1,000,000

The R.E.M. Breakdown

This week jD and Rico continue on their journey through R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town as they discuss the first song from the second side, 1,000.000.

Transcript:

[0:16] Hey, it's JD here, and I'm joined as always by my friend Rico Borrego to discuss.

[0:20] The work of the influential American band, REM.

Every week, we'll explore a different song in the band's catalog, working through the discography in chronological order to better understand just why this four-piece is considered soseminal, innovative, and downright awesome. So there's that.

Talk to me, Rico. How the hell are things going this week?

You know, it's been a long week for me. It's been a long week.

Um i got over a little bit of a cold ah so you could say i don't feel like um a million but uh it's also been a busy week for the band um we have some some exciting news from from remthat we haven't it won't be news by the time it won't be news by the time you're listening to this because we're recording a couple in advance but go ahead and share the news rico it'spretty Pretty fucking cool.

Yeah. Well, um, actor Michael Shannon, he has his own REM tribute band.

And I know last year they did some shows, but this year they're traveling to different cities and touring and playing all of murmur.

Um, and there's some select shows where they're doing reckoning as well.

Um, they'll play all through murmur and then they'll do an encore with just some of the other greatest hits from the band.

And I believe last week, their first show was in Athens.

[1:50] And during the show, all four founding members of REM eventually got up on stage.

And all of them but Michael played with the band during certain songs.

Like on A Perfect Circle, you had Bill playing the piano.

[2:06] And in other certain songs, Mike was playing bass and Peter was playing guitar.

And it was the first time in 17 years that all four members were on the same stage or in the same room together publicly that is just so badass i had a lot of respect for michael shannonbefore even in his turd role as zod um general zod uh in the superman reboot you know which was a weak character but he was a strong point in the movie and uh gosh i'm trying to thinkof the other one that i saw tiff is it lady in the water um something like that the shape of water the shape of water no it's not is it the shape of water well he's in one called shape of waterthat i saw in theaters yeah yeah it's by uh gilmore the director gilmore del toro that's right yeah that's the one shape of water yeah he's fantastic in that yeah and i didn't even love that filmbut anytime i i see him in a movie he's great knives out it's a fun movie that he's in and he an ensemble cast and he's great in that um he was in that waco tv show too limited tv show that'sright and he was really good in that too yes he was yeah but who knew that he can sing yeah he can sing and he kind of sounds like michael stipe yeah very cool and it's yeah it's it'sinteresting you don't really see a lot of actors who are like oh on.

[3:32] My downtime i'm gonna go and play in a tribute band to uh you know right and go tour and tour a specific album all the way through yeah you don't see it like i mean i'm guessingthey're riding a bus like you know like they're doing it like like they're playing what is it like 10 dates yeah and they're playing fairly small venues too too so they're not you know we hadit together if we had it together we should have went to athens for that yeah yeah that was well and i didn't expect i mean when when they announced this news um you know i saw it popup on on different websites but you know i don't think anyone expected the band to show up um that makes sense especially for the athens show but, um usually you would just expect likeuh mike to show up or peter the both of them but, michael and bill too that's just kind of crazy to think that they'd all be there for a show yeah are they all still living in atlanta.

[4:31] Um that i have no brother like i mean george is what i meant yeah i don't i don't know um i i want to say whenever i see michael post on his instagram it's usually like in new york ohokay so um but it wouldn't surprise me if yeah it wouldn't surprise me if like uh mike still lived there but um clearly they thought this was special enough for them to take time out of theirweek and you know be there for that special occasion well the 40 watt club is a is a special place right yes especially to rem yeah that's what i mean yeah yeah it's and you can go onlineand watch videos from the show and they all sound fantastic michael shannon his voice great he really pulls off that kind of mumble singing that you know michael did in the 80s yeahand yeah hopefully hopefully down there hopefully Hopefully it was professionally recorded, and maybe down the road we'll get some type of release for it.

I think that'd be fantastic.

I wonder if you're right. Because Michael Shannon was in it, there might be some sort of documentary or something like that. Yeah, that'd be cool.

Yeah. Or some type of touring DVD where at each show they have a song that they recorded, either on video or audio.

Yeah, that would be cool. even a release of Murmur like their version of Murmur.

[5:59] Yeah, I mean, I would dig anything from it, especially because I don't have an opportunity to go see this tour.

I think they are coming to California, but I just... Well, I thought it was strictly East Coast, but you might be right. Oh, it might be.

If that's the case, then I don't feel as bad missing it because...

Yeah, it's not like you're going to jump on a plane.

Yeah, I've never really had the opportunity to travel for a show.

[6:25] So, yeah. But some people do. Some people will travel with the band.

I'm sure some people on REM tour, they follow them state to state, you know?

