Unlisted blog

Once upon a time, I was young. It's hard to believe now, yes, but youth happened to me, too. In point of fact, I was precocious to the point of being born at an early age. About a dozen or so years after my first birthday, I entered the ranks of the world's most important people. And who would that be? Teenagers. Duh!

One of my first loves as a teenager was music. About 25 (gasp!) years ago, I found a band whose sound really spoke to me: R.E.M. I still have their first album, Murmur, 25 (gasp!) years later on the original vinyl. During the interlude between the decline of LP's and the rise of CD's, was the golden age of these funny little things called "cassette tapes." And I had more than a few R.E.M. tapes back in the day.

Most stores carried the entire R.E.M. catalog except for Chronic Town, their first EP. It was a lovely little ditty of a musical effort. My smallish college town of 16,000 people had a pretty limited musical landscape. When I was 15 years old, we finally got a real music store that ordered Chronic Town for me.

I loved that cassette no matter what. Okay, that's not exactly true. It disappointed me on exactly one occasion. It went missing one day and turned up on the kitchen counter. The seemingly innocent musical messenger, a direct connection between me and my musical idols, had allowed itself to be abducted by my then very evil mother.

ME: "How did this get here?"
MOM: "I borrowed it."
ME: (incredulous) "Huh? Why?!"
MOM: (without pretense) "I like it."

At age 15, you inhabit a universe filled with opportunistic interlopers known as Everybody Else. There are rules, nay laws, that Everybody Else constantly breaks because none of them bothers to check in with you regularly. Of course, none of them could have feigned ignorance because this rule and many others are part of the public record. These laws are laid out in a personal Constitution, whose Article 1 is unambiguously titled It's All About Me, Dammit!

Pursuant to that is Article 2, Section 1, which states clearly that, unless she buys you beer, your mom is not cool. She does not, therefore, listen to cool music willingly or accommodatingly. Rather, she must repeatedly say, "Can you PLEASE turn that down?!"

Eventually, a Bill of Rights was enacted that delineated the rights of others to inhabit some portions of the universe not at my immediate disposal. This was replaced by a Magna Carta that further reduced my royal rule, thereby allowing some to cohabit some of the space I'm currently using.

Yes, I grew up, folks. So, now, in recognition of the undeniable fact that I'm actually as uncool as my mom was supposed to be, I'm sharing R.E.M. with y'all. This is one of my fave songs from that once hard-to-find EP, titled "Wolves, Lower."



R.E.M. - "Wolves, Lower"
(chorus)
Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don't get caught
Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, let us out
Wilder lower wolves.
Here's a house to put wolves out the door
In a corner garden, wilder lower wolves
House in order (ah-hah ah-ah) (4 times)
Down there, they're rounding a posse to ride.

(repeat chorus)

Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don't get caught
Suspicion yourself, suspicion ourselves, suspicion myself
Wilder lower wolves. Here's a house to put wolves out the door
In a corner garden, wilder lower wolves
House in order (ah-hah ah-ah) (4 times)
Down there, they're rounding a posse to ride.