Peo­ple lose their reli­gion all the time. It hap­pens in all sorts of ways. And R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Los­ing My Reli­gion” has spo­ken to so many in the midst of these expe­ri­ences that we might won­der if singer/songwriter Michael Stipe had a sim­i­lar life change when he wrote those lyrics. Not so much, he says above in an inter­view with Dutch sta­tion Top 2000 a gogo. “What the song is about has noth­ing to with reli­gion,” he says.

The lyric comes from an old South­ern col­lo­qui­al­ism mean­ing that some­thing so upset­ting has hap­pened “that you might lose your reli­gion.” Stipe used that old-time notion as a metaphor for unre­quit­ed love, a dif­fer­ent kind of faith, one he describes in painful­ly ten­ta­tive terms: “hold­ing back, then reach­ing for­ward, then pulling back again, then reach­ing for­ward again.”

He explains anoth­er of the song’s ambi­gu­i­ties hid­den with­in the ellip­ti­cal lyrics: “You don’t ever real­ly know if the per­son that I’m reach­ing out for is aware of me, if they even know that I exist.” It’s the heady tur­moil of a roman­tic crush raised to the heights of saint­ly suf­fer­ing. A brood­ing, alt-rock ver­sion of love songs like “Earth Angel.” Giv­en the role of devo­tion in so much reli­gious prac­tice, there’s no rea­son the song can’t still be about los­ing one’s reli­gion for lis­ten­ers, but now we know what Stipe him­self had in mind.

Some oth­er fun facts we learn about this huge hit: Stipe record­ed the song almost naked and kind of pissed-off—he had pushed to deliv­er his vocals in one emo­tion­al take, but the stu­dio engi­neer seemed half-asleep. And his awk­ward, angu­lar dance in the oh-so-90s video direct­ed by Tarsem Singh, above? He pulled his inspi­ra­tion from Sinead O’Connor’s St. Vitus dance in 1990s’ “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and—no surprise—from David Byrne’s “riv­et­ing” herky-jerky moves.

While the record com­pa­ny saw the song’s mass appeal, bassist Mike Mills express­es his ini­tial sur­prise at their choice of “Los­ing My Reli­gion” as Out of Time’s first sin­gle: “That’s a great idea. It makes no sense at all, it’s 5 min­utes long, it has no cho­rus, and a man­dolin is the lead instru­ment. It’s per­fect for R.E.M. because it flouts all the rules.” This peri­od saw the band fur­ther devel­op­ing its moody down­beat folk side, yet the album that pro­duced this song also gave us “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” the pop­pi­est, most upbeat song R.E.M.—and maybe any band—had ever record­ed, a true tes­ta­ment to their emo­tion­al range.

The fol­low­ing year, Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple came out, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al writ­ten dur­ing the Out of Time ses­sions and again fea­tur­ing two sin­gles that vast­ly con­trast­ed in tone, maudlin tear­jerk­er “Every­body Hurts” and the cel­e­bra­to­ry Andy Kauf­man trib­ute “Man on the Moon.” Anoth­er song from that album that didn’t get as much atten­tion, “Try Not to Breath,” hear­kens back to a much ear­li­er R.E.M. folk song, the Civ­il War-themed “Swan Swan H” from Life’s Rich Pageant.

As we hear the band explain above in an episode of Song Exploder, the song began its life on a Civ­il War-era instru­ment, the dul­cimer. Then its son­ic influ­ences expand­ed to include two of Peter Buck­’s favorite musi­cal gen­res, surf rock and spaghet­ti west­ern. The episode con­tains many more fas­ci­nat­ing insid­er insights from R.E.M. about “Try Not to Breathe,” which may be one of the sad­dest songs they’ve ever writ­ten, a song about choos­ing to die rather than suf­fer.

