I have a paper due next Tuesday, and I'm going to be very busy thinking of ways to avoid working on it until then. So in the interest of being allowed to ignore this blog for awhile, here's a stack of thematically related Little Hits.

We've discussed in several entries the enormous effect R.E.M. had on the American indie scene in the early 80s; how overnight there seemed to be hundreds of similar bands with a spindly guitar sound and obscure, mumbled vocals. For me, it is very easy to understand how this happened. When I heard "Chronic Town" for the first time, I thought, "Wow! Someone has heard our prayers and is coming to save us." (Most of us had no inkling of the existence of the Hib-Tone 45 until R.E.M. had already become the "Beatles of College Radio.") When I bought Murmur, the only track I heard for the first two weeks was "Radio Free Europe," because I just kept playing that one song and over. In short, I was a raving, smitten fan; to this day, R.E.M. remains the only band besides the Embarrassment that I have ever written a fan letter to. For some reason I recall as a high school kid sitting at the dinner table with my father as he gave me a lecture about what a ridiculous bunch of queers all these rock musicians were with their outlandish costumes and such. I handed him some fanzine I was reading with a picture of R.E.M. on the cover. "What about these guys?" I asked. He regarded the photo carefully for a moment and then said, "Well, they look OK, I suppose you could look like them if you wanted to. Heck, you can even have a Nehru jacket." So you see, they could charm anybody.

And so they did, to an almost unhealthy extent. Many of these bands were centered around the band's Athens home base. For instance, the Kilkenny Cats. Their debut 45 was so obviously influenced by REM as to be comical; nevertheless, my pal David Ring and I played it incessantly. Exactly what the hell the singer is groaning about is unclear to me, but the temerity of that ridiculous three note guitar solo speaks loud and clear. Dreams so Real were also from Athens. Their debut 45 is J-A-N-G-L-Y, and perhaps their best-ever tune. Their subsequent LP on Coyote suffered from mediocre songwriting, later LPs on Arista brought them some national attention, but had a much more commercial sound that I didn't find nearly as appealing. A bit up the road, Atlanta's Blue TV made only this one 45 to my knowledge. New York's Erratic Sculpture, again laughably imitative, had a similarly lengthy discography. The Chant, from Florida, made two surprisingly strong LPs. Their devotion went so far as to name a song "Heaven Assumes" after a bit of lyric in "Perfect Circle," though they were probably equally influenced by garage psychedelia. (Their debut LP contains a swell cover of the Nightcrawlers' "Little Black Egg.") And perhaps the best of these is the gem from Idiot Savant, a Minneapolis combo who made just this 12" EP. "Throw It Away" demonstrates the power of an inspired moment of catchiness to render its trappings irrelevant. I should mention that one of the members of Idiot Savant, Kent Militzer, is the flash guitarist behind Little Hits Hall of Famers/cartoon rockers the Vandalias, as well as the soon-to-be-famous Stingray Green.

R.E.M.'s inspiration was inevitably a mixed a mixed blessing that grew worse as the influences narrowed. R.E.M. made some wonderful records by combining the influences of the Byrds, The Velvet Underground, country music, and many other idioms and artists. Then along came a horde of bands like One Plus Two that seemed to be influenced solely by R.E.M. without benefit of knowledge of any of the bands R.E.M. loved. Then we got to the point where we were one more generation removed; where bands were influenced solely by one of the bands that mimicked R.E.M. and of course things were pretty weak and diluted at that point. The same thing would happen a few years later to an even greater degree with a band known as Pavement.

My love affair with REM continued for several years through the beautiful Reckoning, the flawed but intriguing Fables of the Reconstruction, and the increasing clarity and commerciality of Life's Rich Pageant. For some reason Document threw a wrench in the works; I don't know if the chief cause was the gradual abandonment of the Byrdsy guitar sound, the competition with other bands and styles I was more interested in, or the fact that this LP contained the most annoying single of their career ("It's the End Of The World As We Know It"). I've never bought any of the WB albums, but I have never had the sense that R.E.M. was doing anything other than exactly what they wanted to.

Oh, and for you smart-assed youngsters who think it's safe to slag R.E.M. because they're beloved by yuppies and suburban moms: back around the time you were born, just as they were emerging as the biggest indie band in America, the members of this band (especially Peter Buck, who penned a wonderful manifesto in Record magazine called "The New Spirit of American Rock" shortly before he produced the Feelies' best album) were taking time in every interview to sing the praises of the American bands they saw as their comrades; bands like Mission of Burma, the Replacements, the Minutemen and other seminal, ultra-hip bands you discovered last year by reading about their reunion tour in Wire. Chump.