On October 7th 2011 Chieftan Mews changed his location to Kenneth’s Frequency, a tribute to the title of a R.E.M song named ‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?’.
Screenshot of Mew's Twitter Profile taken by Inkybrown on October 7, 2011
Previously on September 22nd a fan posted a Youtube video of R.E.M’s videoclip for ‘The Great Beyond’ on Youtube the day after R.E.M broke up. Chieftan Mew’s simply replied to with “Aluminum” a lyric from ‘E-Bow The Letter’ which was the first single from R.E.M’s 10th album ‘New Adventures in Hi-Fi’
XFan: I know Radiohead cares
R.E.M. – The Great Beyond (Video)
http://www.youtube.com
© 2006 WMG The Great Beyond (Video)
22 September 2011 at 13:41 ·Chieftan Mews: Aluminum
22 September 2011 at 17:00 · Like · 3YFan: tastes like fear
23 September 2011 at 01:33
R.E.M was a major influence for Thom Yorke and the band who toured with them in 1995 and in 1998 Radiohead joined R.E.M to perform at the Tibetan Freedom Concert where Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke took turns joining each other on stage. You can find footage of Radiohead performing Lucky with Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke performing Be Mine and Backup on E-Bow The Letter on Youtube.
They remain close friends and Thom Yorke sometimes adds the start of ‘The One I Love’ from R.E.M’s fifth album ‘Document’ to the start of ‘Everything in It’s Right Place’ when performing live.
The date of the change to Chieftan Mew’s twitter profile marks exactly 9 years since the release of R.E.M’s 8th album ‘Automatic for the People’ which was released on the 7th of October 1992 before going on to sell 16 million copies worldwide.
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? wasn’t from Automatic for the People, instead it was the first single from the next album ‘Monster’ from 1994. Radiohead where the support act for this tour.
Michael Stipe describes What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? as:
I wrote that protagonist as a guy who’s desperately trying to understand what motivates the younger generation, who has gone to great lengths to try and figure them out, and at the end of the song it’s completely fucking bogus. He got nowhere.
( Source: Wikipedia )
R.E.M announced on the 21st of September last year that “As lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band” on their website, they had been together 31 Years and released 15 Albums of which ‘Collapse into Now’ was their last.
Rolling Stone did a really nice interview with Thom Yorke while Radiohead where in New York last year about R.E.M’s influence on him and the band, you can read it here.
Hunting Mews 