Pitchfork

[Posted Friday, September 19th, 2003 15:30:00 Pitchfork Central Time]

Josh Bauchner and Will Bryant report:
The anchorman doesn't wear a piece, the financial analyst looks vaguely like Dieter from Sprockets, and both the trenchcoated reporter and dorky weatherman look like Mike Mills. What the hell is going on here? After several days of furiously searching for a meaning, diehard R.E.M. fans finally found a link attached to the curious images of a suited Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills in various guises on the website Morningteam.com, which as of today is streaming the video for "Bad Day," featuring the fake news show. Stipe acts as the anchor, singing lead, while Mills and Buck pop up miming along in various roles (our favorite: "Jonathan Vance," in which Buck sports a completely ridiculous Nick Drake bob). And you say there's no such thing as the liberal media!

The site also purportedly offers coffee mugs and trucker hats, a Peter Buck news ticker, and most disturbingly, a miniature Stipe as news anchor "Tod Allen" on your desktop. All of this, of course, is in support of the "Bad Day" single, which is out in stores October 13th and looks somethin' like this:

01 Bad Day
02 Favorite Writer [Magnapop cover]
03 Out in the Country
04 Adagio Unused Tune

"Bad Day" will be also be released, along with another new song ("Animal"), on the new In Time best-of compilation on October 28th and the video actually makes its television debut tonight on CNN's Anderson Cooper show (!). Our previous story on that has all the dirt. For Pitchfork news, I'm Josh Bauchner, good night.