i have, more or less, been meaning to do this time of year specific post for, oh, say seven, maybe eight years now, look you see. just kept "forgetting" to do it. oddly i have "drafted" it in my head a few times over, which is a bit unusual for my rather gung ho approach to things of stuff here. no doubt (or if you will undoubtedly) it shall not, alas, come out at all as well as i had hoped.
this is all about Automatic For The People, then. an album most (but certainly not all) would consider as being the band's (not sure about that apostrophe) masterpiece, if not "magnum opus". a somewhat similar to U2, then, with The Joshua Tree generally the "go to" for their greatest, whereas many would argue that Achtung Baby is superior, or some (presumably more hardcore) suggesting that The Unforgettable Fire was as good as it got. i am just not as much a fan of REM to argue the case for any of their other records, it is just this one what gets played frequently.
not that i took to it with any sense of immediacy. far from it, dear reader. quite a lot of my usual meandering sentimental hygiene is coming up in this post, so be warned. roughly, or at a guess, it was only about two decades (or if you like twenty years) after it got released that i came to understand, accept and embrace the album. this is all to do with me either "not being ready" for the content to speak to me, or needing time for it to connect. oh yes, plenty more of what i call "sixth form w@nkery" like that is to follow.
yes, as you should (more or less) be able to deduce from the above, i have given in and procured another variation on what is called an "8 bit camera" app. nowhere near as class as the most beloved Commodore 64 one what stopped working with phone updates (cheers for that) but this shall jolly well have to do for now.
what was, for want of a better word, the "issue" with moi and Automatic For The People at the time it got released? i think it came out in late 92, but likely "went massive" across 93. just wasn't interested, to be honest. sure, i had an awareness of the band, as Losing My Religion was a great song, and one they did called Stand was used as a theme for some TV show my brother, sister and i liked. can't even remember the name of it. but Shiny Happy People, resplendent with a video of people wearing baseball caps (or whatever they are called now, think i saw someone call them "lids") sideways, was a a huge massive big "no". reinforced by Denis Leary's take on it.
from what i recall - and no, my memory is not to be trusted - it will have been Everybody Hurts that i will have heard first off of it. would be fair to say that i didn't pay too much attention at all to what sounded like some astonishing sixth form w@nkery whining on the singing, for i was obviously distracted at how someone had (somehow) gotten away with stealing the music off of Bowie's Rock n Roll Suicide and no one saying so. after that it will (most probably) have been The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, which was very much just more Shiny Happy People sh!t, so yeah, that's a no. we didn't ever have particularly similar tastes (never, ever mention The Stone Roses to my sister, for a start) but it was always kind of strange that my brother and sister really took to the album strongly.
softening my approach, or if you will being "open" to the record, was a slow, long process. at some point in the mid to late 90s i heard Nightswimming and was immediately intrigued by it. there was something in it which "struck a chord" or what have you, made an impact. an acceptance, if you will, that i could very much relate to the sentiment of the song. no, not hanging by a creek or river, but that yearning for the past, for friends gone, for being in a different world than the one you remember so very fondly. at the least this was enough for me to purchase some "best of" of theirs that came out, where i believe i discovered Man On The Moon too. had a vague knowledge of the Andy Kauffman story, at the least. joining dots had me considering that maybe i had been hasty to dismiss the album both of those songs had come from.
brief break from my meandering to look at the "themes". a widely well regarded website, which i won't name, likes to think it is quite good, but (alas) is written by people "full of themselves". in this regard they tend to come up with a great bit of writing (and that is really good) and then just "apply" it to whatever, regardless of if it is correct. to this end, for Automatic For The People, they described it as being "about death, it actively has death as a guest on the album". no, it does not. so (very) close. at heart the album is of loss, of being lost, and longing. different. it's interesting that when the band wrote this they were either approaching or in their 30s. for my generation, and the one before it, we were conditioned to consider 30 as "middle age", that where your life was then was where it would always be, you would have "grown up" and "settled" by that point. none of us had any idea that this had somehow changes. for a (most excellent) companion piece, Robert Smith wrote Disintegration from a virtually identical position.
above is a picture from inside the Automatic For The People booklet. whilst it is far from being the most flattering image of Michael Stipe, i was (on eventually buying the tape / disc), intrigued by just how astonishing the image "nails" the album. is he breaking the tension of the surface coming up, or is it rather more an acceptance of going under the surface? bravo all involved in this stark image.
ok, if not already, this is where it is all going to go (totes) sixth form poetical w@nkery. somewhere in the mid to late (think late) 90s "the internet" was a kind of new thing. no "social media" as we know it now, but "forums" and "chat rooms". believe it or not we all used our real names and met up in the real world. moving on and one of the first "internet scandals" i can recall was, and no i am not linking to it, a certain Michael Stipe posting naked pictures of himself on a forum thing, pleading for someone - anyone - to come and be with him. having negligible interest in either the band or naked men (despite what you may have heard) this is strange, it doesn't feel right and many will (correctly) say this is symptomatic of my lack of emotional intelligence, of having no idea what to do with emotions, but my instinct is to (eventually) write that i felt like i ever so slight fell in love with him.
you really have to recall a time when "celebrities" very much retained an interesting (intriguing) air of mystery to them. we simply didn't know what they did 24/7. rarely thought about it, i suppose, but if we did then it was to assume that they were living amazing, luxurious lives. it hadn't occurred to me that someone like a Michael Stipe could experience the very same dislocation, loneliness, desperation and longing that, to be blunt, i was. so i (kind of) vowed to give this Automatic For The People an actual try, just to see if it resonated or "connected". and, a mere 15 (or so) years later, i picked up a copy and did that.
ready for some more abstract, arbitrary sixth form level poetic w@nkery? good. quite possibly things like experiencing "art" happen only when you are ready to accept them. when i (eventually) decided yeah, go on, let me hear it all, i was clearly "open" to accepting life consequences and choices. mostly the sound of the album swirled around, bringing to the fore senses of loss experienced and caused, of being lost, and the dislocated sense of longing. or something like that. this album is quite an experience.
does Automatic For The People belong in the (mostly pointless if not futile) "greatest album of all time" mass debate? not really. whereas there is no absolute clanger like Trip Through Your Wires over on The Joshua Tree, there's a few too many flaws. and no, not just Sidewinder, which (i believe) the band acknowledged was a mistake. something like New Orleans Instrumental is a very necessary "break" for the listening experience between Everybody Hurts and Sweetness Follows, but, you know, still. whereas Ignoreland is a truly brilliant song, there's somewhat of a limitation placed on its relevance by the dating going on it it, and to be fair the complaints about American politics in the 80s do seem rather quaint in comparison to the present day. hasn't aged well.
regardless, this album is one hell of a listening experience. one which is as compelling as it is uncomfortable, depending on what life you have (up to now) lived and just how much you are prepared to affect (or touch) you. a year or so after this came out there was the "double whammy" of Nirvana releasing In Utero and the Manics releasing The Holy Bible. it is not so that Automatic For The People delves directly into the darkness of those two records, but it certainly opens the door to such, inviting you to consider just how far over the threshold you have been.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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