V04-T06 Academy Fight Song

.....You may have noticed that since this volume began that even those songs recorded in the 70's and 80's were from sources released within a couple years of 1990. This track is no different. A big part of the reason is that I was making last minute substitutions, as I've mentioned here before. I think that subconsciously I was also wary of being perceived as someone living in the past. It's just that if any ongoing collection is to be genuinely well-rounded then whatever in it is contemporary, regardless of when 'contemporary' happens to fall, is always going to be a small part of the whole. And of course, even that will soon be part of the past. Since I had already attempted to play around with the dates by playing older recordings I decided to indulge myself with a contemporary cover of an older song before fishing around for older sources. I felt I had been behaving myself were the covers were concerned and this one isn't archly deconstructionist or remotely campy.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 6

• 03:42 "ACADEMY FIGHT SONG" (Chris Conley)
• performed by R.E.M.
• original source: A-side 7" BOB32(UK)1992
• [free with magazine Bucketful of Brains issue #39/40(Mar-Apr/92)]
• and my source: the same

.....I'm going to reproduce my original liner notes again, with the exception that a specific institution's name will be redacted not merely for legal reasons but because it may no longer be an accurate reflection of campus life today. Also, Conley attended University of Rochester, NY and not the school discussed.

"Many British fanzines give flexi-discs (or used to, in the age of turntables). Few give hard-vinyl singles in picture sleeves. This live track opens with the announcement, "Mission Of Burma", the name of the band who recorded this song originally on their debut single [in 1980]. R.E.M., who are even better as a out-of-left-field-cover band than as radio hounds, do a pretty faithful job.

"I'm pretty sure that the song is about [a certain institution]-- the arrogance, cliques and hypocrisy. The 'fight' is against the academy, not for it. It was about this point in the tape that I realized how many overtures of rebellion I have been working into this thing. What distinguishes [this institution's] cliques (according to my personal experiences meeting people and the testimony of friends who were either students or professors) is an unavoidable sense of shallowness that comes from defining themselves in terms of others-- specifically what they choose not to like or else denigrate. It's not unheard of for a [~] student to confront someone with a laundry list of real or imagined personal faults the student feels that person should correct, and to react with shock and defensiveness if that person should have the nerve to tell them to fuck off.

"The song is sung from the perspective of someone wrestling against peer pressure to do exactly that; hence the line, 'I'm not judging you, I'm judging me'. The flip-side of the single, by the way, is a song by The Coal Porters."

That covers it. And for anyone reading who isn't from the northeast but knows that Mission Of Burma began their career in Boston, I should point out that the redacted school is not Harvard. Regardless of what national television may repeatedly tell you, Harvard is not in Boston, it's in Cambridge. On the other side of the Charles River. In another county. End of sermon.