It’s amazing how difficult it is to find REM songs on YouTube. Goddamn EMI and Warner Bros. I mean that literally, God needs to send a few lightening bolts up their asses.

I tried to find the slow version (that was on And I Feel Fine), but sadly it wasn’t on there. But this is the more familiar version. I find it hard enough to garden in daylight, so good for the guy who inspired this song.

Rant under cutA word to record companies. Stop fearing the future. Radio and MTV are dead. You are not dealing with the same market as you were 15 years ago, let alone back in the 70s and 80s.

YouTube is how people spread new music. Much like college radio was how I found R.E.M., The Violent Femmes, Butthole Surfers, Morrissey and other bands in the pre-Nirvana days of music, YouTube does the same for bands of today and for “the youth of today™”.

When you force YouTube to take down music, when you remove the audio track, you hurt your sales. That is you taking money away from your artists and out of your own pockets. It’s denying them FREE publicity and airplay. I have bought every REM album and still continue to listen to most of them. I like to turn people on to music I love, especially the music of my youth.

But you will not listen to me. You’ll continue to pull every video you can off of YouTube. And in response I won’t be able to give you free publicity. Now, the only reason I say all of this isn’t because I give two shits about EMI or Warner, hell no. But the artists on those labels? They’re the reason you have billions, and you continue to fuck them when you do petty bullshit like this.