Larry Wilson: Radio Free Europe loss means one cowboy less on world stage
Sometimes in a culture there’s one single moment — one speech, one piece of art, one song — after which everyone recognizes the changing of the guard.
It always looks or sounds so obvious, as if it had always been there and we just hadn’t seen it, or heard it, although of course it wasn’t so obvious until its creator or creators sculpted it, which wasn’t necessarily easy — it’s only in retrospect that it was so inevitable.
In pop music, the tipping point that led to the renaissance that was American indie rock after a period when only the British post-punk bands — the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, or the Irish upstarts U2 — were doing anything interesting was the 1981 release by REM, an obscure new band out of Athens, Georgia, of one banger of a song: “Radio Free Europe.”
The success of the driving, muddy, lyrically almost incomprehensible song was propelled by the simultaneous burgeoning of college radio, the left-of-the-dial FM stations of which began playing the number in joyous saturation, because here was something new, something the hidebound “album-oriented rock” stations of the time, locked in to terrible bands like Foghat and Foreigner, and unnecessary spinnings of the same old Led Zep, couldn’t fathom.
One song. A revolution. That was clear. A thousand garage bands were formed on listening to it. But what the hell was it about?
Stipe so often sang in a mumble — a “Murmur,” as a later album was titled — that all the lyrics excepting the “Radio Free Europe” chorus were indecipherable.
When the song was added in 2010 to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress because of its cultural significance, critic Lori Majewski wrote: “Turns out, R.E.M.’s breakout single is named for a U.S.-funded organization that disseminates uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate in countries around the world where, in its own words, ‘a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.’ How ironic, then, that ‘Radio Free Europe’ liberated rock fans in their own country, gifting music fans with a song that signaled the end of the world as rock fans knew it while heralding the arrival of a thrilling new one.” Turns out Stipe wrote the lyrics on a kind of bet: the band had grown up hearing commercials for the government network aimed at spreading democracy behind the Iron Curtain, and guitarist Peter Buck challenged him: “Write a song with that as the title.” He did, but the rest of the lyrics have little to do with spreading democracy.
When I was growing up, in the same way that it seemed weird, and a little appalling, to learn that the CIA sponsored cultural tours of jazz artists, and even poets and New York School painters, to Eastern Bloc countries, the idea of Radio Free Europe and its parent Voice of America had the hint of jingoistic propaganda about it. In spy novels, the cultural attaché is always really a spy.
And, look, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union split up, and Germany was reunited. We, uh, won the Cold War.
But these days, given your Hungaries, descending into fascism, and your Russias, already descended into czarism, the idea of an American network telling it like it is to listeners in troubled parts of the world — even if they no longer have to hide in the attic secretly tuning in to your frequency on their analog dials — doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Listen in and you’ll find straight down the middle news.
But, for the next three years at least, forget about normie hopes for America or its voice overseas. Donald Trump considers the plain-talk VOA “The Voice of Radical America,” because it reports both sides of stories, and thus he wants to “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.” And, Katie, bar the door, “in March 2019, Voice of America ran a segment about transgender migrants seeking asylum in the United States.” Can’t have that news reported! A Trump executive order last week guts the United States Agency for Global Media to “the minimum presence.” Vladimir Putin will see that, as my Somali friend Saeed Omer used to say when we worked together in the Middle East, as “one cowboy less” on the world stage as American influence diminishes.
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.