Take the case of a band like REM... Er, R.E.M. that is! Whatever the acronym stands for (it is better than O.A.R. or even O.M.D. but they all have gays in their midst anyway, so - what's in an acronym; that is the question!)

Their BEST SONG (EVER) used to be available on sites such as Playlist.com and Deezer.com - and what do they do? They yank it out of there! It is to be an iTunes exclusive now - and nothing else at all! You want to listen to it, YOU FORK OVER THE CASH FOR IT!

Hmm... Haven't they made enough money with their insufferable hits (such as SHINY HAPPY PEEPS and LOSING a religion they never believed in anyway, the damn agnostic morons that they always were from the very get-go, their very humble and yet posh suburbanite slacker beginnings - but that is another story...)

Those truly insufferable hit songs that are played over and over again by virtually every damnable commercial radio station out there...! (It does seem like every half-hour or so, "shiny happy people" are raining from the skies above, no matter how dreadful your day has been! It's either shiny peeps, happy peeps or men that rain down on ya - no matter how straight-as-an-arrow that you are! But we're digressing now - because this isn't about the Pointer Sisters and their ilk...!)

HUH.

Have they not made ENOUGH DOUGH! I ask you...

Why won't they share their only (thing that comes remotely close to being a) hidden treasure, this lesser-known song titled "The Great Beyond" that was expressly used for the movie MAN ON THE MOON - oh yeah, that was another one of their insufferable hits that gets to be overplayed on commercial radio...! The title track, that is: MAN ON THE MOON! And only because it mentions, over and over again, Andy. And Elvis And Classy Freddie Blassie for that matter...! Now, Andy could have been just about any Andy - Warhol seemed a more probable bet, given the proclivities of lead singer whatsisname here... Gibb could hav been another suspect here - some unholy fixation there, the queer kind of obsession...?

Andy could have been the same Andy that French band Les Rita Mitsouko sang about, too...!

Andy Griffith was a likely suspect too, for that matter -he'd go well juxtaposed to Freddie Blassie- as well as Andy Stevens, Andy Williams, Andy ... Damn it, ANDY is a VERY COMMON NAME...!!!

But I am digressing now - really digressing, methinks...!

I am infuriated that there is no way to get this gem of a song - whose lyrics make no sense whatsoever, but still... R.E.M. is not where we would seek SENSE, LOGIC, RATIONALITY anyways... But there is no way to get to hear even a snippet of this song anywhere anymore!

Look at this lousy official video for the song in question: here it is. IT MAY STILL BE AVAILABLE -just to watch- on YouTube, that's right! But what an abysmal, pathetic video it is, folks...! For watching the video destroys any sense of awe that one might have had when one got to listen to it for the first time, quite by accident, as the end credits for MAN ON THE MOON rolled on the screen...!

The video completely obliterates all the scope and all the potential of the song by limiting itself to a simple multi-mediatic premise; the "breaking through" is now merely seen as a message vehiculated by the airwaves, reaching the masses... And it isn't much of a message at all, since it is so cryptic and all! Truth is, it is truly nothing other than gibberish, of course! And the video kills any ability that our own imagination has to enhance it beyond (oh, that is the key word here: beyond!) its terre-à-terre levels...

*BORING*

When one does not watch or even know about the existence of this pathetic run-of-the-mill video, you listen to the words that make no sense but are, somehow, evocative still (while making abstraction of the fact that it has been written and produced by a bunch of agnostics, at best) and the scope of it is much, much broader, I can tell you so much... It can be as large as the limits of your imagination, really, and if yours is anything like mine, it will therefore attain the scope which the movie that this song was written for wanted to attain: the actual Great Beyond! As it is alluding to an eternity that can be reached - through mere imagination or media-fueled fantasy, since those two options seem to be the only viable ones for the gay thinkers behind the song here, alas. Indeed, it is such a shame they are themselves limited in scope... For alas, here, it is alluded to that this "eternity" is really nothing more than the notoriety a dead comedian can have post-mortem, especially when his life was cut short tragically -by a visceral illness- and they make a movie about him starring one of the most ambitious, Oscar-hungry would-be thespians-but-really-nothing-more-than-a-stand-up-comedian types out there today...! But that is another story, really...

R.E.M could therefore stand for Really Egregious Morons

For to commit such an absurdly gross, egregious blunder as to commit such a song only to RUIN IT COMPLETELY afterwards - well, they are either morons or complete hypocrites.

Or both.

Hmm: completely moronic hypocrites - such should be the definition of an agnostic mind! Or the atheistic one, in truth...

INDEED!

You can take and shove all of your songs YOU KNOW WHERE.
You don't know what truly SHINING is all about; THEY DO!
You don't know what HAPPINESS is, R.E.M. - THEY DO!
You have no CLUE what RELIGION IS! Or FAITH. WE DO!
So... What would any of you peabrains know about THE GREAT BEYOND...?!?
That's right: absolutely nothing.
One day, you will though: when you croak.
Hope it's not too late for your SOUL then!
Maybe Andy, Elvis and Classie Freddie Blassie will be able to help you all then...?

Good luck with that, R.E.M.!

Until then -
I suggest you listen to the copycat version of THE GREAT BEYOND -
on Deezer.com!
He may sound gayer, actually -
but at least there are no images disturbing your imagination's process of ENHANCING THIS SONG (because it needs it - considering the nonsensical lyrics) BEYOND ITS BOUNDARIES...

Oh, and one last thing now -
does this hurt, Stipe?
Well remember that EVERYBODY HURTS - sometimes.

Get ready for some more hurting right now -
here goes:

The Corrs' cover of that one was much better than your original recording!
There!

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