Joseph Arthur "Walk On The Wild Side"

A minor footnote to the announcement that David Letterman is retiring, was that Mike Mills of R.E.M. fame, broke the story.

He was part of the band for the scheduled musical guest that night, Joseph Arthur, so he was at the afternoon taping, and tweeted the news.

Joseph Arthur was on, because he has recently released a cover of "Walk On The Wild Side."  Arthur was a friend of Reed's, and recorded this reworking, as a tribute to his late friend.

See the Letterman performance below, which includes Mike Mills, and Peter Buck of R.E.M.


See the video on Youtube.

R.E.M. "Superman"

Last weekend, I was out for drinks with Craig Sherman, who likes to ask questions.

"If you could be anyone famous, who would you be?"

Strangely, the answer came to me quickly.

"Mike Mills of R.E.M."

Waay back in college, I had a next door neighbor from Georgia and a bunch of friends who were musicians.  So naturally, we learned a few R.E.M. songs.

Even though it was a cover, we thought "Superman" (a hidden track on the cassette!) would be a great addition to our repertoire.

Kristine had the best voice, so of course she would sing the Michael Stipe part.  And since I could barely do anything else to contribute (my bass playing skills were severely limited), I got to sing the Mike Mills part.

And here's what I discovered.

Despite the fact that Stipe get referred to as the "lead singer" and Mills as the "back-up singer," on "Superman" Mills sings just as much as Stipe does.

In fact, this is true on a ton of R.E.M. songs.  He never comes off as the "lead singer" (except for the couple of songs he gets to sing lead on, from "Out Of Time"), but he's not a background guy by any stretch.

I became more attuned his contributions to the band.

A casual R.E.M. fan might suspect that R.E.M.'s melodic sensibility came from either the lead singer with amazing pipes, or the guitar player (Peter Buck) who seemed to produce endless combinations to guitar (and later, mandolin) figures to build songs around.

But multi-instrumentalist Mills, was the main contributor of songs you know and love, like "Don't Go Back To Rockville," "Nightswimming" and "At My Most Beautiful."

So Craig Sherman asked the question, and as I flipped through names in my head, I stopped on Mike Mills.

As I told Craig, and the rest of of gang at the table:

"He's this awesome musician, in one of the biggest bands in the world, but he never had to live out front.  He's been super-successful, and never has to work again if he doesn't want to, so he's free to pursue whatever creative outlets he wants to.  He'll probably eventually make a solo record, but he'll be able to do so without the crushing expectations that will be heaped upon a Michael Stipe solo record."

I'm sure my therapist would have a few interesting thoughts about my reasons for picking him.



Hear the song on Youtube.

The Backbeat Band "Money"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Following up on yesterday's Afghan Whigs post, it's worth remembering this little Venn diagram of 60s/90s ephemera . . .

"Backbeat" was a decent-enough film about the relationship between John Lennon and original Beatles bassist Stu Sutcliffe, set during The Beatles pre-fame days in Hamburg.

How about the amazing band that was assembled to recreate the lean, tight, uppers-and-American-Rock-N-Roll fueled early days of The Fab (at that time) Five?

Greg Dulli of Afghan Whigs sang the John Lennon songs and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum sang the Paul McCartney songs.  The rest of the band:  Dave Grohl (after Nirvana's "In Utero" but before the death of Kurt Cobain) on drums;  Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) and Don Fleming (of Gumball, as well as a producer of loads of records) on guitar.  And Mike Mills of R.E.M. on bass.  Mills also voiced Sutcliffe's one spotlight song, "Roadrunner."

They recorded a really solid album's worth of 50s and early 60s rock, and made only one live appearance as a unit, at the MTV Movie Awards.

This record was totally not appropriate for my Alternative specialty show, except for its pedigree.  But when I needed to fill 2 minutes to ride out the hour, "Long Tall Sally" sure did the trick.


Hear the songs on Youtube.


Hear "Roadrunner" on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.