Oh, yeah. I did it with Pavement. I followed them through the UK a couple years ago. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah. My girlfriend did that with one of her favorite bands, Meat Math. She went and saw them at all the California dates. I remember Meat Math.

Oh, yeah? Really? What was their big song? I think they had a song for Apple back in the day. Their biggest song was Typical.

Yeah. We used that at Apple. oh wow and one of the apple maybe it was only for like uh our side of things like it wasn't customer facing but definitely it was uh it was oh wow i'll have totell her about that she'll be it's not everyone you run into knows that band you know they're right i mean like yeah when that first album came out in that first single you know it got a goodamount of airplay but then And yeah, they just never got the success of other bands from the 2000s. Yeah.

Well, shall we spin Million? Yeah. Let's give it a listen and then we'll talk about it.

[7:36] Cool. We'll be right back after this. This is Million on the REM Breakdown.

[10:41] Alright, that was Million, the first song on the second side of Chronic Town.

And right off the bat, would you call this song Million, or do you say A Million?

Because I say A Million even though I'm sure it's just Million.

I mean, it's not spelled out, it's, you know, the numbers, so.

I'm a stickler. He sings a million. I'm a stickler, and the title of the song is Million, so I gotta go with Million.

Yeah, that makes sense. Or would you say One Million?

Well yeah i mean i think you would say written down i think you'd say one million but like in a song he sings i think i just say a million.

[11:22] Because that's what he sings in the song yeah you know but there's so many songs that the title is not exactly what is sung in the song you know right yeah um but but what do youthink of it i mean it's it is uh funny enough i was doing some some research and uh if you if you listen to the first episode of the chronic town that we did we mentioned that on the back ofthe uh record and the cd the track list is kind of out of order but what i read was it was just a misprint because the first two songs listed on the back are million and then stumble and then ithas wolves lower and the rest so they were just flipped it's like they put the songs on side two listed first and then the songs so they're not completely there is like an order to it they're justthe first two songs are swapped yeah right right yeah so that's wild i didn't want to point that out um but it is the first side of the the poster torn yeah side of chronic town um yeah for me ithink this song uh starts with with more clean sounding guitar and i immediately think if there was distortion on this guitar with uh with the vocals that um stipe.

[12:43] Gives like it's got a real monster feel to it it's got a star 69 like in terms of the vocal you're blowing my mind because i shit you not i have that exact thing in my notes i can't no icould even even down to star 69 it's the vocal it's like this This is like a kind of a demo for way down the road with Monster. Yeah, it has that.

He's singing kind of fast and the words are kind of trailing as like the end of the verse comes.

And then he does a little kind of flip up in the melody.

Is it is exactly like Star 69?

[13:20] Yeah, I can't get over the fact that this is.

This is their first EP, and they're already giving us blueprints for a record that doesn't come out for, like, eight records from now. Yeah. You know?

We're not going to be talking about that song for, like, at least another year. Yeah.

[13:37] But no, I have the exact same thing on my notes. I'm so glad that you felt the exact same way, because I was thinking I was going to mention it, and you were going to be like, oh,I've never thought about it.

But no, you said exactly what I was going to say.

[13:50] Um i love the i love the drum sounds after the chorus coming into the coming into the second verse like those quick fills uh it's not even really a fill but it's just like the the drumpattern is is really cool sounding he's very bill is very tom heavy on this whole i've noticed on this whole ep like this song and the next song to stumble like he's doing a lot of of actions onthe toms um which i always love it kind of gives it like a tribal kind of sound yeah um and and really i kind of you know as we're going through and analyzing each song on the cp i kindof think bill's like the star like the rest of the band every band member is pulling their part you know but bill just really stands out like eventually like maybe three four albums in like i feellike he's playing more for the song which is that's that's you know a great thing as well but I think on this EP really shows off he's like he's doing more fills he's he's doing more kind oflike just kind of different you know on other songs on chronic town you kind of have like a disco drum beat and he's just doing a little more experimentation I feel like then a couplealbums you know down the road.

[15:08] Yeah, I also have to give them huge props for, in the context of the EP, the cohesiveness of this EP.

Like, everything sort of fits together like a nice jigsaw puzzle.

Not that you have to do the work, because it's only a five-piece puzzle.

But it's really cohesive in that way.

And I think that, you know, again, it's just showing a level of maturity that you don't see with 20-year-olds very often.

