R.E.M. news - yay

(i.e., not james brown)

This is exciting. I am excited. Also, scissor kicks are neat.

Harborcoat— wow!

WOW!

(no irony).

don't worry, tim, it was mostly a joke -- although seriously, a scissor-kick from a barely-middle-aged guitar player is really not stop-the-presses exciting, is it? most instances of this phenomenon that i have personally witnessed have been more embarrassing than anything else.

PLZ TO NAME EMBARASSING SCISSOR KICKS YOU HAVE WITNESSED. PETE BUCK ONE IN THE PHOTO LOOKS SWEET.

http://www.abqjournal.com/shock/s_hagar306-19-02.jpg

that said I am all for REM to start playing good songs again, though "Gardening At Night" at the hall of fame show implied that Stipe sadly can't re-learn mumbling.

and Burma's pretty damn enthusiastic live

lol Hagar's pants

that's Mike Mills.

rofz

okay mikey, maybe the nudie suits weren't so bad after all.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2005/06/16/stipegall3.jpg

they really haven't played Harborcoat since '85???

(^^^ ALSO TIM PLZ NOTE CORRECT SPELLING)

That's probably true. It doesn't seem like they were playing it by the time of the Lifes Rich Pageant tour.

I love "Feeling Gravity's Pull", I should like to see them do that live, its a wonderful song.

I'm glad it only took them about ten years to realize that the fans who're still with them love that material. [Back in '99 I cringed when people booed 'Cuyahoga.' Somebody needed to sit down with a focus group before the Up tour it seemed.]

ugh, except Cuyahoga sucks and Harborcoat doesn't!

Wait, I really like this Christine McVie idea!

people booed them during 'cuyahoga'? jeez. i thought that was pretty much the highlight of the 99 show i saw.

The Dublin clips i've seen show Stipey mostly turned to one side, reading "Feeling Gravity's Pull" and "1,000,000" off a piece of paper. This tempers my jealousy toward the concertgoers a bit.

How can we talk about middle-aged rockers kicking up their heels & not mention GBV?

do GBV have heels? can they kick them?

Converse have heels, yes.

R.E.M. could have been the college rock Led Zeppelin if they just broke up when the drummer died. Instead they're the college rock Stones, right down to OMG THEY DID PARACHUTE WOMAN.

Tim, Mission Of Burma bring it live, esp. Conley. They all look like they're having tons of fun. I don't think I saw a scissor kick though.

This does seem like a welcome resurgence.

R.E.M. could have been the college rock Led Zeppelin if they just broke up when the drummer died

They could have asked Phil Collins to join too! What's he doing lately?

Mission of Burma could have asked Zak Starkey to join if their drummer had quit.

Umm dude I believe REM still have time left to "break up when the drummer dies."

Also: is it just me, or has Stipe's voice progressed kind of backwards? He spent his youth being husky and mumbly, and slowly converted into bleaty projection and clarity -- it's hard to imagine him now getting back at the vocal tone of those early songs.

("Progressed backwards" meaning over his life span, of course -- it seems like aging usually makes people more soft and husky.)

Umm dude I believe REM still have time left to "break up when the drummer dies."

Gee, you'd think I was making a joke or something.

Heavens! ;)

Sorry! He had that whole brain-aneurysm thing, I thought maybe you thought he died then!

I saw Zombie Bill Berry play on the Monster tour and didn't notice a difference

You know what's weird? Really weird? Right now I find myself wishing R.E.M. made another album that sounded exactly like Monster. If you think about, in all this time since 1994 not a single band has made an album that sounded like that (vox amp + digital delay as the main instrument).

no, there have plenty of shitty albums since 1994 duder

we don't need more shitty albums

haven't their past couple tours been pretty tragic affairs, scissors kick notwithstanding? i mean, they did that one where they took all those requests...and they played the liacouras center at temple u. i'd go if they played the tower again tho.

i think i saw the last three u.s. tours and they've all been great!

R.E.M. could have been the college rock Led Zeppelin if they just broke up when the drummer died. Instead they're the college rock Stones, right down to OMG THEY DID PARACHUTE WOMAN.

otm

for some reason it didn't surprise me that they hadn't played harbourcoat since 1985. then i realized that i last saw them in 1985.

http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1225

10. 15. 10
COLLAPSE INTO NOW
The band's new record, slated for a spring 2011 release, will be titled COLLAPSE INTO NOW. BBC6Music first reported the title following a conversation with Bertis who was in Manchester earlier this week for In The City, a music business conference.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Y'all, that album title is complete ass. But I'm still cautiously optimistic about the music contained within.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/bzzagent-bzzscapes-prod/collapse-into-cool--lrg.png

Since their titles are often thematically relevant to the album, what will "Collapse Into Now" signify? Are they conceding to commercial reality by duetting with Rihanna?

Their ability to write a tune has dropped off, unfortunately. The last album had all the LRP/Document sound but no tunes. Has anyone ever grilled Stipe on his use of lyric stand...even now? The Dublin shows notwithstanding their setlists recently have been ass given the back catalogue.

Yeah, I liked Accelerate for a number of listens but I only find myself going back to a handful of songs now. The bridges in particular are really rote. God that new title is awful. Cautiously optimistic in spite of everything.

