Behka’s Secret Stash: REM Edition [VIDEO]

Kids, we've discussed music here and on the show several times.  It's almost like... it's something we do around here.   One of my favorite bands of all time, which we play from time to time here on BOB, is REM.

REM was one of the first bands I "discovered" on my own and followed up on.  I remember quite clearly being on the very dreadful school bus in the sixth grade - I want to say this was when I was 11, so it might have been all of 1991.  I was on the bus, listening to the radio through my tape Walkman, because, well, the girl next to me liked to make fun of me.  And then, I heard it.

"Losing My Religion" was unlike anything I had heard up to that point, and I was intrigued to say the least.  I saved up my  money, went to the little record store that used to be on Thompson Boulevard, and bought a cassette copy of Out of Time.   If I remember rightly, it cost me $12.99.

Over the years, I came to be the kind of person who once I found a band or a group or a singer that I particularly enjoyed, I had to know everything and anything about them.  This was before the days of the internet, and so I had to go to the library, I had to listen to the radio, I had to try to get tapes and albums.  I eventually got my hands on all of REM's catalogue right around when the the next album came out, the eternal classic Automatic for the People.

I did my searches and as I learned all I could about REM, it also took a lot of listening to decipher what Michael Stipe, the lead singer, was actually saying.  Sometimes, there were layers of different background vocals that I tried to hear over and over again.  They didn't include lyric sheets at the time, and it's not like I could have Googled it in 1992.

This song has been one of my favorites, and one of the hardest to figure out, and I've had a lot of great memories of sitting in the basement next to my speakers, trying my darndest to figure it out.

This song is from the very first official EP they put out, "Chronic Town."  This was very very early 80's, before they made it really big in 1987, with Document.

As an REM fan, I share this with you and hope you enjoy it; seeing videos like this is all I'll ever get now that they've broken up.  I never did get to see them live, and it's one of my "shoulda woulda" moments in life.

Growingly yours,

Behka