The Zimmermann Note

The transition of Day 1 into Day 2 saw the first duplicate song played by 2 different artists: Mission of Burma/R.E.M. – Academy Fight Song. Mission of Burma is a band that by the time they were getting a tiny bit of notoriety, they ended up breaking up due to Roger Miller’s tinnitus, however, not before releasing a solid single, EP and studio album.

I think one of the reasons that I was fond with R.E.M. was their tendency to dig deep for bands that they believed deserved a bit of notoriety. Their cover was never more than something they played during their Green Tour, as well as ending up on their Holiday Single to fans of the band. There is no doubt that this kind of exposure can still play into the success of the band.

On a completely separate note, as pondering this song tonight for the Z-Note, I read an article about the great Vin Scully “Raging” on and I thought to myself what would it take for Vin Scully to replace Clint Conley on vocals and proceed to sing Academy Fight Song….

Walk into my room
Ask me jerky questions

The genteel nature Vin Scully washed away in the urinals of Chavez Ravine; instead a loud, overbearing, herky-jerky, performance filled with plenty of passion by an 88 year old god of journalism, which is not necessarily far from the original as Conley received a degree in broadcast journalism after Mission of Burma broke up.

Rock and roll cannot be taken too seriously.

Back to our story at hand. Not much to say in terms of the quality between the R.E.M. and Mission of Burma versions. Mission of Burma’s clearly superior here as R.E.M. turned their version into a catchy pop song – i.e. Vin Scully on nitrous.

• R.E.M. – Academy Fight Song
• Guided By Voices – Acorns and Orioles
• U2 – Acrobat
• Wire – Adapt

As many of you know, song titles starting with articles i.e. “A”, do not appear alphabetically when sorting from A to Z, or so I thought.

Sleater-Kinney however, pulled off a punk move by being the first song on my iPod alphabetically going completely against the logic built into the iPod and showing up as numero uno. ‘A New Wave’ would be the appropriate genesis: ‘Die to prove we ever lived this/Invent our own kind of obscurity’.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Sleater-Kinney and for giggles I often include them in non-sequitor phrases such as “I had buttered popcorn with Sleater-Kinney last night”. All of a sudden buttered popcorn is a winner.

It’s sorta the fucked up nature of rock and roll is that for every Nickelback in the universe, there is a Sleater-Kinney.

That being said….

There are times that you get stuck putting a song on your iPod via children’s request. The ‘Best of Sesame Street’ was an addition made around when Dylan was one and a half and we were planning on taking a road trip to Colorado. As a recommendation to any parent, it is important to carry enough music so that you do not have a child freaking out in the backseat in the middle of a 10-hour drive. While it is suitable to contain enough albums to calm down a young child, you should not carry too much as to overwhelm mom and dad. Soon, Bert’s ‘Doin the Pigeon’ turns into sexual birdsploitation song.

As a business note: since I have been monitoring (for my own sake) where I have been starting and stopping while in transit, I figure that I would also post that information here to give a random sense of a couple songs for the day.

• Sleater-Kinney – A New Wave
• Big Bird – ABC-DEF-GHI
• Cults – Abducted
• Mission of Burma – Academy Fight Song