REM: Classic or dud?

i liked when he would just pop up in the background in a no big deal way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge26Aybem2M

and this one of course...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfW4-nP2G1Q

a your ghost-like duet album could be nice!

I'm not sure Stipe was ever much of a songwriter, I always got the sense his job was to write/sing the lyrics and look enigmatic and let the others deal with the music. There was a very specific alchemy that collapsed when Berry left.

He is genuinely more likely to direct a film than release a solo album.

Totally agree with Matt DC. I'm not sure Stipe on his own has much to say through music; so much of R.E.M. was collaboration from Berry, Buck and Mills. I remember seeing some rockumentaries showing how R.E.M. wrote their music and it was very much a collaborative effort. I think I remember there even were lyrics in signature songs that Stipe didn't write (wasn't most of Perfect Circle written by Berry?)

Hindsight's 20 20, of course, but R.E.M. were such a tight unit, it's easy to see why they crumbled down after Hi-Fi.

I just remembered their appearance in the VMAs 95 and Stipe saying "If anyone on this foursome leaves this couch right now, the other three would be more comfortable, but we wouldn't be R.E.M.". Which sounds like a cliche, but ended up being totally true in their case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTklT8u0L7U

but that's him in the spotlight! just would have figured he would have wanted a solo diva moment. although i mentioned the collab/duet thing cuz i think that comes more naturally to him. so maybe he is a shrinking violet after all. remember when he was the shy one? hiding behind the hair. they are all the shy one though in a way.

Berry is or was the most obstreperous and out-there personality of the four; they fell off hard when he left and took most of their rock attitude with him

Im not really interested in looking out for Stipe related material, new stuff anyway; maybe the other three reined him in but he was a compelling enough frontman in the 80s and 90s but from the millenium onwards hes been terrible imo

yeah i'm not saying anyone would listen to it, just seems like a natural thing for a front-singer guy to do. videos, artwork, the whole vision thing. don't call me crazy. it totally is a normal thing for lead singers of bands to do.

yeah! it's surprising he hasn't made a solo album produced/masterminded by like moby or nigel godrich.

Maybe he should a Fred Schneider and bring Albini in

Should do a

maybe he should just bring fred schneider in!

imaginary 90's stipe album would feature patti smith rapping on it probably.

flea contributing scintillating funk bass

CD single with future sound of london remix...

Best Stipe appearances - Hitchcock and Hersh as shown above, but also his Golden Palominos tracks and one with the Blue Aeroplanes. Any others of note?

i remember the neneh cherry one being not great.

neneh cherry would have been on the 90's solo album. scatting with q-tip.

stipe (in a skirt!) w/ thom yorke at the tibetan freedom concert in '98 blew the mind of little teenage me.

oh yeah baby...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4oE5h4Z7Zg

little fluffy clouds it ain't...

there are like 4 songs on that utah saints album with stipe samples for some reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vkSt2fePvs

(wasn't most of Perfect Circle written by Berry?)

That's one, and "Driver 8" is another supposedly written completely by Berry.

kinda nice. doesn't sound like they were in the same room but what do i know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP0Sd8Cyy9c

Kind of feels like Wilco pretty much picked up where REM left off in a few ways, especially as heartland/experimental/conventional albums that each have a distinct aural/visual concept to them.

Stipe's backing vocals are "you broke up my neighborhood" are good

Argh iPhone.. his backing vocals on billy bragg's "you woke up my neighborhood" are good

Argh iPhone.. his backing vocals on billy bragg's "you woke up my neighborhood" are good

XPS And Wilco opened for them on the UP! tour! #Symbolic

i saw the feelies open up for them once. i like to mention that.

also saw 10,000 maniacs open up for them which was not as thrilling.

XPS And Wilco opened for them on the UP! tour! #Symbolic

and their greatest hits tour in 2003. one of the best shows i've ever seen between post-yankee wilco and the ridiculous setlists r.e.m. assembled for that tour (they opened with "world leader pretend")

i saw luscious jackson open for them :'(

I saw the Neats open for them. They were ok. A couple years later, saw the dB's open. They were better (than the Neats, not R.E.M.)

