Growing up in the 90s often felt like the second 60s.

I was there for all the 60s and 70s throwbacks: the flower-power inspired clothing and accessories that were everywhere in trending teen fashion [many things which I still have, and fit 🙂 ]; I binge-watched VH1’s “Seven Days Of 70s” [which I tried to watch for all seven days at the age of 13]; I indulged in the local oldies station, “Kool 96.7”; … And this 60s and 70s nostalgic love that the mid-90s was fondly reminiscing was part of how I learned about things like The Monkees.

But more than the literal throwback to the 60s and 70s, the 90s was like a reincarnation of the 60s in many ways–while outwardly dark and edgy, the 90s was inwardly soft, vulnerable, and naked. The 90s had a creative, awkward, deeply earnest aspect to its music and culture that was very much like the 60s, upside down. The 90s felt like, although clearly packaged differently, a time for people to become more true to themselves and more in touch with others, which is very much an underlying theme among so many movements of the 60s.

While in the 90s I myself was longing for the 60s in so many ways, as I grew and developed as a person, so did I grow and develop around the beautifully deep music of the 90s. I came to truly love that I could appreciate the 60s through the lens of the 90s, enjoy the comforts of the 90s era I was living in, and love 60s and 90s music both as one creative feeling inside me.

To this day, whether I’m browsing my local Stop & Shop and hearing “Counting Blue Cars” playing overhead, or ducking into a local bar and hearing a cover band cry out “Interstate Love Song”, 90s music is deeply a part of me.

So it’s pretty cool Micky Dolenz is now endorsed and covering songs by R.E.M.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution can’t praise Micky enough: Micky Dolenz of Monkees fame sings the praises of R.E.M. in new EP.

The songs are absolutely fantastic.

I remember the day I sat in a science research class in the fall of 1996 in Greenwich High School and was reading through dream research articles I had photocopied. Our teacher gave us free reign to choose a research subject that interested us, and at 13 years old, I decided I wanted to read about what adults had to say about dreams. I recall then reading for the first time about “R.E.M.: Rapid Eye Movement”, which is the stage in sleep that it is believed a person is dreaming [or so was the theory back in the 90s]. I was enthralled, feeling in the cutting edge of something exciting in sleep, and science, and in myself… I recall staring at friends and family as they fell asleep, at their eyes, and wondering is it happening now? as I watched their beating eyelids dance [sorry everyone LOL].

Of course, I imagined the band “R.E.M.” was a nod to “Rapid Eye Movement”, dreaming: a deep, edgy, 90s way to reference this sacred space of dreams. Back in 1996, the internet was in its absolutely zygotic phase of development, and you could not “Google” this kind of thing–Google didn’t even exist; legends, folklores, rumors, and mystery were king during this time.

But modern day Wikipedia–if it can be trusted?–says nah.

“After considering names such as “Cans of Piss”, “Negro Eyes”, and “Twisted Kites”,^[6] the band settled on “R.E.M.”, which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.^[10] R.E.M. is well known as an abbreviation for rapid eye movement, the dream stage of sleep; however, sleep researcher Rafael Pelayo reports that when his colleague William Dement, the sleep scientist who coined the term REM, reached out to the band, Dement was told that the band was named “not after REM sleep”.^[11]“

So, hmmmmmmmmmmmm….

The band R.E.M. may not be about dreaming, but this cover Micky Dolenz sings of “Shiny Happy People” sure is dreamy.