Orange Crush: R.E.M. (Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe)
Green, 1988.
The song features a call and response verse, with overlap at the end of the verse:
Mike Mills Michael Stipe
Follow me, don't follow me
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
Collar me, don't collar me
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
We are agents of the free
I've had my fun, and now it's time to
Over me, not over me Serve your consience oversees
Coming in fast, over me
CHORUS:
High on the roof, thin the blood
Another one climbs on the waves tonight
Coming into your home
(repeate verse and chorus 1x)
BRIDGE:
(vocals distorted to sound as if over a radio, walkie-talkie, or megaphone; a helicopter is heard as if overhead, and a marching cadence is shouted)
We'd circle and we'd circle and we'd circle to stop, and consider and centered on the pavement stacked up all the trucks jacked up and our wheels in slush and orange crush in pocket--and all this here county, hell, any county, it's just like heaven here, and I was remembering and I was just in a different county and all then this whirlybird that I headed for I had my goggles pulled off--I knew it all, I knew every back road and every truck stop...
Follow me, don't follow me
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
Collar me, don't collar me
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
We are agents of the free
I've had my fun, and now it's time to
Over me, not over me Serve your consience oversees
Coming in fast, over me
CHORUS:
High on the roof, thin the blood
Another one climbs on the waves tonight
Coming into your home
As most people know, this isn't about the orange-flavored soda produced by Pepsi Co., or the nickname of the Denver Broncos defense in the 1970s, but the chemical known as Agent Orange, which was used in the Vietnam War as a defoliating agent. Unfortunately, it didn't just kill plants, but a lot of civilians, as well as our own troops--there are now numerous health problems identified with troop exposure to Agent Orange.
Michael Stipe was an army brat, and his father did serve in Vietnam. This song fits in with the political theme of the album, while calling to mind--in the band's typically oblique way--the problems of now-neglected veterans, much like Bruce Springsteen's equally-misunderstood song "Born in the U.S.A.." Of course, Stipe's lyrics focus more on images of soldiers hitting the beach, and of Agent Orange being dropped on houses. More interesting is the phrase: "I've had my fun and how it's time / to serve your conscience overseas"--for while the hippie generation had their fun, the government thought it time that they pay for that fun, in a sense--defending their freedom against domino-theory communism.
The video features alternating images of a soldier--bare-chested; some would argue homoerotic--and a child playing at war. They are the same person, perhaps. And while the child plays with toy soldiers in his sandbox, the soldier puts on camoflage, paints his face, and goes into battle, only to be killed.
Peter Buck (R.E.M. guitarist):
"He didn't write it about his father. His father was in the helicopter corps. I'm not sure if he actually dropped the stuff, but he was around it. Even so, the song's not about his father's life, though his father sometimes thinks it is."
Mitch Easter:
"'Orange Crush' was really mechanical and probably done a lot on a Fairlight or something. If I had suggested that on the 'Murmur' sessions they'd have shot me on the spot, and that wouldn've been the end of it."
Quoted by Peter Hogan in The Complete Guide To The Music Of R.E.M.. Courtesy of CloudStrife. :)