\\\///\\\/// It's the ILX SUPER SUMMER R.E.M. POLL OF POLLS RESULTS THREAD \\\///\\\///

It does seem to pre-empt Monster somehow.

I always thought it was "You come to me with the phone in your hand" ...

I think "evocative" is the key to why this song is so loved by some and others don't get it (like me). "Evocative" is such an ineffable, personal feeling; if it hits you, it hits you hard, but the rest just don't feel it.

I'll put "Sweetness Follows," "World Leader Pretend" and most of Fables of the Reconstruction on my evocative list. "Country Feedback" is a lot of keening and whining to me (though it's not as bad in that regard as "The Wrong Child"--that one I actively dislike).

"Country Feedback" isn't so far from the songwriting of New Adventures In Hi-Fi, an album I don't really get (though my heart remains open). Yet I recognize that the latter album is super popular. So I wonder if love of this song is correlated with love of New Adventures.

I do love New Adventures, but I feel like "Country Feedback," for all its Evocativeness, is still way more directly zeroed-in on the heartstrings than most of the material on that record. Also, the sonic signatures (wailing steel guitar, sad strumming) are more familiar in terms of associations, like I hear those and I know I'm hearing a ballad, y'know?

But I will join Hideous Lump in detesting "The Wrong Child."

I think Stipe has often singled out "Country Feedback" as his favorite REM song and tbh I think that's one reason it gets lots of love. I think he sells "I need this." But yeah, it's no "Me In Honey."

Meanwhile though, I really never will get tired of this:

marathonpacks: I think it’s “Country Feedbag”

Matthew Perpetua: I am pretty sure that Michael Stipe wrote it about the closing of a beloved all-you-can-eat country buffet
“it’s crazy what you could’ve had — ribs, chicken, greens!”

you come to me with your fork in your hand

These clothes don't fit us right
the buffet's to blame

Euler, I fit your theory. "Country Feedback"is maybe my favourite R.E.M. song and NAIHF is my favourite R.E.M. album.

It would actually be kinda cool to hold the top 4 until each member of R.E.M. dies:

# 4 - Peter Buck RIP
# 3 - Michael Stipe RIP
# 2 - Mike Mills RIP
# 1 - Bill Berry RIP

Athens, GA finally finishes biodegrading in the year 13,200 AA (after apocalypse), cockroaches and single cell organisms rule the town - full lists/results are posted

It would be great to see the end of this!

Agreed, I am ready.

It might be quicker if we all just post our ballots here and work it ourselves.

no no, i will do it!!! Sorry guys! I am on extended archi-tourist vacay right now but i promise I will get these results out by the end of July. SUPER SUMMER 2010!!!

What, surely Buck outlives the rest. I see him starring in "It Might Get Loud 10" in 2045.

no no, i will do it!!! Sorry guys! I am on extended archi-tourist vacay right now but i promise I will get these results out by the end of July. SUPER SUMMER 2010!!!

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, June 29, 2010 2:01 AM (2 weeks ago)

im holding YOU to this!

it's still the plan! i have been screaming around europe on a bus full of architecture students but the POLL OF POLLS has never left the corner of my mind!

yeah!, as nice a song as it is, please don't leave us with country feedback as the highest-ranked all-time rem song.

i'm so jealous. you should be having the time of your life!

in that case don't worry about it, have fun, it will be here when you come back from holiday.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005BIG0.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

#9: Wolves, Lower
10 votes, 97 points
Highest position: #2 (Daniel Esq)
Position in Chronic Town poll: #3 (10 votes)

I'm not sure what the fuck "urgent" is but I'll volunteer "Wolves, Lower."
― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, January 27, 2005 4:50 PM Bookmark

i had that as no. 2? hm. well, it is a fantastic -- and, j. cotten is right -- "urgent" song. the beginnings of the southern gothic rock vibe, and "that beat."

Love the hell out of this one - Mills's background vocals, the drumming, and especially the opening, things sort of gearing up slowly with the mysterious jangle, then kicked in by Berry and Stipe's yelping. Plus: "Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don't get caught."

The "in a corner garden" bit makes the song for me: obv. not the lyric on paper but the way that he sings it, wistful but with the bucolic menace of wolves: there is something dangerous just beneath the surface.

yeah, by "hm," i just meant that i thought i rated another song from chronic town even higher. but that would be a pretty heavy concentration of songs from their debut ep at the top of my ballot. i'll have to go back and check my ballot.

