REM: Classic or dud?

Wait, did R.E.M. break up!?

MAybe I have thought the "un-R.E.M"-thing properly through. Normally I love anthemic R.E.M. But not this one. Lyrics maybe - no mystery. Makes me think of the movie.

― Mule, Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean that's not really fair to the song, considering that the movie was named after it and all. the song had kind of a hazy mystique to me when it was new -- for all i knew Andy Kaufman and Elvis and St. Peter were just swimming around in the same vague river of associations as Lester Bangs, Lenny Bruce and Leonard Bernstein.

Glad there is so much love on here for Fables, which is damn near perfect, as is Reckoning. The early, mysterious REM, as I've called them on here before. The vocal harmonies, the poetry of Americana, the restraint. I'd save everything up to and including Document, after which is the long slow decline.

So long and slow that many of their best moments come after Document.

some dude otm

it's the time of the year for Automatic, put it on a couple of days ago and enjoyed the anthems of decay

fuck, good call, I should bust it out tonight. Increasingly when I think of that record what I hear is the opening bars of "Sweetness Follows" and it sounds so good.

re: contract, it's been argued before on ILX that they could have renegotiated and walked out any time they wanted. But it might be that with that structure in place, it would be hard for any of them, and certainly for all three, to conclude "yeah, we should push against this and go out of our way to quit now." Very revealing in the interview that Buck takes it for granted that they would not be able to get a (suitable?) contract to make records. Also amazing to think that they had basically as long of a career span after Berry as before - years and years doing those big tours and making these basically unsuccessful albums. I could believe it had all become a real drag.

For me they're sort of the archetypal "if they'd broken up at X time, they'd be much more highly regarded to this day." But those things also fade and shift with time.

Has Stipe being doing anything? I didn't see anything in that interview.

I have a good feeling about the members keeping a lower profile. As I said above, I think the band suffered from overexposure and although I'd imagine a few of their hits will still be on radio regularly for many years to come, I think their fame dying down might help future fans appreciate their albums better. When people say they jumped the shark in the 90s (some people say as early as Fables) I just have the impulse to tell them that they are really missing out, because I really think their peak was New Adventures - Up era and I hope the new fans of the coming years will agree with me. That might be interesting to see; especially if this thread goes for decades and kids can peer in confusion at the opinions of older fans.

my understanding is stipe doesn't have a lot of interest in doing any more music and negative interest in touring.

For me they're sort of the archetypal "if they'd broken up at X time, they'd be much more highly regarded to this day." But those things also fade and shift with time.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I disagree. I don't think that R.E.M. ever stopped being "highly regarded".

i was always curious what Buck would do outside the group, and it appears he's been up to a lot that you don't really hear about, partly because he doesn't do much press. is there anything especially good he's done since R.E.M.?

As I said above, I think the band suffered from overexposure and although I'd imagine a few of their hits will still be on radio regularly for many years to come, I think their fame dying down might help future fans appreciate their albums better. When people say they jumped the shark in the 90s (some people say as early as Fables) I just have the impulse to tell them that they are really missing out, because I really think their peak was New Adventures - Up era and I hope the new fans of the coming years will agree with me. That might be interesting to see; especially if this thread goes for decades and kids can peer in confusion at the opinions of older fans.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, October 10, 2013 9:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, New Adventures In Hi-Fi these days is (quite rightly) seen as one of their better albums for quite a number of people, and Up has always had its own cult fanbase which, from what I've noticed over the last few years, keeps steadily growing. If there's any R.E.M. album that's grown on me more since the band broke up, it's Reveal, which is an album I never used to have a great deal of time for, but seems to have come into its own for me over the last couple of years.

Judging their back catalogue a couple of years since the split, I'd actually go as far as far as saying they never "jumped the shark" at any point, but they did reach the point that they got tired of it and maybe realised that there was nowhere else they could go; a natural dead-end in other words, both in a 'music' sense and a 'career' sense. They certainly couldn't have got any bigger (and definitely not to the degree of worldwide success they had circa Automatic), and its very debatable as to whether they could have taken the "R.E.M. sound" (i.e. the combination of Mills/Buck chord sequences and Stipe's vocal melodies) and do anything with it they hadn't really done before. I think the band had reached the end of its natural lifespan, and the band themselves realised this.

Really, the only album of theirs that I would consider to be in any way a "bad" record is Around The Sun, which 9 years on from its release has failed to connect with me in the same way as all of their other records do. But all bands are allowed one dodgy album in an extremely long career like the one that R.E.M. enjoyed without it being considered a "shark jump" moment.

I mean, whichever way you look at it, they released 15 albums in a 31 year career, and 14(!!!) of those albums range from being (at the least) good to (at the most) indispensable, with only 1 being an out-and-out turkey. I'd say that wasn't bad going, and its definitely not something I could say of popular ILX staples like Depeche Mode and The Cure, and I'm a fan of both of those bands.

Eh. They've got no embarrassments but since the late Clinton administration they've released an awful lot of irrelevant albums.

For me they're sort of the archetypal "if they'd broken up at X time, they'd be much more highly regarded to this day." But those things also fade and shift with time.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I disagree. I don't think that R.E.M. ever stopped being "highly regarded".

― Dog Man Star took a suck on a pill... (Turrican), Thursday, October 10, 2013 10:14 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dunno, when SPIN did some 100 best alternative guitarists ever list recently, Buck wasn't on it, which would have been UNTHINKABLE back in the day. They're still respected, but they lost their shot at being alternative's Led Zep by dropping post-drummer albums fewer people cared about than even Robert Plant solo albums.

Of course it's possible that Reveal and ATS would sound worse if released under the mid nineties spotlight.

I'm with you on Reveal - it's much better than it's given credit for. Around the Sun has some nice moments but some really terrible moments too. I actually think if you take the best parts of AtS and the best parts of Accelerate, you've got a pretty good, pretty varied REM record.

xp

liking an REM album after 1996 is like liking Van Morrison albums like Enlightenment or Days Like This.

Eh. They've got no embarrassments but since the late Clinton administration they've released an awful lot of irrelevant albums.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, October 10, 2013 10:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Irrelevant to you, maybe. Not necessarily to the hundreds of thousands of people who bought and enjoyed those records.

hell I'm one of those hundreds of thousands (as opposed to the millions during the nineties), but that's what I mean. "'I'll Take The Rain'? Nice song. Lemme put it on a playlist. 'Airportman'? OK." At this point it's like sticking up for "Rough Justice."

I dunno, when SPIN did some 100 best alternative guitarists ever list recently, Buck wasn't on it, which would have been UNTHINKABLE back in the day. They're still respected, but they lost their shot at being alternative's Led Zep by dropping post-drummer albums fewer people cared about than even Robert Plant solo albums.

― da croupier, Thursday, October 10, 2013 10:50 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hang on, I'm reading this correctly? You're basing R.E.M's post-Berry stature on Peter Buck not making some list in SPIN!? Christ.

Lots of bands still make vital music after their Cultural Moment has passed, but REM isn't one of them. It's a lot of things, I guess: Berry leaving, Stipe's extra-musical distractions among them. They were fortunate to reach an indecisive middle age later than a lot of eighties bands (more power to'em).

Hang on, I'm reading this correctly? You're basing R.E.M's post-Berry stature on Peter Buck not making some list in SPIN!? Christ.

― Dog Man Star took a suck on a pill... (Turrican), Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:01 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink]

hey, would you mind taking the fanboy fury down a tad? It's an anecdotal implication that a group whose sales went from millions to hundreds of thousands is also losing some canonical weight.

when a brand traditionally associated with a genre makes a list of of the best guitarists associated with the genre, and leaves out the guitarist from the band traditionally associated with popularizing the genre, it's noteworthy.

xxpost:

If by "vital music" you mean that the albums didn't manage to reach an audience beyond their (large) fanbase in the same way that Out Of Time or Automatic For The People did, then fair enough. I don't think that sort of thing is truly representative of the qualities/merit of the records when taken as their own thing. If by "vital music" you mean that the albums aren't worth checking out or listening to, then I'd definitely disagree: Accelerate, for example, I would rank as one of my Top 5 favourite R.E.M. albums. No joke!

i think it was the millions of copies of monster in the dollar bins that did them in. how many damn copies of that album did they make???

Spin is exactly the right place to look for a discussion of rockist canon although maybe the torch has passed a bit to other sources - where does Pitchfork stand on those late records? The point isn't that fans thought those albums sucked (most of us liked at least some of them, to varying extents).

It's just that if you're a kid now, and learning about the important rock music of the last x decades that you NEED TO HEAR, R.E.M. have sloughed down the priority list in a way that I don't think they would have had they not put out those albums. Maybe there was a backlash waiting to happen, and of course Murmur continues to make those lists. But these same sources love BIG TRAGIC NARRATIVE and if R.E.M. had quit RIGHT IN THEIR PRIME, at the HEIGHT OF THEIR POWERS, New Adventures would make big countdowns, and not just those of active fans of the band. Post-96 it was just so obvious that whatever the band did, they weren't "important" or an "event." I could see this trend reversing itself just with time, to be honest, but I could also see it being cemented and them becoming one of those bands that were huge and sold lots of records, but have no radio homeland and no guaranteed spot in the canon (though they'll make Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without a doubt).

hey, would you mind taking the fanboy fury down a tad? It's an anecdotal implication that a group whose sales went from millions to hundreds of thousands is also losing some canonical weight.

