250 Bears Rolling off a Mountain to Psychedelic Music

Yes, this is yet another video from the recent hit video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. No, I have not yet played the game extensively.

There is something strangely beautiful to this video. And you might even notice a moment that reminds you of the scene in Titanic where the guy falls off the ship and hits the propeller.

No actual bears were harmed in the creation of this video. And so far as I know, none of them were singing autotune bears.

Tears for Fears - Waiting in Line

Get in line with the things you know.

Tears For Fears, "The Hurting" from The Hurting (1983)

I'm already getting sore from standing in line. Amy is bouncy and bubbly, her energy boiling over as she remains stationary.

There's a couple in front of us with expensive beers. He's bristled from head to toe with thick dark hair and leaning back with the confidence of a tried and true intellectual. Her eyes are big and searching, but right now they are focused on the man, who is rambling about Tears for Fears, and she is beaming. The couple is a good decade or two older than me and Amy.

"He's just trying to impress her," I whisper to Amy, trying to impress her. "Probably making it up as he goes. And he can get away with it too. It's clear that she doesn't know any better."

Amy gets closer to the couple without detection, an advantage that short, cute girls like her have over us large, imposing men.

"He said that Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain should have been attributed to 'Tear for Fear' because they were essentially Roland's solo albums."

I had just been texting a couple of friends regarding my problems with the album Elemental compared to earlier Tears for Fears albums.

"This guy really knows his stuff."

The man recounts to his lady-friend (girlfriend? fiancee? wife?) an abridged history of Tears for Fears. I heard none of it, but I imagine it went something like this:

"When one talks about the foundation of The Beatles one imagines the monolithic moment when John Lennon first ran into a young Paul McCartney. But the Beatles was more than Lennon and McCartney; The Beatles was George Harrison and Ringo Starr as well! The same is not true for Tears for Fears. The story of Tears for Fears is the story of Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith. Unlike the Beatles, Tears for Fears is a band that begins with the monolithic meeting of two individuals.

"Curt and Roland were teenagers when they met over thirty years ago in Bath, England. They got by as session musicians for British bands Neon and Graduate before forming Tears for Fears (originally History of Headaches) in 1981. The band was influenced by musical geniuses like David Byrne, Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno, as well as psychological geniuses like Arthur Janov, whose Primal Therapy is the inspiration for the name Tears for Fears.

"The debut Tears for Fears album, The Hurting, released in 1983, is a concept album intended to address the emotional distress of Orzabel's childhood with Janov's techniques of Primal Therapy. It is dark and universal, an exposition of the difficulty of youth, strange and accessible. The Hurting begins the trend of strong synthesizer-based songs, beautiful, but also unfortunate in that attention is shifted away from Orzabel's edgy and biting guitar work, some of the best the decade has to offer. While The Hurting reaches #1 in the U.K., it is relatively unsuccessful outside of the British Isles.

"Their sophomore album, Songs from the Big Chair, released in 1985, is likely the most significant album of the '80s, both creating and capturing the sound of a decade haunted by the ghost of George Orwell's prophetic political novel Nineteen Eighty-Four as substantiated by Reagan and Thatcher and of a people embarking upon an inward journey into an emotional heart of darkness. The album sky-rocketed to #1 on the U.S. charts, bringing with it the singles 'Shout' and 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World.' (The first single from the album, 'Mother's Talk' was obviously too far ahead of its time to gain popular acclaim. This is the only reason I can think of that it too wasn't also a #1 hit in America.) Like The Hurting, Songs from the Big Chair is grounded in popular psychology, specifically the Flora Rheta Schreiber novel titled Sybil and the subsequent television miniseries of the same name. Sybil Dorsett (pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason), the main character, is a woman with multiple personality disorder who finds comfort and refuge in the 'big chair' of her therapist. Presumably, it is this therapist's 'big chair' that serves as the stage from which Curt and Roland perform the various songs of the album, transforming "Shout" into a kind of 'shout for help.'

"Seldom does a band attain such heights of perfection regarding their first three musical attempts as Tears for Fears did upon release of the 1989 album The Seeds of Love. The album, like Songs from the Big Chair, topped the U.S. charts, but unlike its predecessor, The Seeds of Love was incapable of producing any number one singles. While the singles were obviously not as successful, it can be argued that they are of a higher quality, from the Lennon-esque tribute to love in the face of political confusion of 'Sowing the Seeds of Love' to the slow feminist funk of 'Woman in Chains,' featuring the sexy vocals of Oleta Adams and drum work of none other than Phil Collins, to the Latin styling of 'Advice for the Young at Heart' and quiet anthem of 'Famous Last Words.' It's likely that nobody loves this album more than Oleta Adams, a singer / pianist that Orzabel and Smith discovered in a Kansas City hotel bar who was able to turn her time with Tears for Fears into a successful solo career.

"The next two albums, Elemental and Raoul and the Kings of Spain should have been attributed to 'Tear for Fear' because they were essentially Roland's solo albums. Neither of them gained commercial success, but the latter, Raoul and the Kings of Spain, allowed Orzabel another chance to delve into the depths of his own past. This time he was not as interested with the difficulty of childhood as with his Spanish heritage. Raoul is the name of Orzabel's firstborn son, but it is also the name his own parents originally intended to call him before settling on the name Roland. Not only is the album something of a family reunion, but it also features a reunion with singer Oleta Adams on the song 'Me and My Big Ideas.'

"Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, released in 2004, is presumably the last album by Tears for Fears. This is witnessed both by the name of the album and the fact that the band has been active ever since 2004 in not putting out albums. In a world haunted by bands like KISS and Black Sabbath, who alternate between farewell tours and reunion tours because both present a sense of urgency that allows them to sell tickets for a higher price, I am happy that there is a band like Tears for Fears. A younger listener might shout for more albums because they just want more Tears for Fears. An older listener might complain that they've already released too many. I admire that Tears for Fears placed a period at the end of their discography and ended the way they wanted to. They have neither burned out nor faded away. They have recorded their story, and now they continue to recount that story live."

"I'm pretty excited to hear that story tonight," says the woman. "Oh! Hey! The line is moving!"

15 Albums From Which A Justin Tiemeyer Can Be Constructed

(In chronological order)

1. Queen - Greatest Hits (1981, 1991)

Queen is the first because I can't remember the name of the Monkees tape we always listened to in my parents' station wagon. I remember being vexed in middle school when this guy named Austin asked me who my favorite band was and I had no answer. Some time later I discovered a passion for Queen, but when I hunted Austin down to tell him Queen is my favorite band he seemed unimpressed, as if he had moved on from that momentary conversation months earlier. Dick...

2. Aerosmith - Nine Lives (1997)

My best friend Jared and I got into Aerosmith fairly heavily because his older brother Paul was really into them. We just ate up anything Aerosmith at a fairly young age, but it wasn't until 1997 that we witnessed the release of brand new Aerosmith material for the first time during our obsession. We listened to Nine Lives day and night, each of us having bought it early on and thus possessing the CD with the naughty pictures all over it. The first time I ever traveled very far from home was with Jared and his family on a trip down to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and we listened to Nine Lives on our Discmans nearly the whole trip.

3. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979)

When I was in high school I was convinced that I was the youngest person on the planet to both know as much as I did about Pink Floyd and to never have done any sort of drug while exploring the Floyd catalog. I remember listening to The Wall over and over again in my car, explaining the nuances of the album to anyone sitting next to me in my little Honda CRX. You see, it's about the war, but it's also about music, and more than that, it's about one man's struggle with emotional events as expressed by war metaphors in music.

4. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (1973)

 
This one time I went to Vertigo Records with my good friend Elliot Mayo, now world-famous DJ Elijah. I wasn't into looking at the electronic records just yet, but I did enjoy looking for cool Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin t-shirts. When I came across the Houses of the Holy t-shirt, I was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, this was one of the most important albums I've ever listened to - it had changed me, but on the other hand, it was a t-shirt populated with naked children and I was still in high school. In the end I saved my money. I probably bought some issues of Uncanny X-Men with it. This would have been either during the Onslaught or Operation: Zero Tolerance days.

5. Smashing Pumpkins - Adore (1998)

Any time before my senior year of high school this album would have sounded much too dark for me. But when a girl I thought I was in love with began dating a good friend of mine I found myself really struggling with a kind of darkness that made this album accessible. I've since found several other boys who claim Adore to be their favorite album, and who can cite similar dark periods of life that the album helped them through. I would never again underestimate the healing power of a really sad album.

6. Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way (2002)

Because my brother and I drove around everywhere singing this album together we joined forces and created a band called Craig. We focused mainly on playing classic rock music and writing solid, interesting songs. Because we weren't trying to mimic either Green Day or Blink 182 we were different from all the other bands in the area. When I was kicked out of the band they changed the named to Craig and the Cowboys, which made me conclude that I am the negation of Cowboys.

7. Ryan Adams - Gold (2001)

I don't know what had happened, but I remember driving in my GMC Jimmy and crying while listening to this album. I dried my eyes and met Brian Vandenberg at a coffee shop where we were going to hear our mutual friend Matt play some music. Matt ended up writing a novel in a very Dickensian fashion, so I'm sure he'd be fairly happy to be called "Our Mutual Friend."

8. Zwan - Mary Star of the Sea (2003)

Has Billy Corgan ever sounded as happy, positive and enlightened as he did on this album? Has he ever released a record that comes with fun rainbow guitar stickers that I've found on my old belongings in my parents' basement from time to time? No. And I fear it will never happen again.

9. The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

Abbey Road wasn't the first album that flowed from one track to the next. According to Brian Wilson, that was Rubber Soul. According to the rest of the world, Wilson's band The Beach Boys recorded the second real album: Pet Sounds. Abbey Road, however, was the pinnacle of album-making. It never sounded so good until then and it never sounded so good afterward. Let's throw all of that away. The fact of the matter is that I can't imagine that a human could ever fall in love without ever hearing the George Harrisonsong "Something" from this album. That's the more important impact of this album.

10. David Bowie - Young Americans (1975)

Young Americans is by far not the best album put out by David Bowie, but it is the only album I owned on cassette during the lonely year in Toledo in which I couldn't get the car CD player to work. We bonded through struggle much like Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves did in Speed.

11. Neil Young - Harvest (1972)

I listened to this album enough times that I considered writing a book of short stories, one for each track on the album. The ideas were pretty interesting, but I was not very good at finishing things that I started back then. I didn't have any deadlines, so I never got anything done.

12. Prince and the Revolution - Parade (1986)

No need for an anecdote. It's simply the best.

13. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

Becky, Elliot and I were walking around Manhattan, and I had this melody stuck in my head. It was Radiohead's "Reckoner." I didn't know any of the words. I just kept humming this melody. Suddenly, the sound was coming at me from behind. I looked at the storefronts and none of the stores were open. None of them were pumping Radiohead out of their speakers. None of them even had speakers. I was convinced for some time that Thom Yorke himself was walking several paces behind us singing this song to himself until a car pulled away and the music was gone.

14. Tom Petty - Wildflowers (1994)

You're just a poor boy along way from home
You're just a poor boy a long way from home

15. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)

I didn't fall in love with Arcade Fire because David Bowie loved them first, but it certainly didn't hurt. But seriously, how cool was it when David Bowie and Arcade Fire performed "Wake Up" together on VH1's Fashion Rocks. I don't know whether I was more excited about that or the Where the Wild Things Are trailer with the same song. Oooh.

Korean Baby Singing "Hey Jude"