Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDLXXII--R.E.M.--(Don't Go Back to) Rockville

One of these days I'll get another one on time....

This week's tune is the one that made me an R.E.M. fan.  While the rest of the album would eventually become songs that I loved, this week's tune was the one that made me keep coming back and giving more listens until I had become infatuated with the entire album.  And just to tell you how old I am, it was on an actual LP that I first listened to R.E.M.....

I wrote about R.E.M. in Jukebox Vol. CXXXII, and as the band is still not performing together, and showing no signs of ever doing so again, that brief bio is pretty much going to cover everything I'd want to note about the band.

"(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" was the second single from R.E.M.'s first LP, the rather prophetically named Reckoning.  The single did not chart, while the album reached #27 on the Billboard 200 (which kind of surprised me as I seem to remember my store selling about three copies--which may be great in Decatur, Illinois for a quirky band from Athens, GA).

Fun Fact:  "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" was written about a love interest of bassist Mike Mills, Ingrid Schorr, while the two of them were in college.  Ms. Schorr would eventually become a journalist and wrote a somewhat humorous piece about her fifteen minutes of rock and roll fame--and the inaccuracies in the song as well as how those inaccuracies only grew through the years as R.E.M.'s fame grew as well.  

"(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" is not the standard fare for an R.E.M. song, as it is more or less a country and western song (the song was originally performed in a punk style, but while recording it the band made it country in a joke aimed at its manager).  The song is a plea from Mike Mills to his then girlfriend to not go back home to Maryland and stay in Athens with him (even with the inaccuracies that part of the song is more or less true).  Michael Stipe's vocals are impassioned (though when the band performed it live Mills sang lead), the band sounds like a country and western bar band on a Friday Night at the Dew Drop Inn (fully intended as a compliment), and together they made a hell of a song. In the end, though, what the song highlights is R.E.M.'s versatility, which in turns shows its greatness as it stretched the limits of its talents and made a musical moment of wonder.

Lyric Sheet:  "At night I drink myself to sleep/And pretend that I don't care that you're not here with me/"Cause it's so much easier to handle/All my problems if I'm too far out to sea..."

Enjoy:

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee