From the Roanoke Times & World News
HEADLINE MUMBLEDY-MUMBLEDY-MUMBLEDY-GOOK WHERE IS JIMMY HOFFA? DID OSWALD ACT
ALONE? WHO WAS DEEP THROAT? WHAT THE HECK IS R.E.M. SAYING?
Byline: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATE 01/03/95
Ok, maybe it doesn't rank with some of the great mysteries of
our time.
But it's up there somewhere, debated line-by-line, mumble-by-mumble,
like details from the Warren Commission report. It's now part of our
culture. And the legions who care about such things usually harbor
strong opinions - or at least puzzled expressions.
Is it: They call me Cliff/into the holy cow?
Or: They called the clip/a two-headed cow?
Or: Mumblemumblemumble?
Only Michael Stipe knows for sure, although, as the mystery
unravels, you will find he doesn't even know all of the time what
he's saying. Nor is he willing to tell what he does know. That's
part of the R.E.M. mystique.
And Stipe - the band's singer and primary wordsmith - wisely
keeps his mumbles close to the chest, and that only fuels the
debate and ultimately leads to Lynchburg College computer-services
specialist Kipp Teague.
Kipp Teague is our Jim Garrison in this serial, a man in dogged
pursuit of the ever-elusive words to "Second Guessing," "Can't Get
There From Here" and countless more songs that, to the average
listener, sound like gobbledygook.
However, to the self-trained ear, like Kipp Teague's, and
others like Teague around the country, phrases and lyrics from the
gobbledygook can emerge, followed by complete songs, albums and
finally an entire catalog of R.E.M. lyrics, give or take a mumble
here or a mumble there.
Teague, 38, goes about this work quietly. He only reluctantly
agreed to an interview, fearing that he would be branded as some
crazed R.E.M. zealot, which he most assuredly is not. He is just a
fan, like many fans of the group, hoping to make sense of Stipe's
befuddling lyrics.
"I don't put them up on a pedestal," he said.
In fact, his interest in R.E.M. began relatively late in the
game, in 1987, when he heard the song "Cuyahoga," from the band's
fourth album. By 1987, R.E.M. was already a college favorite, and
Stipe's lyrical idiosyncrasies long had been a subject of
exhaustive debate in various music magazines.
It took Teague another six years before he became the
unofficial R.E.M. word sleuth.
In 1992, he linked up to the Internet, a worldwide system of
computer networks that allow its users to exchange information on a
vast number of topics, including R.E.M. But Teague found that the
R.E.M. computer chat consisted mostly of gossip and unconfirmed
Stipe sightings around the band's hometown, Athens, Ga. "This is
sounding very juvenile coming from a 38-year-old, isn't it?"
What really spurred his interest, though, was finding a
computer file of R.E.M. lyrics maintained by a graduate student at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Teague also found a core
of several hundred fans around the country who continually updated
the file and raged an ongoing, wired debate about its content.
This file set the R.E.M. fans apart from similar fans who link
up about other musical acts. "That's the thing about R.E.M. There
was a void there. Most bands release their lyrics," Teague said.
But he found the compilation "horribly inaccurate. ... A lot of
dashes, a lot of fill-in-the-blanks," he said.
"I immediately suggested tons of corrections."
At the same time, there also were songs that seemed complete
that had been gleaned, Teague learned, from the R.E.M. Fan Club
newsletter or from published interviews with band or through
Internet consensus.
"It's not like I came in with these great revelations of song
lyrics," he said.
In 1993, when the MIT student graduated, Teague inherited the
task of maintaining the lyric file, primarily because nobody else
seemed to want the responsibility. It also gave him the chance to
leave his own stamp on the lyrics, particularly where there were
gaps.
Not that he rules the lyric file like a dictator. "I've been
wrong," he admitted. "I've come up with my interpretations that
were proven wrong, but are still accepted as correct, to my dismay."
He said that's the downside. "You can put words in the band's
mouth, and it comes out as the truth."
