Michael Stipe Disses Limbaugh, Schwarzenegger, Bush* & Rove

[DemBones DemBones]

I was watching the Today show today instead of Washington Journal and REM was playing in the street outside the studio. They had done "Losing My Religion" and "Orange Crush" and then Katie Couric went up on the stage to talk with them about the new collection of REM songs being issued. It includes two new songs, including the new single "Bad Day."

Michael Stipe smoothly segued into "It's a Bad Day for Limbaugh" to cheers from the crowd and Mike Mills cracking up. Then, "It's a Bad Day for Schwarzenegge!." More cheers. "It's a Bad Day for Bush!" Still more cheers. "It's a Bad Day for Rove!" And more cheers.

About this time, Katie managed to say "But it's a good day for us," playing right into Michael's riff, whether unintentionally or not. Michael gave a big smile and said "It's a good day for me" and then they played "Bad Day."

Go Michael!!! :yourock:

[GinaMaria]

1. kewl

That made my day. Thanks

[Lost4words]

2. WOW! very cool!!!

[tjdee]

3. Oh Michael.....

For a while there I had a crush on him bigtime.

He has been very active on 'the scene', good guy. Good guyS, I should say, the band seems very with it.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. I'm a big fan of REM....wooohoo

[Stupdworld]

5. Stipe disses Limbaugh, et al.

[RandomKoolzip]

6. "We're sick of being JERKED A-ROUND!"

Then they played an obviously anti-corporate media, anti-war song, called "Bad Day". Man, that was a cool thing to wake up to! (And I'm not even an REM fan!)

[underpants]

7. REM on the Today Show

Let's let that sink in for a moment REM on the Today Show

I couldn't stay home and watch it but I was wondering if the boys were going to say anything. It doesn't surprise me that Stipe did that. By the way they put their money were their mouth is. They have bought and refurbished a lot of old buildings in their home town of Athens to stop them form being torn down and the town losing its roots.

REM on the Today Show. When I heard that his morning I thought back to their first national network TV appearance on the old Letterman show. That show was about the closest thing we've had to kids putting on a show form the attic on network TV. Stipe was so camera shy he turned his back from the cameras when they finished playing. Radio Free Europe I think it was.

Good for them.

The little band that could.

[AP]

8. How positively 1960s of them! That puts them a couple notches

above U2, in my book. U2 did the Superbowl half-time show on the 30th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and didn't even make a subtle reference to it.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Yes, and the REM guys also don't hide out on huge estates,

they go around Athens like ordinary people. And they're supportive of other Athens musicians, Michael especially so.

[underpants]

12. Bill Berry retired to his farm

Halloween night in '97?

Talk about doing your own thing, who has ever officially retired from being a rockstar. Hell nowadays as long as the life support is running they can charge $300 for seats.

I've known a few people who lived in Athens and they told me you see them all the time. Pete moved to Seatlle though I believe.

Great Pete quote on living in Athens-someone stole a plant of his front porch and he was convinced it was a fan "You can't fence a PLANT!"

[DemBones DemBones]

16. You may be right about Pete moving away, I'll ask my

daughter. She moved there in '91 and was invited to a party at Pete's a few months later. But that was still novel enough to for her to mention it back then. Since then, I've stood a couple of feet from Michael Stipe in an Athens club (watching my daughter play) and managed not to stare at him. He's always been the one you see most around Athens, I think.

[Iris]

36. I love that when people see him,

they act just like you did - give him space and try not to stare!

[mac56]

38. "Radio Free Europe" first -

and then "Don't Go Back To Rockville" before it even officially had a title yet.

We still love them here in Athens.

Add on edit: R.E.M. and Widespread Panic are both great supporters of progressive causes here.

[Cooley Hurd]

39. So. Central Rain...

...the song they did on Letterman. I remember because I saw the video on MTV earlier that day. The next day I ran out and bought "Reckoning." They've been my favorite band ever since.