I'm happy to see the poll going again btw: I'm on a big REM kick, listening through all the singles with their b-sides (for the first time!). And I listened to Reveal last week for the first time since, er, it came out, and liked parts of it a lot ("The Lifting", "I've Been High", "Saturn Return") (about the rest let's pass over in silence). Also I listened to Around The Sun for the first time ever & cannot remember anything off it to say anything. A first listen to Accelerate is coming soon too: I've finally worked up the nerve to get to the newer stuff. Why not smile.

summer's the season for golden-era (i.e., early) rem.

Euler, I think Accelerate is better than either Reveal or Around, neither of which I ever need to hear again.

"Wolves, Lower" -- can't think of anything to say about this near-perfect song except that it's near-perfect.

http://ambianceyourlife.com/images/coriander_ambiance_bb.jpg

#8: Find the River
11 votes, 99 points
Highest position: #1 (G00blar)
Position in Automatic For The People poll: #2 (15 votes)

I will say that REM consistently has killer final songs on their albums. Usually the last two are among the best two. "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" are an incredible pair. My take on the latter was always that the youthful skinnydipping escapades of the latter evolve into the poignant if painful reflections about going out to seek one's way without the company of all the party people from your college days. The water imagery the two songs share, and stories the various band members have told in interviews about "Nightswimming," lead me to jump to these conclusions.

― the consular horse, Wednesday, March 15, 2006 1:46 AM Bookmark

I remember reading an interview with Stipe when the album came out, and he said that he and Mike Mills (I think) would drive around Miami (I think) during the recording, in a convertible with the top down, just singing this song together at the top of their lungs. I always think of this scene, and the pure joy of singing implied, whenever I hear this song. Whenever Stipe's voice breaks on the high notes, I get chills.

― gooblar (gooblar), Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:23 AM Bookmark

and more here: R.E.M. Find the River. Your thoughts.

I don't have anything to say about "Find The River" (it's the wrong time of year for that song) but just listening to the new deluxe Fables and holy shit does "Feeling Gravitys Pull" kick: the end of the song is apocalyptic, disoriented madness as you all know, but the disorientation is now more, er, disorienting; oh never mind, just listen to it. btw it is a Man Ray kind of a sky right now.

it's the wrong time of year for that song

100% otm.

also, fables of the reconstruction is very -- very -- underrated. i like it more than murmur or reckoning, tbh. it hits the southern-gothic rock vibe better than it's album predecessors and captures the band in a fragile, tenuous, almost-jittery, state. absorbing, hypnotic songs throughout this album.

wow, the "Feeling Gravitys Pull" on the second disk of the rerelease sounds like "The Hanging Garden", or at the least the drumming does at about 2/3 through the song, and again at the end; first time I've heard I've heard the Cure in REM I think?

Haven't heard the whole thing, but mentioned yesterday on the Rolling Reissues thread how great I thought the Fables remaster sounds.

also, fables of the reconstruction is very -- very -- underrated. i like it more than murmur or reckoning, tbh.

I completely agree, and "Lifes Rich Pagent" continues that uber-high quality. I like Fables and LRP much better than Murmur and Reckoning.

Liked "Find The River" when it came out, but now don't feel the need to hear it ever. There are a lot of explicit indications of poignancy on AFTP but in the end it's kind of a cold, gestural record -- e.g. no expression of regret on the entire album displays 1/10 as much feeling as does "Me In Honey."

Oh, I don't agree! "Find the River" is, I think, bigger in scope in that it's not about regret. It's the more universal loss coming simply from the passage of time.

Yeah, I agree with Tim, more or less; although it's not so much about regret per se as it is about attempts to step outside the "normal world" of work into which most of us enter, and to find "our own" way in the world. For Stipe this is the artist's way, strewn with flowers. And it is a beautiful dream but at the same time it is to see "life", that is, the life of the "normal world", passing you by. You have to leave the road to find this other way, and there is no one else to lead you. But while this is a standard romantic trope (the lone hero traverses her own way in the world), the song contrasts this celebration of the heroic individual with the observation that even the heroic individual is going to die, just like the "normals". All this energy & vision is still going to end up flowing into the ocean. All of this is coming your way.

Yeah, somehow the last line of the song really recasts the whole thing for me, it becomes open-hearted and optimistic after the inward-looking artist's path stuff and "nothing is going my way" - - - suddenly it comes into focus as Stipe at 30something chatting with a 20-year-old pondering whether to follow his/her dreams, or do what the read on the speed-meter says and take on a 9-5 in "the city." And the former is going to have its ups and downs, but the rewards are great and "all of this is coming your way." I like this one a lot.