― da croupier, Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:14 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It has nothing to do with being a "fanboy" (I'm not a "fanboy" of anything). I just don't think that Peter Buck not making it into a list in SPIN automatically means that R.E.M. stopped being highly regarded. Maybe less popular, but still highly regarded nonetheless.

For me, there's a final period of theirs that starts with Reveal. Stipe's lyrics became more less, I don't know, narrative oriented? I think they become more concise to the point where some of those tunes from the final album - "Uberlin," "Every Day Is Yours to Win" - are just so direct. I really like that aspect to them. Collapse Into Now is definitely one of my favorite R.E.M. albums.

iirc from stairway to hell, led zep's next-to-last album with their drummer was a cutout bin regular initially too

rem straddled the indie scene and the college rock scene to $$$$$$ back in the day but between their refusal to either bail or go megabig U2-style, and the post-pitchfork world, where Our Band Could Be Your Life leads to Nirvana and nobody's giving five stars to Diesel And Dust, that's gonna cost you more than a few cool points.

maybe they just put out too much stuff. they put out a zillion singles in the 90's and beyond and lots of best-ofs and comps and albums and they toured a bunch. maybe it was just too much without big hits on their side.

though looking at the indie scene now, maybe they were just a decade too soon with all the wan synthscapes

even U2 only have 12 albums to their name and they're still going. and they started a lot earlier.

but jeez its not like they didn't have a good run. they lasted so much longer than probably any of their original fans ever thought they would.

i saw them twice in the 80's in big places and i was impressed both times by their ability to fill such big spaces. so many bands that they started out with never could have done that or done it for long. you certainly didn't THINK of them as that kind of band early on. though i guess in retrospect i did think that big john cougar sound on LRP was them heading there in a big way. that's the first time i saw them. for that album's tour. and they had people going crazy. i was impressed.

Big. dif with U2 I guess is that they never released an album they did not tour behind, right? REM released a few. Or at least three, correct? Gave them more time to record.

REM's biggest years were when they didn't tour!

They would have had to have radio hits from New Adventures and Up to have sustained more success. They did in other countries. Six top ten hits in the U.K. after Monster (the last one being "Leaving New York").

R.E.M. also never had a record nearly as big as The Joshua Tree. Automatic was their biggest seller, and sold half as much in the US as Joshua Tree.

And I think U2 only started a year earlier than R.E.M.

xxp

I'd argue that was their New Jersey period in the UK.

xpost

If it was a New Jersey period, then it was a fucking long one. 'Imitation Of Life' was a massive hit here.

yeah i was just thinking how amazing it is they had ZERO hits stateside on those last five albums (closest they got was the off-album "The Great Beyond"). Even with those European sales staying decent, it's funny considering the news of their big 80 million deal in '96 reportedly earned a standing O from Warner Bros staff. Though ZZ Top's megadeal with RCA in 1991 was even crazier.

i think they rushed Monster. in retrospect. less than two years after automatic. they had serious momentum. the kind that people kill for. and they sold a buttload of Monster and it was a number one album but then people couldn't get rid of it fast enough. and then it was the long (but still financially successful) decline. but hey it happens.

At least New Adventures hadn't come out when Warner Bros backed up the money truck, ZZ Top scored those numbers AFTER Recycler.

We've definitely worked this vein before but I do think it's interesting to imagine a world where they worked a little longer on Monster, tested the stuff out on tour more first, enriched the songs more, something. I've come to really like the record so I can no longer tell how much of the backlash was "this thing sucks" and how much was "this isn't another album in the style of Automatic." But anyway, as you sort of suggest, they would have been crazy not to put it out - standing on a peak that few bands ever see, that might not (indeed, didn't) last. It could be that some kind of comedown was inevitable, Monster or no.

Was there a way to sustain American commercial success after 1996? I doubt it. New Adventures was the best they could do. By 1998 Backstreet Boys used drum loops more interestingly.

what big alt album from 94 on ISN'T $2 on used cd now?

but jeez its not like they didn't have a good run. they lasted so much longer than probably any of their original fans ever thought they would.

In 1981 the idea of any band lasting that long would have freaked me out. Even the Stones and the Beach Boys had only been around for 18 years or so.

I think Berry leaving really hurt them on the charts.

I like Monster but it was definitely a missed opportunity. In some ways it seems more over- than under-worked to me, at least in terms of production.

it's not like people should be asking what Green Day and Hootie should have done differently on Dookie or Cracked Rear View just because they sold a ton and a bunch went back to CD stores by the late '90s.