Stipe did an EP called In The Sun, which was just different versions of a Joseph Arthur song, for charity. I think he's done a bunch of covers for compilations but its usually someone famous with him (I guess it's a collaboration when it's a famous person but solo when the backup band is lesser known).

My obligatory contribution to talk of late REM: Up is amazing, my favourite by them.

yeah up is amazing, i've probably said as much on this very thread

it holds up!

up is a great record everybody; reveal is sleepy yeah but underestimated, has some of their most beautiful songs; i actually like around the sun but expect no one else to ever; accelerate was cool at the moment and then i forgot about it?; collapse into now is the first record i really didn't like by these dudes, so melodically and lyrically lazy

― mutant slow drum (BradNelson), Saturday, September 24, 2011 9:01 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me otm

around the sun is really the only one that actively bothered me ... though i can't really remember anything about collapse into now.

To me, Fables Of The Reconstruction is their strangest album.

I'm fairly confident that in 20 years (if the world is doing relatively okay) Up will be considered among their top 7 albums. And hopefully more people would vote for "Suspicion" in a song poll.

around the sun is really the only one that actively bothered me ... though i can't really remember anything about collapse into now.

i listened to around the sun until i liked it, really helps if you think of it as a document of post-9/11 exhaustion

yeah that makes sense ... i don't know, at the time it seemed like the opposite of everything i wanted to listen to. i might actually appreciate it more now.

won't blame you if you still think it sucks

i haven't listened to it in aaaages, wonder how i'll feel about it

from memory "the outsiders" would be amazing without the needless q-tip rap, "i wanted to be wrong," "high speed train," and "boy in the well" are automatic-ish depressive ballads that are really gorgeous, "aftermath" makes me unbearably sad even though it's probably the most energetic track on the record, "the ascent of man" is one of stipe's best choruses

Stipe is great on Syd Straw's Future 40s.

seems weird that stipey has never made a solo album. seems like someone who would REALLY want to make a solo album. maybe we should applaud his modesty.

― scott seward, Wednesday, February 3, 2016 12:30 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, it IS strange when you think about it. would have expected him to make one of those solo records with a lot guest star-turns by other over-the-hill college rockers like johnny marr and the guy from camper van beethoven.

One of the big selling points pushed on the copy for the DVD edition of Velvet Goldmine is that the film was "Produced By Michael Stipe!".

I think REM basically played the game right. They were indie weirdoes from the start and that's what they sort of are now, like a Feelies that convinced millions of people to buy their records. We're talking about a band that didn't even bother touring behind its two biggest records. Possibly their two weirdest, most eccentric records, at that. They always seemed happy keeping it low key, playing clubs, going to house parties/shows in Athens, etc. Pretty private and insular. The nicest thing about them fading back into the ether is their albums have remained vital, viable things ripe for rediscovery.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 3, 2016 9:37 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I basically dig this, but I do think they or their management have made some moves that - while no doubt smart business-wise and who could knock them for it? - do probably in an incidental way diminish this sense of them as "fading back into the ether." I mean they are sort of too big, especially outside the US, to have ever become one of those spooky "Were they really here, or was it just a dream? Some say their songs still haunt this kudzu-covered train trestle" sort of band. They show up on this best-selling music artists of all time Wiki entry ranked in between Shania Twain and Van Halen for crying out loud. More to the point, since they started slipping in their critical and commercial acclaim there's been kind of a lot of other product that suggests a bit of a "cash in on the other stuff" thinking: not counting digital-download-only, since 2003 there's been three different best-of albums, two best-of music video DVDs, a box set of other TV appearances, and three live DVDs.

None of those are things that I hold against them - just saying that they make them feel, I dunno, more slick and packaged, like any other band really. Like... I dunno. My dad gave me the Perfect Square live DVD back when it came out, and I remember watching it and basically not minding the performances but being struck by how big and expensive it all seemed. Lotta lighting work, lotta cameras. That just means, I guess, "they reemained an arena rock band long, long after the records that really made their reputation" which is fine... just not quite the same as an apparition fading back into obscurity. And I do wonder if that bigness will change the ways in which they could be rediscovered and reclaimed. Always interesting to see in that kind of process which records/aspects of the work become canonized and which fall away. For all we know Around the Sun will become some kind of touchstone for a different group of listeners, I dunno!