I'm curious, is there something in the lyric that gave you guys the interpretation that he's singing to himself? Of course, he's singing about himself in some of it, but I always interpreted the character referred to in the second person as being somebody else.

The song is not very situational, though (apart from that reference to "the city," which can really just be a very general metaphor for everyday life). So, the character referred to in the second person is easily an Everyman/Everywoman. That's why I was talking about its universality in comparison with "Me in Honey."

http://southernheritagephotography.com/www/images/PE_BustinUpTheMoonshineStill_bw8x10_14b.jpg

#7: Sitting Still
12 votes, 107 points
Highest position: #1 (Euler)
Position in Murmur poll: #2 (9 points)

24 years after figuring out how to play it, "Sitting Still" is STILL the song I play when I'm checking out a guitar.

― Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Friday, December 12, 2008 4:02 AM Bookmark

"sitting still" = template for a million trillion indiepop bands

― the surface noise (electricsound), Friday, November 7, 2003 7:02 AM Bookmark

oh man "Sitting Still"...in the early 90s budding scholar me wanted to make a "history of punk" compilation that was based around this song; still hear it as the band's way through punk to something that's uniquely their own. I dunno if it should be called the chorus, but the part of the song that leads into the song's title being sung is total pogo music (i.e. not for sitting still). I"m not sure this song really has a lyric so there's no chance of drawing anything out of that, except that its inarticulacy is pretty self-conscious with the "can you hear me?" part. Boy, I'm not making much of a case for this song, my #1: I'm pretty inarticulate too today! The drums on this song are a masterpiece, a propeller.

If this is the template for a million trillion indiepop bands then I should probably try listening to some of them!

Definitely one of my favourites. The last few in this poll were things I wouldn't have voted for, so hopefully we're back on track now.

One of my very favorites too. There are some videos of them playing this back in the day where mike mills exuberance is soooo infectious!

http://www.svs.com/rem/gif/boot/carnival.jpg

#6: Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)
12 votes, 112 points
Highest position: #1 (Piotr Kowalczyk, dad a, rogermexico, Daniel Esq)
Position in Chronic Town poll: #1 (22 points)

"carnival of sorts" is a high-water mark in 80s pop music or any pop music.

― sundar subramanian, Friday, February 23, 2001 8:00 PM Bookmark

later on, whenever i put on another r.e.m. album, dad would say "i don't hear anything as good as 'carnival of sorts'."

― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, December 30, 2008 8:40 PM Bookmark

wow, that's quite a picture, Stipey with the sad professor look! is that from a single? I guess I didn't realize it was ever released as a single.

Last week I finished listening through all the REM I have, including a bunch of live shows through 1985 or so. "Carnival of Sorts" is a mainstay of those shows; for instance it closes the July 1983 set included on the deluxe Murmur. Every one in the band is crucial: Stipe & Mills' vocal interplay on the choruses, Buck's riff (live it's even more juiced), & Berry's drumming: going into each chorus his fills are so fucking exciting. It's dance music! which the band always wanted to be until 1985 or so, at least dance music as music you can dance, rather than a separate genre. They're a party band! for a carnival, of sorts.

It's a bootleg cover, but boy what a great period photo.

God, it would have been great to see them back in the day, just these jumped-up party kids keeping the gang entertained with a show in the barn that consisted of, um, some of the best post-punk ever recorded.

Thanks to Stipe wearing these glasses I wore basically the same ones until like 1993. And people would always be like, why are you still wearing John Lennon glasses? and I would be like, no, they're Michael Stipe glasses, but not Michael Stipe NOW glasses, abandoned-church-era Michael Stipe glasses, and then I'd realize the person I was talking to wasn't there anymore.

Anyway. Great song. Still chill at "Gentlemen don't get caught."

so bummed that REM hasn't officially released or somehow sanctioned a bunch of their bootlegs.

carnival of sorts has -- and will always have -- THAT BEAT.

http://georgevelez.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/rem-fall-on-me.jpg

#5: Fall On Me
15 votes, 113 points
Highest position: #1 (Doctor Casino)
Position in Lifes Rich Pageant poll: #1 (16 points)

All I would add is that "Fall On Me" is still my favorite song of theirs.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, December 5, 2005 9:13 PM Bookmark

"Fall On Me" duh.

― Geir Hongro, Monday, December 15, 2008 7:28 AM Bookmark

Pivotal moments in your life:
first kiss - r.e.m. 'fall on me'

― James Blount (James Blount), Saturday, June 21, 2003 12:34 AM Bookmark