[peekaloo]

9. I lurve Michael Stipe

Katie spent the morning pretty much campaigning for Ah-nold so when he threw the jab at the Grope-in-ator I larfed loudly!

[dbt]

11. Go, REM!!

(apropos of not much) Did Buck have his trusty Rickenbacker guitar for the gig?

:freak:
dbt

[DemBones DemBones]

14. You would ask me, the only one

in the family who doesn't play guitar! Daughter and husband are both guitarists, I can hardly move without bumping into a guitar (OK, exaggeration, but there are a lot of guitars here, and that's just my husband's) and husband had a Rickenbacker once. I'll check my TiVo and see if I can tell -- but you may have to wait for a guitarist's take on this.

I've always just been "with the band," not in the band! :shrug:

[dbt]

15. Whatever you can do, Ma'am

A Rick hooked into a Vox AD60VT amp will take one directly to Strawberry Fields! Might want to keep this info from your daughter.

:evilgrin:
dbt

[DemBones DemBones]

18. Too late, dude!

Check out this article to learn about my daughter's amps:

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2002-06-12/vibes_feature.html

or this one:

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/23/music-burk.php

or their site:

http://www.jucifer.com

Hoping I don't regret revealing my rock connections here at DU, while under the influence of REM on Today and great Dem speeches on C-SPAN. ;-)

[dbt]

23. Your daughter completely ROCKS!

No text necessary, other than CONGRATULATIONS.

:bounce:
dbt

[DemBones DemBones]

26. Thank you, we think so, too!

We're very proud of her. And Ed, too!

[peekaloo]

17. yep......the black beauty

featured close up at the beginning of 'Bad Day'.

Lester Dolt called the fans "rem-heads".....:eyes:

Seems Michael got out the word shit on live TV.....as in "shit so thick you can stir it with a stick"!

[dbt]

24. Thank you, peekaloo!

Glad to see that some things are timeless!

:loveya: them Ricks,
dbt

[jumptheshadow]

13. I watched that, too

It was a wonderful rush first thing in the morning. To go from the Dixie Chicking stuff to Michael Stipe getting cheered for his anti-RW statements.

You know what's cool?

It's getting cool to be liberal again.

Don't underestimate the power of that. For some time now, our pop culture has been dominated by shock jocks and dumbo talk radio.

The tide is turning!

[haymaker]

19. Watching now on West Coast.

Will they show his diss?

[DemBones DemBones]

20. Let us know if they edit it. They could have cut his mike when it

was live but Katie didn't even try to interrupt him.

[haymaker]

21. No Orange Crush but

Stipe did get off his bad day blast. Limbaugh, Schwartzenneger, Bush, and Rove. Then "BAd Day"

Nice.

[DemBones DemBones]

22. Great! I must have

just heard "Orange Crush" in my head! I was surfing DU at the time. I thought I heard part of it when they cut away for a news segment or something. I only saw them do all of "Losing My Religion" and "Bad Day."

[haymaker]

25. I did here it being played, but I think it was a tape

when coming back from commercial. Bad day was quite good.

Just saw REM a couple weeks back near San Jose. They killed it.

[DemBones DemBones]

29. I wonder if what we see on television is all that the

live audience sees on these street shows? Meaning, do the bands only play a couple of songs and the rest of the time the crowd is out there listening to tape? I bet that's how it works.

Thanks for letting me know I didn't hallucinate hearing "Orange Crush"! I knew I didn't get enough sleep last night but you had me worried! ;-)

[kainah]

40. They didn't edit it in Mountain Time zone

and you did hear Orange Crush ... the Today show played it as an intro to their segment with the song Bad Day when Michael let his politics shine through. Even better, through the song you could see the newsticker in the background with all the bad news headlines for *. A little exclamation point!

Also, I just saw R.E.M. in concert in Denver and Stipe told the story about that first appearance on Letterman. He explained that he had no idea Letterman was coming over & then everyone labeled him "enigmatic" which he says he detests & now it has become the stuff of legend ... witness this thread.

remfan & I saw them at Red Rocks, had front row seats, & at the end of the show, Michael Stipe himself handed me the lyrics for "It's the End of the World." Is anyone jealous?