Hear the song’s orig­i­nal demo and ref­er­ences to Blade Run­ner, get a glimpse into Stipe’s visu­al song­writ­ing process, and learn the very per­son­al inspi­ra­tion from his fam­i­ly his­to­ry for lyrics like “baby don’t shiv­er now, why do you shiv­er now?” Unlike “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” this song does, in some ways, pull musi­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly from Stipe’s reli­gious back­ground.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

As the “King” of Amer­i­can pop cul­ture in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, Elvis embod­ied so many of his country’s con­tra­dic­tions. Revival­ist of the “love and theft” of black Amer­i­can music and per­for­mance; hum­ble, small town mama’s boy and duti­ful sol­dier who built a cult of mod­ern celebri­ty and a gar­ish tem­ple to con­spic­u­ous excess; self-appoint­ed cru­sad­er who railed against “the drug cul­ture” while his “legal” addic­tion to opi­ates and amphet­a­mines laid waste to his career and health.

Maybe in these con­flicts between humil­i­ty and fame-seek­ing, all-Amer­i­can whole­some­ness and trans­gres­sive seduc­tion, play­act­ing law­less­ness and mor­al­iz­ing law and order, his legions of fans saw their own split selves. His hip-shak­ing con­fi­dence seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­ed to both inflam­ing and sooth­ing anx­i­eties and safe­ly chan­nel­ing pent-up pas­sions. Cer­tain incon­sis­ten­cies in his per­sona did not seem to trou­ble him over­much.

But he was not a well man in the last sev­er­al years of his short life and his tenure in the glit­ter­ing faux-palaces of Las Vegas dra­mat­i­cal­ly has­tened the decline. While the real­i­ty of Elvis in Vegas was tacky and sad, the mythos of Elvis in Vegas made it “cool for fad­ing super­star per­form­ers to find a sec­ond (or even third) act of their career in Vegas,” writes Mike Sager at Bill­board. “Elvis paved the way for the likes of Brit­ney Spears,” whose big Amer­i­can rise and fall resem­bles his in many ways.

Elvis’ own attempt at a third (or fourth) act is pre­dictably trag­ic. Exploita­tive man­ag­er Colonel Tom Park­er pushed him out on tour in 1977, notes Andy Greene at Rolling Stone, “despite his hor­rid shape.” Park­er “arranged a cam­era crew to film the June 19th show in Oma­ha” in order to “get more prod­uct in to the stores”—perhaps sens­ing that Pres­ley did not have much fur­ther to go. The cam­eras kept rolling in stops through­out the Mid­west.

He was an absolute mess. He was only 42, but years of pre­scrip­tion drug abuse and hor­ri­fy­ing dietary habits had left him bloat­ed, depressed and near death. He had an enlarged heart, an enlarged intes­tine, hyper­ten­sion and incred­i­bly painful bow­el prob­lems. He was bare­ly sleep­ing and should have prob­a­bly been in the hos­pi­tal, but he was still a huge draw on the con­cert cir­cuit and the mon­ey was too good to turn down.

It is ugly to dwell on this peri­od, except that some­how those final con­certs pro­duced the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly poignant footage of “Unchained Melody” at the top in Rapid City, South Dako­ta. “With­out a doubt,” writes Greene, “it’s the last great moment of his career.” He digs deep, his voice is clear and strong. The jar­ring con­trast between how good he sounds and how ter­ri­ble he looks under­lines and bolds the lines—“time can do so much…”

At the last tour stop in Indi­anapo­lis, he bare­ly pulled off a ren­di­tion of “Are You Lone­some Tonight,” above. The song starts off real­ly strong but soon devolves into Elvis mut­ter­ing gib­ber­ish, sweat­ing, and gig­gling to him­self. This is hard to watch and it’s no won­der the tour footage, aired once on CBS, “has yet to resur­face in any offi­cial capac­i­ty. This isn’t the Elvis that his estate wants the fans to remem­ber.” Sure­ly those fans them­selves pre­fer the kitschy fan­ta­sy. Less than two months lat­er, he was gone.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch John­ny Cash’s Poignant Final Inter­view & His Last Per­for­mance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