1. “Discoverer”
2. “All The Best”
3. “Uberlin”
4. “Oh My Heart”
5. “It Happened Today” (featuring Eddie Vedder)
6. “Every Day Is Yours To Win”
7. “Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter” (featuring Peaches and Lenny Kaye)
8. “Walk It Back”
9. “Mine Smell Like Honey”
10. “That Someone Is You”
11. “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I”
12. “Blue” (featuring Patti Smith)

That's the tracklist for Collapse Into Now. http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2010/11/24/rem-collapse-into-now-tracklist-new-album/

Track 7 is a joke right?

9. “Mine Smell Like Honey”

.. what do yourn smell like?

'Mine Smell Like Honey' was the one that made me think this might be a joke. This is probably going to terrible but I'm still strangely looking forward to it, especially the Patti Smith collaboration.

ok I take that back, the demo of "Auctioneer" is really swell; it ends with Stipe saying "another...engine....another...engine" à la "Horses" & then someone yells really loudly & then it ends; really tense!

What is it with PSA? Surprised at it popping up here, I thought it was written around the time of Green, odd to be reiterating such an obvious lame duck.

LRP's second side is weak in the songwriting dept - they didn't have enough songs, had to flesh out old 1980/01 live numbers. Disappointing given the first side is so cohesive. Would say the same for Document (ace first side) but I like the oddball stuff after the big hit - people obviously don't. But it was more interesting than LRP's.

Fables better the whole way through both albums.

xp
It sounds like "I Believe", so maybe it's a version of that? It also sounds like "It's the End of the World..." so I dunno.

Can't wait for this, as this is my favorite R.E.M. album by quite a ways. This was the one where I REALLY got them as a band. And if these songs benefit from the remastering as much "Fables" did, I'll probably listen to it exclusively for days on end. "Begin the Begin"/"These Days" is as good as it gets for a one-two punch in the whole R.E.M. catalog.

That half acoustic, half electric thing they were after on Green should/could have been LRP - Guatemala, Swan, Fall on Me, Cuyahoga on one side and Begin the Begin, These Days on the other - problem is they didn't have enough examples of the latter and fleshed it out with light stuff like Superman/Bunker/JAT, which don't fit on the album IMO. Superman I love, but better as a standalone single.

"My picture that I have of us breaking up is that we'd do a couple of really bad records...and then we'd go to a Chinese restaurant and get drinks with umbrellas in them and say 'you know guys it's been a really haul but we just don't have it anymore', you know, and have a good toast and go home"

Peter Buck 1998.

How many bad records had they made at that point?

<- got off the bus with Out of Time

4

I just wanted to see Buck with the Baseball Project but he hurt his back and skipped a month of gigs.

So is Stipe gonna do an album with Patti Smith now that REM are broken up ?

heard some REM news - yay

lol

wait until you get the Bill Berry ''they've sucked the last decade'' interview now

album of the year?

when I heard this my first thought was 'but don't they have an album that is coming out pretty soon?" and then I remembered that it already came out, and I listened to it, and didn't remember anything about it. so I guess that says it all.

it's good, i find myself whistling the beginning of "it happened today" quite a lot

hearing "blue" now as their "riders on the storm." what a great band

do we think they knew it'd be the last album so threw their all into 'Collapse...' to go out with some dignity? i mean you know even the title suggests it.

http://r-e-m-cycle.blogspot.com/

http://www.uncut.co.uk/rem/rems-peter-buck-working-on-solo-album-news

Spotify is crazy comprehensive on these guys now; all the recent IRS years 2 disc remasters are there and even UP which was weirdly missing on there for years.

I don't which REM thread to put it on so I am putting a link to this nice live version of "Harborcoat" here
http://open.spotify.com/track/3xRaBjpIWB444tvpxAeP87

Although this one is good too
http://open.spotify.com/track/3HvhvwCvKUbuIlxPNgUXfv

except for the harmonica solo

whoa

http://www.remhq.com/news/r-e-m-at-the-bbc-coming-october-19th-read-press-release/

Looks 99% shit, unfortunately. One good show from 85, and the rest is garbage mid 90s / 2000s.

99% great, you mean.

It'll be great to have an official release of Milton Keynes '95 and that Jools special performance is where I heard the Up tracks for the first time prior to getting the album. It was so good it put all my fears of them continuing without Berry to rest.

rest is garbage mid 90s / 2000s.

― brotherlovesdub, Thursday, September 6, 2018 8:35 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a seven minute "country feedback" from 1998 is not going to suck

they never really stopped being an incredible live band imo. live versions of "walk unafraid" really cook, they're the reason its still one of my favorite r.e.m. songs

Clearly it was of interest to a lot of people or it wouldn't have been compiled and released. Unfortunately for me, I don't care to hear anything live from REM after 1991. Country Feedback being the exception, so good shout on that 7min version. I am very happy others are excited. It's good to be excited.

I could do without a couple of the Around the Sun tracks, but that's about it. Live versions of the 1998-2004 stuff have generally been better versions.

a seven minute "country feedback" from 1998 is not going to suck

Is it the Neil Young one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CERhzm6t7I

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/05/michael-stipe-new-songs-webster-hall-video-performance/

The fact that he's doing something is brilliant news. It'd be a shame if he'd let that great voice of his go to waste.

Producer Marc Urselli posted this seven weeks ago on his Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwhxx9GHL2U/?hl=en

I love my musical life: yesterday I was in Oslo listening to extreme metal today I’m in New York City recording the mesmerizing #BillFrisell @billfrisellsmusic at @eastsidesoundstudios with the revolutionary producer @willnerh #HalWillner doing to overdubs for #MichaelStipe of #REM

No more info though...

Up vinyl preorders are presumably coming this week (maybe even Tuesday morning). FINALLY