I Want You to R.E.M.ember: R.E.M on Letterman 1983-1995

Rock Turtleneck presents "I Want You to R.E.M.ember," the first in an ongoing series of tributes to R.E.M. on the occasion of their disbandment.

R.E.M.'s national television debut on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman in the fall of 1983 was the college rock equivalent of The Beatles playing the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. 

Music fans hungry for an alternative to the Foreigners and REO Speedwagons of the era saw a band of Southerners charge out of the gates with the seismic "Radio Free Europe" fueled by an energy, eccentricity and commitment that made it clear that this was a band to watch and listen to.

Their debut LP Murmur was already legendary, a strangely assured and worldly piece of work, despite being a mere six months old. Already a devoted fan, I stayed up that night to watch them play and taped it on my VCR - the tape still resides in the humidity-controlled subterranean RT archives.



After the commercial break, Letterman engaged in some awkward conversation with guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills. Michael Stipe refrained from conversation due to shyness or affectation and sat on Bill Berry's drum riser, turning another rock convention — the singer as spokesman — on its head.

Then the band cemented their college rock-god status by not playing another track from Murmur in favor of a song they called "too new to be named" - the gorgeous "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)," which would be the lead single off their next LP Reckoning. Here was a band confident enough to suggest tha ast great as the songs on Murmur were, the next ones would be even better.



R.E.M. didn't return to Letterman's show for 12 years.

By 1995, both had graduated from fringe cult heroes to mainstream superstars. Letterman had the dominant 11:30 talk show on CBS and his own theatre — the Ed Sullivan Theatre, which The Beatles had rocked 30 years earlier.

In the midst of its worldwide Monster tour, R.E.M. was probably the biggest band in the world. Playing the post-glam "Crush with Eyeliner," it was obvious that they were a little older and a lot more professional, but still as compelling as they had been eight or so albums earlier.

At the end of the performance, Stipe, who'd long since shed his shell of shyness to become one of rock's most flamboyant frontmen, sat on his PA monitor rather than engage with Letterman - a subtle yet unmistakable nod to his fans that underscored how much had changed for all of us in all those years.




Bonus R.E.M./Letterman clip:  "What's the Frequency Kenneth" featuring Dan Rather


Buy R.E.M. on iTunes here

Take a Picture Here, Take a Souvenir: R.I.P. R.E.M.

2011 Austin City Limits Music Festival: the Rock Turtleneck Executive Summary

Three days. Five stages. Six bloody marys. 130 bands. 70,000 hipsters. Countless pork products. Yes, it's going to take some time to process my magical experience at the 2011 Austin City Limits festival this past weekend.

Rock Turtleneck (seen here taking in the Mavis Staples show in the Gospel Tent) will be recapping ACL over the next week or so but in the meantime, here is what business school grads would call an Executive Summary of what I learned:

• Many of the best sets were by people I’d only vaguely heard of before I got there: Seattle-bred country spitfire Brandi Carlisle; Elbow, from Manchester – like Peter Gabriel with a sense of humour; and J Roddy Watson and the Business, who provided the ideal musical bed on which to play hacky sack with hipsters in skin tight blue and green body suits (long story).

• Nonviolence is best achieved not through Buddhism or Pacifism but through free water bottle refills courtesy of Camelbak.

• Coldplay sucks. Admit it - in your heart, you've always known it. Their headlining set was boring and their top billing exposed them as poseurs to the Important Band crown. They are musical Brylcreem: a little dab'll do ya. If Gwyneth Paltrow was at ACL, she’s probably already left her Coldplay-fronting husband for J Roddy.

• Stevie Wonder, who looks, sounds and acts almost exactly like he did 30 years ago (he said he's lost some weight), gave the Festival’s best performance (that I saw anyway).

As the truly amazing clip below shows, Stevie is also the only person on Earth who can look like a badass playing the Keytar. His playing alone justifies the ludicrous invention.

All other Keytar players should bring their Keytars to the nearest Keytar redistribution center, where they will be immediately redistributed to Stevie.

Plans are already underway for ACL 2012, which will happen in October this time. I found the festival incredibly well organized and the concertgoers to be a fine bunch of upstanding citizens. If you are interested in live music, Tex-Mex cuisine, margaritas, BBQ, swimming holes, and people watching, you should book your flight now.

Way to TCB, ACL.

Countdown to the Austin City Limits Music Festival: Stevie Wonder

Arcade Fire. My Morning Jacket. Mavis Staples. Fleet Foxes. These are but a pittance of the many great acts I will be catching this weekend at the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend. (There are some other big ACL names, like Coldplay and Kanye, that I respect, but they just don't light the RT fire.)

But if I had to pick just one act to see the whole weekend, it would have to be Stevie Wonder, who is closing Saturday night's festivies, at the same time as My Morning Jacket, one of my favorite current bands. Which band to see? That's an uptown problem, as they say.

As much as I enjoy MMJ, especially their new record Circuital, Stevie is a true genius, and when he is in the house, you must pay proper respect.

"Genius" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in rock circles, to include charlatans like Axl Rose and Patti Smith, but it truly applies to Mr. Steveland Morris and a handful of others in the rock canon: Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Prince, Bon Jovi... you get the idea.

Around 1996, Stevie played a free promo show at an HMV record store near my Upper East Side apartment at around 2am on a Tuesday night.

Sensing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I waited several hours in line alone to attend the show along with about 200 strangers and saw him rip through a few new tunes before going into classics like "Sign, Sealed, Delivered" and "Isn't She Lovely." I was lucky to be there.

This weekend, Stevie will be Livin' for a different City, the City of Austin thank you very much. Here's a vintage clip to show you the true genius in action.

