Whenever I listen to this song I think of when I was 18, in 1989, blasting it on my car stereo as I drove to do my own gig at a local high school. It really created the energy for the evening.
I remember watching this episode of TOTP and Orange Crush has been in my top 5 songs of all time ever since. Although the performances weren't live, TOTP was such a treat every week - it was at it's peak for me around this time :)
Just like Morrissey did in 1983 with the Smiths when he went on stage and sang with no mic, Stipe hides behind a megaphone to show disapproval with lip syncing. Awesome.
That's not the reason at all.. It's because part of the song's studio version / LP record is sang thru a 📣 megaphone, namely the refrain and the bridge both so.. That's the reason but nice attempt at making this seem cooler than it is
@DerseyLaBoosh he said "Especially nice on a hot day, Orange Crush" apparently the band took extreme offense to this,seeing as the song is about the chemical Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War. They didnt go on Top Of The Pops again until 1995.
If this was the episode of TOTP hosted by Mark Goodier then it's missing the classic introduction along the lines of "Mmmn, now it's REM with Orange Crush. Who wouldn't like a nice glass of refreshing Orange squash right now!!!".
Hang on, what does the presenter say at the end? It cuts off too soon to hear, I think. The orange refers to agent orange, the chemical used in the vietnam war. Thank you for posting and sharing with the rest of us REM fans. The band is gone but not forgotten.
The studio was just never cut out for live performance anyway. At least we got some great spoof moments out of it. Oasis switched the Gallagher brothers on a track in good fun, but the idea was lost since both of them sang on different tracks, so people just naturally assumed it was one or the other.
This was the best Tour REM ever did! The Green Tour when they were becoming huge and Headliners! That Album along with Murmur is still their best! If people only knew that a few years earlier they were playing pizza parlors and bowling alleys. You could see early REM for practically nothing and up close. They had Radio Free Europe as their best song but it was only played on college radio so it wasn’t really a hit song. Nobody knew who they were except the hip college kids or college crowd. Ah, the good old days!
@AndyAufAnglo HI Andy its been a year since your post and like me, you probably did it after a few beers. But the point I am making is that the more accomplished Bands would happily sing live, as a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff, one memorable performance when playing and singing live was Simply Reds holding back the years from 1985 which stood out to me because compared to his fellow peers he actually could and did sing live and sounded like his released recording,
I'm surprised people on here are bemoaning the fact it's not a live performance. The producers expected bands to lip sync on TotPs, even accomplished bands like REM. The show had a high turnover of acts and it wouldn't be practical to play live for just one song. TotPs was a cheaply made entertainment vehicle reflecting current single sales. There were rare exceptions, New Order and, I think, Nirvana.
KingProne No. He’s purposefully exaggerating the fact that he’s lip syncing because he thought it was lame. As for New Order, according to Peter Hook it was their manager Rob Gretton who insisted they play live. Integrity etc. And supposedly every time they played live on TOTP their singles did worse on the charts. So there’s that.
I remember watching this .Then i remember my disappointmen at taping over it.I think fuzzbox were on before them..pink pink sunshine.saw them in Dubling on June 24th that year. Immense
I’d say it was because he didn’t know what it was about. How many people know enola gay is about the aeroplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. It’s not obvious is it
+Pykadon that were infamous but it will go down in tv history as one of the best protests they did against the BBC. the whole point of going on TV is to play live to see how well you can play and what the audience think. the BBC wouldnt let musicians play live because they claimed that setting up a studio or stage for live performances took too long so they made people mime. even now you still cant play fully live at the BBC studios yet. many countries around europe make people mime but people always play live in the U.S
I have never liked the clips from that show. It was so stupid how they ask the bands to go on stage to perform with playback. Arrgh! hated it. R.E.M: was one of the most memorable bands of all time and you ask them to be on stage with playback??? I'm absolutely sure that neither Michael, Peter, Mike nor Bill liked doing it. Thank God, Morrissey (The Smiths) told them once: I'm not doing it and if I do so, I'll make it look so ridiculous;)
So funny that Michael Stipe is pretending to use a megaphone while lip syncing.. Is he also wearing a fake ponytail? I have never seen pictures of him with long hair.
So just because you've never seen pics of him with long hair that's a fake ponytail? It's actually real hair he had his hair long in 88 and 89 on the green world tour
I hope this is a sarcastic commentupthebracket26 cause this song is about "agent Orange" and the vietnam bullshit occupation so many shamfull years ago....
They were well-received among rock music fans because they played good-sounding rock music. That's *ALL* there is to it, hipster. It's a shame that artsy-fartsy self-indulgent musico-types just don't get it yet--especially since it started in the early 50s. Music is not, and never has been, a medium for discussing "important" things. It has to sound *good*. Not sound "important".
That show was one of the worst shows ever!!! I can't believe they even agreed to do this...totally not their style @DerseyLaBoosh I think "that's gotta feel nice on a hot day"