Watch John Lennon’s Last Live Per­for­mance (1975): “Imag­ine,” “Stand By Me” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Imag­in­ing a “broth­er­hood of man” sounds Pollyan­naish and painful­ly naïve when even an “uneasy truce of man” seems hard­ly pos­si­ble. But when John Lennon sings about it with con­vic­tion in “Imag­ine,” we sit up and lis­ten. Such is the pow­er of “Imagine”’s utopi­an vision, and Lennon lat­er admit­ted it “should be cred­it­ed as a Lennon/Ono song,” since “a lot of it—the lyric and the concept—came from Yoko,” specif­i­cal­ly from Grape­fruit, her lit­tle book of whim­si­cal “instruc­tions.” For decades the pair’s col­lab­o­ra­tions have received with­er­ing scorn from Bea­t­les fans, but no greater tes­ta­ment to their com­bined human­ist vision exists than “Imag­ine,” a prod­uct of Ono’s con­cep­tu­al dream verse and Lennon’s earnest songcraft.

So much has been said and writ­ten about the song, so many great and not-so-great cov­ers per­formed since its 1971 release, that we might think we know all there is to know about it. We even have behind the scenes footage in the doc­u­men­tary Gimme Some Truth of the some­times tense record­ing ses­sions. Yet it turns out that the orig­i­nal demo ver­sion Lennon record­ed at his own Ascot Sound stu­dios went unno­ticed in a box of tapes for 45 years. We can cel­e­brate its 2016 redis­cov­ery and now hear it for our­selves, that eight-track tape trans­ferred to dig­i­tal and enhanced by engi­neer Paul Hicks, above.

The record­ing was dis­cov­ered by Rob Stevens who found it, reports Jason Kot­tke, “while sift­ing through box­es upon box­es of the orig­i­nal tapes for Yoko Ono.” It seems that improp­er label­ing damned the tape to decades of obscu­ri­ty. “There’s a one-inch eight-track,” remem­bered Stevens, “that says noth­ing more on the ‘Ascot Sound’ label than John Lennon, the date, and the engi­neer (Phil McDon­ald), with DEMO on the spine. No indi­ca­tion of what mate­r­i­al was on the tape.” The find was “true serendip­i­ty,” he remarks.

Hear­ing this mov­ing, stripped-down solo ver­sion reminds me of David Bowie telling an audi­ence in 1983—just before singing the song on his Seri­ous Moon­light tour—of how Lennon approached his song­writ­ing: “’It’s easy,’ he said, ‘you just say what you mean and put a back­beat to it.’” Even with­out the back­beat, “Imag­ine” says exact­ly what it means. Imag­ine all the peo­ple liv­ing for today.

A set of “Ulti­mate Mix­es” of the Imag­ine album will be released in Octo­ber (pre-order here) and will of course include the new­ly-unearthed demo along with many oth­er demos and rar­i­ties. Till then, enjoy this amaz­ing dis­cov­ery, just above.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Imag­ine”: A Touch­ing Trib­ute to His Friend John Lennon (1983)

Watch John Lennon’s Last Live Per­for­mance (1975): “Imag­ine,” “Stand By Me” & More

John Lennon Extols the Virtues of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion in a Spir­it­ed Let­ter Writ­ten to a Bea­t­les Fan (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Opel. That’s what Ken­neth Gold­smith (poet, crit­ic and found­ing edi­tor of UbuWeb) spot­ted in Tri­este, Italy sev­er­al days ago.

No, it’s not an offi­cial mod­el. It’s just an Opel Karl lov­ing­ly re-brand­ed by its own­er, an homage to one of the ground­break­ing elec­tron­ic com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Watch Karl­heinz Stockhausen’s Great Heli­copter String Quar­tet, Star­ring 4 Musi­cians, 4 Cam­eras & 4 Copters

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)