Rem Shiny Happy People

Art at the exact right time

Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d like us and the readers to answer? E-mail us at avcqa@theonion.com .

Amid a general discussion of things the participants appreciate, last week’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast touched on pop culture that came into their lives at precisely the right moment. We’ve previously talked about art we came to too late in life , but what art did you encounter when you needed it, whether it’s an angry song that helped you as a frustrated adolescent, a mopey movie that made you feel understood after a breakup, or a book that suggested a point of view you needed to hear from?

Jason Heller Until age 27, I had a love/hate relationship with Led Zeppelin: Some songs I loved, others I hated. Overall, though, I was never able to fully commit to even one album by the band. That changed in 1999, though; after a bad break-up, the disintegration of my own band, and a belly-flop into the bottle, Led Zeppelin found me. The band’s 1969 debut suddenly made sense; I’d heard it, or at least all the songs on it, a zillion times before, but the album’s murky majesty and primal snarl sunk its hooks into my skull. Maybe it was Robert Plant’s opening verse from the disc’s first song, “Good Times Bad Times,” that did it: “In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man / Now I’ve reached that age, I try to do all those things the best I can / No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam.” Granted, that’s some pretty hackneyed shit. At that point in my life, though, I could painfully relate—and the fact that I’d resisted going whole-hog on Zeppelin for so long meant it hit with the accumulated weight of decades of denial.

I didn’t care for the movie SLC Punk , but I did like one scene: a flashback toward the end, when one kid shows up at the other kid’s house. (Hey, it’s been a while, and it isn’t that memorable a movie… I think one of them was played as a grown-up by Shaggy from the Scooby Doo  movies?

REM – Shiny Happy People Rehearsal # 2 – 1991 | To Live the Good Life

@ucb2912 I don’t think they expected it to be such a huge hit upon release of the actual single. SHP wasn’t even out yet at a single when they did SNL, LMR was still a massive hit. SHP went top 10 everywhere, and I think the band simply got tired of it. I consider myself a pretty big R.E.M. fan, but I even got tired of SHP after repeated listens.

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