As a fan of R.E.M., I find this reworking blasphemous. As a fan of Tojo Yamamoto, I find it absolutely brilliant. I feel conflicted. Isn’t music flippin’ great for doing that? As the Lord of the New Church once asked, Is Nothing Sacred? Apparently not, and the world is a better place for such an attitude, attitudes that bring songs such as this into the world, in its own way as much a tribute to the original as a deconstruction/reconstruction. So much is going on here to unpack and discuss, and Andy Kaufman was a divisive, strange, and often uncomfortable figure, so it is only keeping that a song about him is the same.
It is also only fitting that a band so intertwined with the history and art of wrestling should cover this. Amongst Kaufman’s strange projects was a wrestling challenge, of which perhaps the less said, the better in these more enlightened times. But given his penchant for the shocking, the unexpected, the revolutionary, Tojo Yamamoto’s cover is perfect, the lyrics moving between world weary and bored and the histrionic and sonically violent, while the music takes R.E.M.s indie sound and turns it into a roller-coaster ride of the ripped and the roaring, full of shocling dynamic plot twists and at its crescendoing heights feeling as if it is in self-destruct mode…much like the man himself.
It even comes with the “Nothing is Cool” remix, which takes elements of the song and wraps them in billowing sonic clouds, somehow both serene and serrated, cinematic and incendiary… and even madder (in the very best of ways) than their first take.
Covers need to do something interesting; otherwise, what’s the point? If ever there was a stark opposite of the phrase “merely going through the motions,”, which is often applicable to covers of other people’s work, this is definitely it.
In years to come, music and perhaps even film students will be asked to write essays about this for their final exam.
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