Yeah, Michael!!!!!!!

[remfan]

44. Third song was "Get Up", but I think NBC did play

a sort of montage that included a clip from "Orange Crush", so you weren't hearing things.

Mike Mills slams Ann Coulter in an interview...

http://www.weeklydig.com/dig/content/4759.aspx

Q: I noticed that one of the older tunes you've exhumed for this tour is “Exhuming McCarthy.” Would that song choice be in any way a reaction to the revisionist theories being bandied about lately by ultra-conservative Ann Coulter, who believes that McCarthy was the misunderstood victim of liberal muckraking?

A: God, she's an asshole. I cannot believe that woman ... she's out of her fucking mind! She must literally be insane. Actually, we try to ignore Ann Coulter whenever possible. It's funny; we just played it because we liked it, but it's weird that there are several songs that we're playing that could have been written yesterday, in terms of their timeliness. It's like ... didn't we write these like 15 years ago? And they apply just as much today, if not more.

[NashVegas]

27. I've Never Seen Them Get THIS Pissed and Vocal About It

And I've been a fan since 83.

Most of their political songs were usually more allusions to things that were going on (Orange Crush, Exhuming McCarthy); and any political speech from them always seemed more driven by compassion than anything else.

Now they're just pissed and getting in Dubya's face. Stipey's come a long way from the days when they appeared on Letterman and he went and hid behind the drums rather than be interviewed by Dave.

[Iris]

37. Weren't they a big part of Rock the Vote?

And I know they signed the anti-war declaration that the celebs. put out before we invaded Iraq.


("we invaded Iraq" - how easily that flows from my tongue. Kind of makes me want to vomit.)

[Minstrel Boy]

28. Imagine the control room freak out

"Katie - Katie - cut him off!"

[DemBones DemBones]

30. Maybe the control room guys were saying "Go, Stipe!"

I'd like to think that was the case.

[peekaloo]

31. link to video

http://www.msnbc.com/news/975414.asp

intro to 'Bad Day' not included x(


Get Up was not shown in my area....x(

[underpants]

32. But STILL the question remains unanswered "Why doesn't Pete sing?"

Sigh perhaps we will never know.

[DemBones DemBones]

33. Can't sing and play at the same time?

Can't sing at all? :shrug:

Lots of musicians can't sing. . . Stipe can't play anything AFAIK, except a bit of harmonica. How did you like the blue eyeshadow on his ears? First time
I've seen that look but I'm betting I'll see it a lot more now.

[kainah]

41. the green eye shadow on his ears

throughout the tour, he's been wearing a very heavy streak of green eye shadow across both eyes & on to his ears. They were on Letterman last night & he had that makeup on. This morning, he & Peter were both in the same clothes and it looked to me as though they had been up all night & Michael had just washed his face & not reapplied the makeup. I doubt the look on shadow on his ears was a permanent thing. ;-)

His harmonica's getting pretty good, though.........

[peekaloo]

34. gotta love a man who plays to his strengths

but I love to hear him talk, and talk, and talk........

[remfan]

45. He does sing on one song...

The word "three" on "These Days". :-)

We have many things in common
Name three
Three!
Three!
Three!

Mills sings it once, Berry sings it once, and Buck sings it once.

[mitchum]

35. kick for the hometown good guys

[cmf]

42. Darn it!

I wish I would have seen this earlier, so that I could have informed my husband to watch the West coast broadcast. He loves REM and is on vacation this week. He would have loved to see this!

A few weeks ago, we went to see them in concert. My husband said that it seemed like they picked the playlist to make a political statement. I'm not familiar with their music so I didn't know one way or the other (it's hard to understand the words in a noisy stadium). He probably was right!

[kainah]

43. their playlist on this tour has been very political

they played one of my faves, a totally appropriate anthem for the times: World Leader Pretend.