Rapid Heart Movement

The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, as a concept, is a wholly stupid idea. Taking something as subjective as music and trying to measure it by the same standards as baseball and football players is just ridiculous. It's bad enough that Billboard tracks sales of records instead of just letting them stand on their merits. That anybody buys an album because of how much it sold is so foreign to me. Radiohead debuts at number one every time they out out a new disc, but that doesn't stop me from thinking they suck hard and are one of the most pedestrian and overly-pretentious bands of the last decade. That they will be in the R & R HOF someday and Robyn Hitchcock won't is all the proof I need that it is a joke. And also pointless. So pointless, in fact, that they put the actual museum for it in Cleveland.

That being said, I have to admit I was interested and excited about REM being inducted last night. For the first time they were airing the induction ceremony live on VH1 Classic. I didn't even know there was such a thing as VH1 Classic until I heard about this. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found out that we actually have it, buried in with the other gazillion pointless stations that come with digital cable. So I stayed up last night watching the ceremony waiting for them to get to Michael Stipe and company. The good thing about it is that when they do the inductions you get treated to a performance of a few songs from the artists being honored or maybe a few of their songs being performed by another band if it someone who is dead or a band that refuses to reunite for the occasion. Or in the case of the Sex Pistols refusing to even accept being inducted, which was just brilliant last year. That was my favorite Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame moment ever, them being told to fuck off by the Sex Pistols.

So I wanted to see REM perform last night because original drummer Bill Berry was going to be with them in one of only a handful of times he's performed with them since leaving ten years ago. No way I could miss it. I had to endure the crappiest band ever Velvet Revolver butchering Van Halen before it got there, but I finally got my payoff.

They were inducted by Eddie Vedder, who feted them in a really sweet, albeit clumsy, speech. He said something about REM not only being able to hit the emotions that were already in your heart but also putting some there that didn't exist before. I really understood what he meant.

REM has been in the soundtrack of my life for so very long. I met the girl who would become my wife because of an REM concert. They got inducted last night less than a week after the 18th anniversary of that night and one week before our third wedding anniversary. And it was happening just a few blocks from where we live.

But their music has been more then just something that coincidentally coincided with my personal life. REM is more than any other group responsible for my lifelong love, some would say obsession, with music and even, dare I say such a gooberistic and melodramatic thing, my musical awakening.

I grew up in Stone Mountain, GA, a short 60 miles from Athens. So I became aware of them a lot sooner than if I had grown up somewhere else in the country. I think I was about 14 or 15 when I first heard them. Up to that age in my life I liked music but I had no real love of anything. I know people my age that grew up with parents who introduced them to things like Highway 61 Revisited, Sgt. Pepper, Joni Mitchell's Clouds, Velvet Underground and Nico, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Who or even Tom Waits. My mom listened to the Four Seasons and Air Supply. The first record either of my parents ever got me was my dad's birthday gift of Bobby Vinton's Greatest Hits. My second one was my mother giving me Disco Duck. You could see why I didn't think I liked music very much.

This all changed after hearing REM. Though I did discover U2 (the first band I truly loved) before them, it wasn't until hearing REM that I really started to discover my passion for music. They were responsible for leading me directly to both Robyn Hitchcock and Billy Bragg, two singer-songwriters who would go on to surpass REM as my favorites. But they didn't just lead me to other great music directly. They showed me that there was more to find out there beyond the shitty pop they played on Z-93 in Atlanta, which as a kid I thought was the only radio station that existed since it was all that got listened to in my house.

After REM happened for me I never heard music the same way again. And I actively sought out new and interesting stuff as much as I could, spending hours upon hours in local record stores in search of anything that "spoke" to me. If I hadn't heard them in my teen years, I don't know if I would have ever become as curious about music.

I also don't know if I'd be alive.

I had a rough time in my teen years, like a lot of people. On top of having to deal with being a social outcast in high school, we also moved right before my senior year. Because my life wasn't difficult enough in high school without having to be a new kid on top of it. I guess my mother didn't think high school sucked enough for me so she had to give it a nice twist for my last year. And we moved to a suburban hell called Lake Zurich, IL that I considered the worst place on planet Earth until I lived in Boston. Luckily for me the great album Document came out close to the beginning of the school year. It was the perfect soundtrack for my life that year, with its beautiful raw energy. Peter Buck's most wailing guitar work, a driving rhythm anchored by Bill Berry's ferocious drumming and the most intense Stipe has ever been vocally. It was the perfect soundtrack for my senior year. And I listened to it almost every day. I had to.

Suicidal teenager is probably one way to describe me at 17. Coming home from another day of being knocked up against the lockers by the idiot football player tying to prove how tough he is by picking on a geek, having my hair made fun of by the cheerleader bimbo who sat behind me in Consumer Econ and being challenged to fights by some jackass named John Knox because he didn't like the way I dressed or my political leanings (I wore a peace sign button on my jacket). Or it was because he had a small dick, I forget which. And then I had to go home to an emotionally and physically abusive mother who liked to tell me that I would get along better in school if I tried to "fit in". There were so many days I just wanted it to end. And I really thought about ending it so many times.

But I would put on my headphones, slap Document in the CD player and crank the volume as high as I could handle. The opening riffs of Finest Worksong would come on and fill me with its energy. By the time I got to It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) nothing seemed so bad anymore. And by the ending of Oddfellows Local 151 the day would usually be washed away and I could breathe again. On some days, especially when my mother was in a particularly raging mood about her life and decided to take it out on her children again, it took more than one listening. Sometimes three or four.

But it always worked. And I believe it's why I survived my teen years.

I've always said that if I ever got the chance to meet anybody in REM I would thank them for saving my life. Without Document I really think there is a good chance I would have been one of those 17 year-olds who gets found in the bathtub with slit wrists or hanging in the garage.

Even though they are not my favorite band anymore and I've really not liked their last few albums, no band could ever hold the special place in my heart that they do. Hell, I wouldn't even have the phrase "favorite band" in my vocabulary if it weren't for them. Or a wife.

And keeping me from killing myself was pretty good too.

Thank you Bill, Peter, Mike and Michael.