[15:38] Yeah and it's hard to you know like when i ever think of an ep i kind of think of it as like oh these are maybe songs that couldn't they couldn't quite find room for them on anotheralbum or whatever but totally this is basically almost like their first album even though it's not considered an album murmurs the first album like this is like their first besides ready foreurope you know this was like their first set of songs yes but it sounds like fully fleshed out which a lot of you don't don't you know it really really does so what what have you got becausei've had nothing really uh on the lyrics well um this was one of the many songs from this ep that they played in 2008 or 2007 for the live with olympia um live album and before the songMichael has a little intro where he says lots lots of death in this one I don't know where I was in the early 80s and so I now when I listen to the song I don't get death from it but when Iwas looking more at the lyrics you know there are lyrics that when I did some research.

[16:53] They're in the verse, he says, secluded in a marker stone.

That's right, yeah. And I was doing some research, and there's this thing in Georgia called the Georgia Guidestones.

It's in Elbert County in Georgia.

Okay. And I guess it was a monument made because people thought that there was going to be some type of apocalypse, and that humans would need a guidestone to guide them throughthis apocalypse.

That was the belief of the guy who made the monument in Georgia.

And some people even believe that the monument was connected to Satanism.

Oh, wow. And a lot of people think that the line secluded in a marker stone could be referencing that monument, which makes sense because it was in Georgia. Yeah.

[17:42] And then another interpretation of the lyrics is that, you know, in the chorus, Michael is singing, I could live a million. I could live a million years.

And some people think because of the references to tombs and ruins and the marker stone that Michael could be singing like about some type of like vampire or some type of creature thatlike never dies, that lives for forever.

I find that to be a little bit more of a stretch. But, you know, I could read into the lyrics.

I can kind of see that. um i just happen to think and some other people think that the song is just you know it doesn't have specifics when it comes to the verses but the chorus and the ideaof the song is that, you know when you when you're living a part of your life where everything is breezy you know and everything's going right you feel like you could live a million yearsyou know like yeah you just feel invincible and you just feel unstoppable you know so um you know i there's not You know, there's there's never two other than that intro before that liveperformance.

[18:48] At the Olympia show like you know, there's he's never come out and said the song is about this or that but, um i definitely do that he doesn't do that a whole lot no exactly umespecially with these early lyrics i mean he's mentioned before in interviews that you know the first album and so like a lot of it was gibberish right and i think this song does have somegibberish but i do think like the marker stone reference with the guide stone the actual monument i do think that there might be some truth in that yeah oh that would be cool if it wereyeah it's you know again it's between all the like the things he mentions about georgia and of course like the, murmur cover which we'll talk about in a future episode um it makes me wantto go and visit georgia and go to these like you know have like a bucket list of things related to rem to visit maybe we'll do a live live episode from georgia someday dude yeah that i meanthat would be great.

[19:45] But yeah overall i i i really enjoy the song it really has just an upbeat feel to it like you listen to it you just kind of you nod your head and you're tapping your foot it just makes youfeel happy the chorus is beautiful yeah like the melody michael's melody in the chorus that's the hook to me like yeah that's the part that gets stuck in my head um oh other than the starour 69 vocal delivery of the yeah yeah peter's playing buddy well i just really like peter's playing on the song he's doing more of those like you know jingly arpeggios um yeah and thesecond verse um instead of doing the arpeggios for the second half of the second verse he does kind of this more just guitar strum which you know kind of has a dreamy tone to it which ireally enjoy it has a really short bridge which kind of.

[20:40] It's kind of one of those ridges where it's like, did the song need the bridge? No.

But does it add a lot to the song? It's super short. No. But yeah, it's just kind of a transition.

It just kind of gets you from point A to point B.

[20:55] I really love the intro of the song, like you were mentioning.

And I like that that's how it closes out the song.

It's a good bookmark. you know um and really the last thing i have for the song is that um it was actually played 193 times live um so it was a staple in like the early 80s when they wereplaying live um and again it made a return in 2000 2007 where it was played seven more times between 2007 2008 uh and there's There's a video on YouTube from a performance inNorth Carolina in 1982, where supposedly Mitch Easter, producer, is on stage playing guitar on this song.

Get out of here. He's playing second guitar in the background. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So at least that's what people in the comments say. There's definitely someone else on stage and everyone's like, oh, that's Mitch Easter.

Well, that sounds really... I got to check that out. Yeah.

But no, yeah. Yeah, I think it's a really strong song. It's not the most memorable song, like maybe from the ZP.

You know, I think we both probably prefer like gardening at night, but it's a fun one.

It's and it's fun and it's short. It's like to the point.

[22:13] It's barely three minutes. So it's, you know, it's just a fun song.

Nothing offensive about it at all. No. Yeah. And like I said, it's it's I've kind of put it up there with some of their songs, earlier earlier songs like a murmur where they're just light fastupbeat songs that just make you smile you know you're in and you're in and out totally exactly yeah well that's what we got for you this week hope you enjoyed yourself on behalf of ricoand myself blink your eyes and we'll be back.