Get yer Stevie Wonder on iTunes here.

Countdown to the Austin City Limits Music Festival: Gillian Welch

The Austin City Limits Music Festival, which I will be attending this weekend, features over 100 acts on several stages, with many acts playing concurrently.

This embarrassment of riches means that there will be several conflicts that will have to be resolved in the moment. For example, on Saturday around 5pm there will be simultaneous sets by Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly, whom I profiled earlier in the week. and Gillian Welch, who is something like the reigning Queen of Americana.

Welch and her guitar-slinging partner David Rawlings make a style of music that is pulled straight from the dust bowl and dropped down right here in 2011.

And while Welch she has little in common with Wandamusically, they do share a bond: Elvis Presley. Wanda actually dated the King back in the 1950s (who didn't?) and Welch wrote a magnificent tribute to the King called "Elvis Presley Blues," one of the highlights of her most celebrated record, 2001's Time (the Revelator).

I was thinking that night about Elvis

Day that he died, day that he died
Just a country boy that combed his hair
And put on a shirt his mother made and went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
And he shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler, baby,
Like you never seen

Welch is the adopted daughter of show-biz folk who were music writers for the Carol Burnett Show. She was in a goth band at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1980s until one day when someone dropped the needle on a Stanley Brothers LP and she had a life-changing epiphany. One might say it was the cure for The Cure, if one were into annoying puns.

She was also one of the guiding forces behind the hugely successful soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? In a concert film recorded in conjunction with the soundtrack, she and Rawlings recorded my favorite song of theirs, "I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll," which features a magnificent guitar solo by Rawlings. I wish I could rock the acoustic like that.

After battling a nasty case of writer's block, Welch and Rawlings came back a few months ago with their first record in several years, called The Harrow and the Harvest.

I haven't heard much of it yet, but I am looking forward to hearing it ACL. Judging by this performance "The Way it Goes" on Conan recently, it's another in a long line of fine Americana.

See you at ACL — Stay hydrated!

Buy Gillian Welch on iTunes here:

Time (the Revelator)

The Harrow and the Harvest

Paul Simon's 9/11 Bookends: "The Boxer" and "The Sounds of Silence"

Paul Simon played a magnificently moving version of "The Sounds of Silence" at the 9/11 10th anniversary memorial service today in downtown New York City.

It was a classic example of a song (which Simon wrote in 1964) taking on a completely new meaning in the light of its context, as great songs so often do. And you can see and feel the weight of that unimaginable day in Simon's singing and stately guitar playing.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turn my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence

Paul Simon is the most New York of songwriters; his songs embody the essence of the City in a way few others can. Perhaps that's because he and his partner Art Garfunkel were a couple of menschs from Queens who made good.

When Saturday Night Live returned to the air about 10 days after 9/11 in 2001, Simon opened the show with an incredibly moving version of perhaps his best song, "The Boxer." With New York's finest and bravest sharing the stage with him, it reminded us that "the fighter still remains" within us all.

Rock Turtleneck joins the millions who send their thoughts and prayers to the victims of 9/11 and their families.

Countdown to the Austin City Limits Music Festival: Wanda Jackson

A week from now I will be touching down on the tarmac of Austin International Airport, in town to attend the 10th annual Austin City Limits Music Festival, a 3-day extravaganza featuring dozens of top-drawer acts that marks the close of the festival season. Over the next week, I will be featuring artists that I am particularly looking forward to seeing at ACL.

First up is Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly, a hell-breathing spitfire of a woman who got her start back in the 50s and once dated an up-and-coming singin' hillbilly named Elvis Presley.

Wanda's music from back then, such as her must-own 1960 collection Rockin' with Wanda, still has a sharp edge today.

That's probably what attracted Jack White to record her recent comeback album The Party Ain't Over, which features a kick-ass cover of the rock & roll standard "Shakin' All Over." Here she is with Jack playing a smoldering version of the tune on David Letterman earlier this year.

I don't think Jack is in Wanda's touring band, but I am hoping that he will make a surprise guest appearance when she takes the stage at 5:45 pm on Saturday, as stars of his ilk are wont to do at these types of events.

The Party Ain't Over also features a cover of Bob Dylan's Modern Times classic "Thunder on the Mountain." Hey Bob, if you're not doing anything, why don't you swing by ACL and do a little duettin' with the Queen of Rockabilly?

Get yer Wanda Jackson on iTunes here:

The Party Ain't Over

Rockin' with Wanda

Rock Turtleneck Goes Back to School with Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks"

Back to School season is upon us, and while it has been many years since I matriculated, I have several children who are kicking off their school years in the morning.

If I found myself going back in school, i.e. college, I have a feeling I would spend a lot of time cranking "Pumped Up Kicks," the smash hit by a band called Foster the People, out my dorm room window.

I first heard this song on a dance music station my daughters love that plays primarily auto-tuned artists of the Katy Perry/Black Eyed Peas variety.

When "Pumped Up Kicks" came on however, it immediately grabbed my ear. My daughters, of course, hated it.

Foster the People is an LA-based band that got together way back in 2009. The bands singer and leader is named Mark Foster. Originally the band was called Foster & the People, but at some point they parted ways with the ampersand.

"Pumped Up Kicks" was the first song FTP ever released, and they must be pleasantly shocked to see it go to the top of the singles charts in this day and age. The song is now available on their debut LP Torches.

I hope they enjoy their sudden success and invest their earnings wisely, because with its relentlessly catchy hooks and anonymous sounding singing, plus the amnesiac nature of the music business, "Pumped Up Kicks" has One Hit Wonder written all over it - and I mean that in the best possible way.

Buy "Pumped Up Kicks" on iTunes here