Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Another Random Walk

So Luisa was drawing a picture of a Pilzhaus (a mushroom house), whatever that is, and she took an orange pencil and scribbled all over it, and said, "Feuer!" "Fire!" made me think of REM's "The One I Love," whose chorus I misunderstood as "I am!" when the song was first out, back in, what was it, 1987? I went to see the "Green" tour with my friend Linda Christie from KZSU that fall in Oakland, and boy did they blow the house down. Their jangly, somewhat light sound in the studio was complemented by their incredible power on stage, especially Peter Buck's electric guitar. But my favorite tune was and is "You Are the Everything."

Back then I did not know that Michael Stipe is gay. In fact, I only found that out earlier this year. And just this week, Facebook got me back in touch with Linda. Now if I could only find my KZSU buddy Clint.

5 comments:

Donald Brown said...

Gee, that's funny about Stipe, but then again, were you really that interested in his sexuality?

I agree that "You Are the Everything" is one of their best. As each album got worse through the late '80s into the '90s, they still managed at least one truly great song per album.

Andrew Shields said...

Good point, Don, and I was also struck by how uninteresting my "discovery" of Stipe's sexuality seemed. If I had heard about it in the eighties, it would have seemed more newsworthy, somehow.

swiss said...

so what's a pilzhaus?

any mention of feuer only makes me think of rammstein, esp the lego version

Andrew Shields said...

The "Pilzhaus" was a house that looked like a mushroom!

SarahJane said...

i didn't know he was gay until right now. and i also thought they yelled I Am!, but looked up the lyrics some time ago and was surprised.
did you know swan swan hummingbird was about the civil war? huh huh?!