On time and Michael Stipe

I remember a few press reports, articles about the personal life of Mr. Mike Jagger. He would date younger Brazilian models (almost half his age) then go on stage and 'rock' the world. His personal life was the subject of café lounges and everyone had an opinion. Should he be dating women old enough to be his daughters? Should he retire to a peaceful, quieter life and live off the proceeds of royalties?

Back in those days (the nineties) I didn't care much for the Rolling Stones. This hasn't changed (I still don't care for them) but the reports kept appearing in TV newscasts and magazines that it was impossible not to notice this scrutiny of Mr. Jagger's (Sir Jagger's) exploits.

The public scrutiny of media personalities is no surprise. Icons of mass culture, whether they're called Kurt Cobain -or Britney Spears- will always fill up the pages of tabloids, pamphlets, sunday magazines, facebook pages, blogs, twitters and most other known or yet to be known communication media.

On January 4, Michael Stipe turned 51. Though Stipe is no Jagger, his reaching of old age reminded me of Jagger in the mid to late nineties. A young teen today may be as indifferent to R.E.M. music as I was of the Rolling Stones fifteen or twenty years ago. (Today's teen may ask: 'Michael who?')

Google Michael Stipe and you are likely to see photos of a bald man sporting an abundant gray beard. The other day I was revisiting some music videos of the nineties: 'Losing my religion', 'Everybody hurts', 'Drive', 'What's the Frequency Kenneth..?' These were a sensation and the darlings of the music industry.

One video that I saw, 'New Test Leper' in particular, had a very dated feel. It looked grainy, and I thought some 're-mastering' (whatever the heck that is) would greatly benefit the image. For some reason, everything in the video seemed dated: the console, the microphones, the headphones, the cables... Nothing that a good macintosh couldn't do today! (Bear in mind these were already the nineties, the era of the dotcom boom).

Those observations aside, 'New Test Leper' is still a beautiful melody: the quality of its lyrics, the choruses, the verses, the guitar chords will all remain timeless.

Another video is 'Drive', released in 1992 and shot entirely in black in white. Through a series of 'flashes' we see slow moving images, snapshots of a young Mike Mills, a young Peter Buck sporting the classic 'rocker' look of long hair and dark glasses... Twenty years later we see Buck abandoning the rocker look in favour of long sleeve shirts and sometimes suits in classy colours.

I'll end the post with a very personal conclusion. When I first watched 'Losing my religion' on MTV, Stipe & Co. looked like grown-up men, adults if you would. The truth is Stipe was a young man in his early thirties, R.E.M. was a glorious band and the future looked full of promise (no one even remotely imagined the fiascos of Monster and Around the Sun). While this single was dominating the radio airwaves (along with Radiohead's 'Creep' and Duran Duran's 'Ordinary World') I was a young boy attending college, barely 20 years old.

What happened later? Paramores, Tokyo Hotels and Black Eyed Peas have settled in. I have the age Stipe had when he recorded 'New Test Leper', the very same video that now looks grainy and needs remastering.