REM: Classic or dud?

The best part of Monster IS the production -- so damn perverse. They reified glam with several removes of vocal and aesthetic filters, but left the sex in.

Idea of Monster was better than the songwriting but the idea was enough, after Green/OOT/AFTP and lot and lots of mandolins.

Berry even then would have walked if they hadn't made it

I prefer the underbelly of R.E.M. - so I'm listening to the bonus disc that came with the "And I Feel Fine" IRS-years comp.

For me, the most perfect song on Automatic is "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1."

Here's a clip from the second show I saw, a year later, in a much bigger venue; also an interview with Mills (the interviewer is Mordeci Richler's son). I hadn't seen this since it first aired, and was hoping I'd turn up in the front row...no luck.

"New Orleans Instrumental No. 1" is so beautiful

^yeah!

Also OTM:

always thought that -- on AFTP -- find the river was a better sappy ballad than either (the cloying) everybody hurts or even nightswimming.

While we're talking about 90s REM, I want to say that while Stipe's singing largely left me cold post-Monster because of his retreat to that talk-sing you hear on "I Took Your Name", "E-Bow The Letter", &c &c &c, he lets it rip on "Leave" & that song's a real keeper; dig the Bomb Squad-style production on that track too.

R.E.M. News - boo

Favorite nineties REM songs:

Half a World Away
Near Wild Heaven (lovely melody, lovely Mills vocal; glad he didn't get too many)
Leave
Bittersweet Me (my favorite of their nineties second singles)
Tongue
Monty Got a Raw Deal
Texarkana
Me in Honey (effective use of Kate Pierson)

alfred otm

my first kiss was to Leave. thanks REM!

thread needs more awesome live REM videos like tipsy posted upthread. everyone's seen this one, but still it's a classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykp0Vq77IBw

yeah to alfred's list. i'd add new test leper, which works really well despite being kind of bland, and electrolite.

Alfred, I was gonna post something about how much i adore "Near Wild Heaven."

"Bittersweet Me" was great. I used to hear one of the other NAiH-F singles, "Electrolite" alot in grocery & drug stores. It made shopping pleasant.

That's a great list.

"Band and Blame" is my favorite second REM single of the 90s; Stipe's vocal is uncharacteristically tender & as Alfred said earlier, it exudes sexuality: open, vulnerable, wanting, "dares to cross your threshold".

ack "Bang & Blame", way to miss the point, self.

electrolite gets a bad rap because it's played a lot in grocery and drug-stores.

but the hook and melody makes it an unforgettable earworm.

i hate band and blame with the heat of a thousand suns.

yeah "Electrolite" has had an unexpected second life as Muzak; I hear it far more than the other NAIHF singles.

"Bang & Blame" is kind of interminable, imo everything it does well is done better by "I Don't Sleep, I Dream"

"Do you give good head?"

and that terrific strummed electric hook.

My favourite '90s song, with my favourite R.E.M. lyric ever: "You know, there's talk of time/Talk is fine."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_JnCWT-_O8

I adore Out of Time, which still doesn't get much love because It's The Big One. The marvel for me, as I wrote in my own obit, is how "Losing My Religion" sounded a hundred times more ambiguous with each radio play. I've never gotten tired of it.

And the record has all kinds of crinkles and filigrees. "Near Wild Heaven" I mentioned, but what about the loping "Endgame"? Those flutes!

i don't know if it's naive to hope for any fruitful side/solo projects at this point but i feel like one thing about the breakup is that practically any of them is more likely to make a really good record in the future outside of REM than they would have with the band

bang and blame made me wish michael stipe's lyrics went back to being unintelligible.

And the record has all kinds of crinkles and filigrees.

yeah, this is kind of true. there's a mumblecore-type song on this disc that i liked. belong, maybe?

I listened to Out of Time today when I got the news. It's my favorite REM album. "Radio Song" gets hate here but I think the opening is thrilling: Buck strums a gorgeous riff, then Mills comes in with clear notes, then Stipe with lovely mystic nonsense.

i hate radio song with the heat of a hundred suns.

it was around out of time's release that i realized i didn't love every song on every one of r.e.m.'s discs anymore.

Out Of Time has aged very very poorly for me and is probably my least favorite of the 90s albums but i love that goofy old "Radio Song"

Green has some grisly stuff, and it's the first one I ever owned.

the whole 90s period was so . . . okay but generic.

i come to celebrate fables of the reconstruction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBVVtNnHeEg

i will join your celebration. i like bits and pieces of 90s REM. i started with late-period REM and worked my way back. the first REM song i ever heard was actually Airportman (yeah, including Everybody Hurts and Losing My Religion and...well, i think i may have heard Stand in a supermarket when I was a kid). i had a strange upbringing, musically. but anyway, since i started with Up, and then worked backwards to New Adventures and AFTP, i used to be a big big fan of 90s REM. at some point i decided to see what 80s REM was like, and Murmur blew me away to such an extent that i can barely listen to the 90s stuff anymore. their first 4 albums are just unstoppable

"generic" isn't really a word i would use to describe 90s REM. there were times when they were relatively in step with the times but they never sounded anonymous.

they became shape-shifting genre tourists, veering away from their distinctive jangle-y gothic southern rock sound.

just heard this but i think i prefer it to the album version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgh0y9vTgY

they never struck me as Elvis Costello-style pastiche masters even at their most dilettantish, though. everything still went through a pretty heavy REM filter (or at least Stipe filter).

beginning of the end was the speak-sing stuff

never noticed or was bothered by speak singing much beyond hating E-Bow

oh man, that's way better than the album version.

stipe picks up a guitar and i thought, "does he know how to play any instruments"?

(i actually kind of liked e-bow, but i couldn't tell you why)

i love e-bow

and i'm not afraid to admit it

a track that got lotsa love on our big REM poll here was "Country Feedback", & it's a good song (lots better than "E-Bow", who love here I also don't get), but I think I hear the first version of the annoying speak-sing thing we're talking about on that song.

and yeah, e-bow was speak-singing, but it was the Beginning of the end, see, so it was still R.E.M. near the top of their game

E-Bow made me go back & reconsider why I dug Patti Smith.

e-bow is great!

Though E-Bow, I'll take you over "How The West Was whatever"

that rockville clip reminds me that mid-80s stipe and late-80s slash and anytime-ever howard stern would have made an ideal hair-metal band -- or ramones cover band.