Happy birthday, Chronic Town
Happy birthday, Chronic Town

If you are a sentimental sucker for rock anniversaries, today is a pretty good one.

WHEREAS on the 24th day of August in the year of our lord 1982, the Athens, Georgia, rock band R.E.M. released its debut EP, Chronic Town, on IRS Records, and

WHEREAS the number one song on Billboard's Hot 100 that week was "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, followed by "Hurts So Good" by John Cougar, "Abracadabra" by Steve Miller Band, "Hold Me" by Fleetwood Mac, and "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" by Chicago, and

WHEREAS everything about the EP, from its gnomic, blue-tinted cover art, to its restlessly discursive music, to the fact that the two sides both had their own titles ("Chronic Town" and "Poster Torn"), was not only good on its own merits, but an excellent influence in favor of obscurantism and understatement, and

WHEREAS R.E.M. kept going for three more decades, and remained at least interesting and occasionally incomparably great pretty much that whole time,

WHEREAS "Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don't get caught" should always always always be the mental soundtrack for sneaking out of one's high-school bedroom and going off to do something dreadful (and "gentlemen don't get caught" for making it back before dawn unscathed), and

WHEREAS I just listened to the whole 20-minute thing for the infinitieth time and am still not even done typing this stupid blog post and I'm already starting it over again,

I hereby proclaim this, the 24th day of August, 2015, the 33rd birthday of Chronic Town. House in order, ah ah ah ah ah ah.