1986_09 The Daily Collegian September 1986

              •
-
. Emft® irteiimim(Bm ft.
.Thursday, Sept. 4,1986
Many-sidedR.E.M. returns with 'Pageant'
By Dina Douglass
Contributing Writer
From the beginning of "Begin the Be¬
gin." which is aptly enough the beginning
song on R.E.M.'s latest LP, one gets the
feeling that if Lifes Rich Pageant doesn't
shoot straight to No. I, the music industry
must be asleep.
Bypassing the beginning of the begin
brings forth only more of the same bright
music the world of college radio has come
to expect from Georgia's favorite sons.
In fact, the only disappointments on
Lifes Rich Pageant are a song called "The
Flowers of Guatemala" and the return of
singer Michael Stipe's enunciation.
Yes. oh fans of mumbling Michael, the
slur of Stipe has all but vanished under the
production of Don Gehman. who engin¬
eered Lifes Rich Pageant in John Cougar
Mellencamp's studio in Indiana.
And for those of you who have spent
hours upon hours trying to decipher Stipe's
oh-so-secret-and-hard-to-figure-out lyrics
on iR.E.M.'s previous vinyl, a surprise
waits for you on the back cover: Mr. Stipe
has graciously allowed one phrase from^-
each song to be printed alongside its
listing. The best phrase revealed has to be
from "Just a Touch": to quote. "RRR-
RRR."
Another surprise this album offers is
three hidden tracks. Whereas the jacket
lists only 10 titles. Lifes Rich Pageant
actually contains 13 songs.
R.E.M.'s musical talents have matured
to the point where some songs on this
album could easily be mistaken as having
been performed by another band entirely.
Among those are a Latin-flavored piece,
sans lyrics, called "Underneath the
Bunker,"the Nashville-tinged "I Believe."
and "Superman." a song that can only be
described as cutesy-pie.
The only single Lifes Rich Pageant has'
fssued so far — "Fall on Me" — provides
A M radio with an easy opportunity to add
some taste. But since R.E.M. has yet to
employ the subject of virginity — or the
loss of it — into its songs, chances of AM
airplay are not good.
For those of you have found R.ET^L to
be just too jangling on your neryes.^wan
Swan H" — the "H" standingTor hum¬
mingbird — will provide you with music
pleasant enough to fall asleep by.
But should you simply be in the mood
to enlighten yourself with an al' am that
will almost assuredly be ignore ' for no
good reason - save for the ict that
R.E.M. has no immediate sex s mbol —
Lifes Rich Pageant will serve yo-i well.
OPENING
Continued from page 3
of the three floors, snatching up great
debt-loads of textbooks, grabbing blaring
red clothing items, useless dormroom fril¬
lies and trinkets, fat. silver bulldog hood
ornaments generally raising hell and
the gross-campus-profit.
The check-checker ladies are doing a
snappy trade. They get their jollies when
they finally find some unfortunate clod's
name on the bad-check list.
And the knapsack department is hawk¬
ing highly profitable stacks of S40 back¬
packs fora "special back-to-school" $35.99.
Textbooks are fetching up nasty divi¬
dends. The credit-card imprinters are
smoking and wheezing, and Visa carbon
copies rustle in the man-made breeze of
eager book-buyers, back again to toss
away a couple of C-notcs for an armful of
texts, most of which will go unread, and
hopefully, will be supplemented by two
bucks worth of Cliff Notes.
.Meanwhile, this tired-looking girl's new
some-or-all-terrain vehicle has just been
brutally assulted by. "some horrid, angry
person in a rusty, smelly, ugly old car."as
she'relatcs the whole wretched experience
to one of her good friends along the fiat,
lonely miles from the parking lot to the
campus proper-that shining mecca on the
horizon—hopefully for the first of many
QUESTION'
VwYJiT EXACTLY IS
b)   A
^
'Op'Yv
c)    A green u^wi, bwuv#->„ .
less.
d) If you'd read the chapter on Manir-     destroy, you'd
know. "
e) Too good to pass up, because it lets you save 15% off
AT&T's already discounted evening rates.
If you can guess the answers to this quiz, you could save on your
long distance phone bill, with AT&T's ?Reach Out America" long
distance calling plan. Jf you live off campus^it lets you maki
full hour's worth of calls to any other state in America—
utu
it us
r  M rates b
If   Sunday
^^        rnnlri m
including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico-and the US.
Virgin Islands—for jus^Hjl5,
All you have to do is raTTweekends,
11pm Friday until 5pm Sunday, and
sry night from 11pm to 8am. Save
_ iff our already discounted evening
rates by calling between 5pm and 11pm
Sunday through Friday. The money you
could save will be easy to get used to.
To find more about '{Reach Out America's
or to order the service, calTtoll ff
today at 1800 CALL ATT,
that is 1800 225-5288.
M
AT&T
The right choice.
bright happy semesters here.  I le tired-
looking girl takes a deep breath ft d forges
ahead, across the dry, parched earth
pockmarked with gopher holes and dottW~ -
with surveyors' stakes.
This frat guy steers his cru vef bike,
through the great huddled massi s of eager
humanity, toward the Pit. That'* whereall
the brothers will meet for people-watching.
(It's not really people-watchin; . though,
but steely-eyed staring from be' ind Dark
Sung^sses.) There's this bespccacled, be-
batted preacher lambasting the masses
with fiery molten brimstone, the telltale
scriptural "thump, thump, thump" reverb¬
erating across the pavement as this frat
guy pedals to a stop at the stairs.
This angry guy trudges acrdCs the great
outback from the far reaches of the parking,
lot. terrible thoughts forming great blue
clouds around his head. Hapless stray cats
and innocent small children are violently '
assulted with nasty curses as this angry
gdy makes his way slowly across the
formidable Great Desolation.
Multitudes swarm this bookstore in a
frenzied hurry to be quickly rid of as much
-money as possible. This tired-looking girl
tells her best friend about getting in a
fender-bender in the parking lot, while
they wait in line for check-checking.
This frat guy locks his cruiser bike
around a light pole and makes his way
through the crowd" to the bookstore.
And this angry guy finally concludes his
long and treacherous journey across the
bleak wilderness and finds civilization to
be a loud iieadachc-inducing mass of
Happy People. He makes his way through
the bookstore lines to the little tins of
aspirin.
And this frat guy needs a pencil. He
bumps into this angry-looking guy near
the paper-type Goods and Useless Sun¬
dries. He politely apologizes and is set
aback with a nasty set of heated curses.
This shocked and bewildered frat guy
gets into the long checkout line with this
angry guy, and they wait.
By the time this angry guy has cracked
open his aspirin and chocked down a few,
this frat guy is chewing the end off his new
pencil, and the checkout girl is ragging on
this tired-ldbking girl for not getting her
check checked correctly, with all 18 items
on the document checked in red ink and
accompanied by three pieces of valid
identification. This tired-iooking girl is
weeping and wailing about an awftH ac¬
cident, an angry guy, and a revolting,
rancid rustbucket.
LETTERMAN
Continued from page 4
bably gave Dave too much competition.)
There's a lot more that goes into the
show, like the glass-breaking sound when
Dave hurls spent "Viewer Mail" cards
behind himself, the most stupid "Stupid
Pet Tricks"segments, and the lame attempts
by "Late Night" writer-turned-actor Chris
Elliott to "make a funny." Altogether,
even though interviewed writers have said
the show isn't planned very well and runs
on a really tjght budget, it beats the hell
out of the "CBS (Rerun) Night at the
Movies," and for my free-TV dollar, 111
stay with "Late Night" as long as I can stay
awake.