There are tricks to the trade, he said, citing bootleg
recordings of R.E.M. concerts. "If you get lucky, it's a bad mix
and the vocals are way out in front, and you can understand more."
Still, a certain amount of mystery remains.
R.E.M. does not acknowledge the compiled lyrics as its official
catalog, and except for two song books the band issued for its 10th
and 11th releases, "Automatic for the People" and "Out of Time,"
there is no way for Teague to check for accuracy.
But the source himself praised the catalog.
Last summer, R.E.M.'s Stipe sat down for some informal
questions and answers with a few of his electronic fans on America
Online, an interactive computer conversation service.
"About a year ago, this guy sent a bunch of on-line stuff to
the office, care of me, and I looked through the lyrics and they
were pretty right," Stipe said under the computer alias, Stipey.
"There are some mistakes, but the gist is there. By the way,
whoever sent me that stuff, thanks a lot. It was a lot to read ...
but it was cool."
Stipey even submitted to some specific questions from Teague
about lyrics - to a point.
Parts of their dialogue follows.
Teague: In "Gardening at Night," what precedes, "But they were
busy in rows?"
Stipey: Hey Kipp, I have no idea what the words to "Gardening"
are. I always wing it live. Mike {Mills, R.E.M.'s bassist} said,
"Fly to carry each his burden."
Teague: Better one: what lyric follows, "We are hope despite
the times," in "These Days?"
Stipey: "We are hope despite the times ... All of a sudden
these days, happy throngs." I must be kidding. "Take this joy,
wherever, wherever you go." I made Mike sing this part at the end:
"Take away the scattered bones of my meal." Oh Lord.
Teague: "Driver 8." Pilot or Violet?
Stipey: Violet? Don't know where that came from, but I didn't
write a violet into the song.
Teague: "Little America." What follows "tree tar-black brer
sap?"
Stipey: No idea.
Teague: "Sitting Still." What is the chorus?
Stipey: Come on now that is an embarrassing collection of
vowels that I strung together some 400 years ago. Basically
nonsense.
Which brings up whole new issue: If it's all nonsense anyway,
why try to decode the words?
It's the principle of it, Teague explained, the mystery. The
words may be meaningless, but they are still words. So which words
are they?
Perhaps it is a futile exercise. "I'm trying to extract the
concrete from what is meant to be abstract," he said, finally
calling the quest "ultimately ridiculous." "I don't know why I want
to know, but I do."
To quote from Stipe and R.E.M.: "When the world is a
monster/bad to swallow you whole."
Or is it: Mumblemumblemumble? Mumblemumblemumble.
(SIDEBAR)
HEADLINE IN SEARCH OF THE GOSPEL
DATE 01/03/95
What do R.E.M. and a little-known gospel group called The Revelaires
have in common? It took Kipp Teague to find out just how much.
He had a pair of clues. He knew that for the song, "Voice of
Harold," R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe lifted the lyrics from an old
gospel album, and he knew where the song was recorded - at
Reflection Studios in Charlotte.
So, he called the studio, which was suspicious of him at first.
But he explained. He maintains a computer catalog of R.E.M. lyrics
on the Internet, he told the studio. However, the catalog was
missing the words to "Voice of Harold," a throw-away song R.E.M.
released on its odds and sods and out-takes album, "Dead Letter
Office."
Teague asked for help.
Soon after, he received a copy of the back cover to an album
titled "The Joy of Knowing Jesus" by the Revelaires. Among the
liner notes, he found the lyrics he had been searching for.
For Teague, the discovery was quite a coup.
"That was probably my biggest find," he said.
@Art: PHOTO: Wayne Deel. Kipp Teague, Lynchburg College
computer services specialist, is the keeper of the national R.E.M.
computer lyrics file on Internet. color. 2. R.E.M. 3. Only R.E.M.
lead singer Michael Stipe knows for sure what the lyrics say.
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