all the songs together despite their musical diversity. The album works as a whole. Some have even called it a concept album. And despite their challenges, or, again, perhaps because of them, the songs on Fables represent REM at their most mature musically and lyrically to that point.

I still love this album because it is a portrait of a band at a turning point; it’s about a band looking for the answers. To me, this accounts for the inconsistencies on the album - the momentum-killing choruses, the dark tones. The muddle represents a searching mind, and what a beautiful muddle it is. Besides, if this is what they could do when unsure of themselves, what could they do when they had everything figured out? Now that’s one question I’m sure glad we have the answer to.

Armed Forces came along at just the right time for me. I was a disillusioned high school senior ready to escape the hallowed halls of cliquedom, totally absorbed in myself and a paper I was writing for a Sociology class. Among the topics available I chose "Mercenaries" even though I was (and remain) a devout pacifist. Oh, the biting irony, I thought. A radical peacenik in enemy territory! It also helped that I'd recently discovered a copy of Soldier of Fortune magazine in a used book store and was utterly fascinated with this brazen subculture: survivalists, wholesale ammo clearinghouse advertisements, camouflage clothing trends, missives from professional soldiers in exotic lands whose only allegiance was to legal tender, and hot girls in bikinis brandishing semi-automatic weapons.

‘Oliver's Army’ was perfectly in tune with the paper I was writing:

Hong Kong is up for grabs
London is full of Arabs
We could be in Palestine
Overrun by a Chinese line
With the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne
But there's no danger
It's a professional career
Though it could be arranged
With just a word in Mr. Churchill's ear
If you're out of luck or out of work
We could send you to Johannesburg

I was aware of Elvis Costello, having seen his infamous 1977 performance on Saturday Night Live where he abruptly stopped playing ‘Less Than Zero’ (from his debut My Aim Is True) and apologized to the audience, saying "There's no reason for me to be doing this song." before launching into a sneering and self-absorbed (oh, how I could relate to that) ‘Radio Radio’ from This Year's Model. On the spot, Lorne Michaels banned him from SNL -- it was the stuff of legend. Still, I thought Costello was a bit of a joke, a strange New Wave punk in Buddy Holly glasses and pegged jeans with spasmodic pigeon-toed dance moves.

Months passed before I bought Armed Forces in, of all places, a Montgomery Ward department store. The album was like nothing I'd ever heard. At once modern and traditional, angry and pleading, intelligent and raucous, nerdy and heroic, the songs didn't so much speak to me as slap me around for waiting so long to buy the album.

Though not quite my favorite Elvis Costello album, it was the one that hooked me with its inventive sexual abstraction and words I'd never heard on a rock and roll album:

I was caught in the suction
By a face like a truncheon
I was down upon one knee
Stroking her vanity

I learned years later that, like much of Costello's work, this album went through dizzying changes. Originally titled Emotional Fascism, it opens with Accidents Will Happen’ which was the obvious choice, but not the first:

Oh I just don't know where to begin
Though he says he'll wait forever
It's now or never
But she keeps him hanging on
The silly champion
She says she can't go home
Without a chaperone . . .
Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone.

It was exactly those verbal moves in the last line that put me in a musical full-nelson and slammed me to the canvas. It was nerd-rock with guts and a clenched-jaw attitude. That and the in-your-face rhythm of Pete Thomas' drums, limber basslines of Bruce Thomas, Steve Nieve's theatrical piano and angular Moog pointillism, and Elvis' self-described hands of cement slashing at his Fender Jazzmaster. It was all so far removed from the Bob Seger, Chicago, Deep Purple, Molly Hatchet, Styx and Boston I'd been (willingly or not) subjected to. Also, I knew no one else in school who listened to Elvis Costello. I was an astonished and forlorn pioneer, baffled yet virtually heroic, listening to the likes of:

You'll be a joker all your life
A student at the comedy college

Sparks are flying from electrical pylons
Snakes and ladders running up and down her nylons
Ready to experiment, you're ready to be burned
If it wasn't for some accidents then some would never ever learn.

If that weren't enough, ‘Oliver’s Army’ and the cover of Nick Lowe's ‘(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?’ were the perfect partners to my little mercenary project, and in fact I listened to this album nonstop a dozen times while writing the paper. ‘Oliver's Army’ sounded equally brand-spanking new and cloyingly familiar, and it wasn't until later that I learned Steve Nieve's last-minute piano flourish owed no small debt to ABBA's ‘Dancing Queen’.

As fitting as this album was to teen angst about class and nationhood reduced to the scale of high school microcosm -- at that age, after all, personal problems seem global and sexual encounters can be covert and militaristic -- Armed Forces still holds up, highlighting Elvis' extensive musical, lyrical, and historical knowledge. ‘Accidents Will Happen’ was influenced equally by Burt Bacharach and Randy Newman, and the sonic wonders of Bowie's albums Station to Station and Heroes are evident on ‘Moods For Moderns’ and ‘Senior Service’. The Quisling Clinic mentioned in ‘Green Shirt’ was taken directly from a Wisconsin clinic of the same name, and Costello recognized the possibilities right away, as he wrote in the Rhino Records reissue liner notes:

"It was just up the road from our hotel. I didn't know much, but I knew a little history. 'Quisling' was the name of the Norwegian Fascist leader who betrayed his country in the Second World War. An entire Boys from Brazil-style fantasy could unravel from such a chance encounter."

Barney Bubbles' pop-art cover only served to accentuate the swirling emotional betrayals, chaos and lack of gravity in Costello's life on the road, as well as the increasing critical attention that was turning him into an "unpleasant character" in his own mind, distancing himself from his first wife. He eventually said about the recording sessions: "I was not quite 24 and thought I knew it all."

For all that Armed Forces is, it could have been even more. The songs that were edited out of the final mix – ‘Tiny Steps’, ‘Wednesday Week’, ‘Clean Money’ and ‘Talking In The Dark’ - all feature verbal gymnastic gems.

I wish I had your confidence
It's love and not coincidence
Do you say these words to everyone?
You're fantastic, you're terrific
Your excellence is almost scientific.
You took the words out of my mouth
You put the tongue into my cheek
But I'd better lose my memory by Wednesday Week.

These lyrics would probably have made my 18-year-old head explode.

As for the doomed Sociology paper, I recall getting a 'C' for lack of objectivity and for including too many Armed Forces references.