An anecdotal blurb to celebrate LRP’s 38th anniversary
‘I Believe’ is the first Pageantry song I heard. Back in 2021, one of my dad’s friends moved to Ireland, and before he left, he gave away a bunch of his old music things. Among them was a deluxe anniversary edition of Green which included a recording of a concert the boys played in Greensboro in 1989. As a result, I heard the live version of ‘I Believe’ before the studio version, and when I heard the studio version for the first time last spring, I was so pleasantly surprised by the banjo intro. I had no idea what song it was until Michael started singing.
“I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract” and “when I was young and full of grace and spirited a rattlesnake” are the lines that stuck out to me upon first hearing the song in 2022. Last year for an art appreciation paper I went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. While I was there, I saw a wooden statue of a coyote sitting on a turtle; it is assumed to be inspired by a Hopi (Arizonian Native American) folktale. Or, dare I say, fable. The picture I took of that statue was my Discord profile picture for a while because it was a marriage between two of my favorite things: R.E.M. and art. I have since changed the picture to a close-up of an Impressionist painting by Childe Hassam of a man and a dog which is currently on display at the Georgia Museum of Art, continuing the theme of R.E.M. and art and, unintentionally, canines.
Other tracks from this record have been tightly woven into my youth: I quoted ‘Cuyahoga’ in my final essay for my first college English course back in spring (on which I got a 92%), ‘Fall On Me’ is the first R.E.M. song I learned on guitar, and the question “What if we give it away?” has a particular resonance with me as a queer person. ‘Lifes Rich Pageant’, like all music I love, enhances my quality of living and serves as a well of comfort and positive energy.