"...Wind a watch or bark at the moon."

So, I hadda update the song of the week today. You can still get NWA's Express Yourself by clicking here, but it totally slipped my mind that this was Rather's last week... It wasn't that long ago that I was razzing REM and their new song, "Check Out My New Wa Wa Peddle!!" as I was calling it. Monster was the first album they put out that seemed old hat to me. I had praised REM and idolized Micheal Stipe for being such an anti-idol. Then "Shiny Happy People" and "Everybody Hurts" killed off their underground status, and clinched the group's pop-culture commerciality. Now-a-days your band hasn't made it until you've been featured in a car ad, but as far as I was concerned my REM fandom had kicked the proverbial bucket by the time Monster hit the shelves. So frustrated, I dismissed the album and only listened passingly to "Frequency" on the radio. I forewent (yes it's a word) my ritual of dissecting their song's lyrical message and chalked the whole album up to "SSDD" with an added Wa Wa. By the by, you can read the full lyrics to "Frequency" here. It wasn't until last year that I heard the story of the Rather assault, and it's connection to the song. I've been assuming most readers already know this one, but if you're still in the dark: in 1986 Dan Rather was accosted by William Tager on the streets of New York. Tager was convinced CBS was sending signals to his head and needed to know the frequency in order to block them out. No one's figured out yet why Billy-boy thought Rather's real name was Kenneth, maybe it was being piped in on Tager FM. The song had basically been affixed to Dan's lapel by the time he took the seat behind the CBS news desk for the last time Wednesday night. (He had even stood onstage with REM on the Letterman Show when they performed it in 1994). Although I wasn't a regular CBS News watcher, (I prefer ABC), I did listen to him during the last two Presidential Elections. I saw him interview Hussain a week before the bombing started, a feat no one seems to find as impressive as I do, and I was fond of his many Ratherisms. Some of these are as follows:

"We had a slight hitch in our giddy up, but we corrected that."

"Two hands worth of white knuckle still hanging ten."

"If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a hand gun."

and...

"Now, ladies and gentleman, if you believe that, you'll believe rocks can grow."

You can also see a video clip of Rather being socked in the belly here. Shows to go ya that the news isn't what it used to be. Find me an anchor man who can give a fair report and take a punch today, and I'll give ya all my REM albums (on cassette tape =). For anyone who's still reading this, the actually frequency WCBS broadcasts on in New York City is 880 kHz. Ciao, Dobie