Many a year ago, me, the clown, and our friend Donnie took a drive from Alabama to Knoxville, Tennessee to catch the circus. The clown drove, I rode shotgun and Donnie rode in the back.

As these things often go, Donnie began to get on our ever loving nerves there on the road. For reasons, only he knows, he continued to beg us to let him put on some Jimmy Buffett. For reasons I only know, and have long since forgotten, I didn’t want to let him. But he continued to insist and finally the clown agreed, and as he turned to retrieve the tape, he nailed Donnie square in the nose with his elbow.

Call it karma. Call it bad music justice. Call it darn funny. Once he stopped bleeding, we put in his precious Buffett, and he remained silent the remainder of the trip.

“Pale Blue Eyes” – R.E.M.
From Dead Letter Office

R.E.M. was one of the first bands that I ever loved. They turned on my excessive obsession gene just as I was learning to obsess excessively. Out of Time was the first album I got really excited over long before it actually came out. Oh, there have been plenty of obsessions since then, and many a long anticipation for a record to finally hit the streets, but I’ll always remember my first.

The Velvet Underground was a later obsession, but I still remember those long, conversation in hushed tones about how the Velvets could play “White Light/White Heat” a thousand different ways and still make it sound fresh.

This is a fun little merging of the two obsessions from an R.E.M. compilation, and it turned me inside out realizing my first favorite band was a fan of one of my later loves. It’s not exactly a classic cover, more of a drunken mistake, but it still has its charms. And it’s a lot of fun to hear and start conversations about what would the musical children of the two bands be if they ever copulated.