pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

A big similarity is that both have killer rhythm sections and boast singers who specialize in babble.

My longstanding theory re R.E.M. fandom: the generation gap of record store clerks is way narrower. It seems to exist in 3-5 year spans (not coincidentally, more or less the length of a four-year undergrad degree). For instance, I always found it fascinating that indie nerds five years older than me all worshiped R.E.M. and indie nerds five years younger than me all loved Godspeed. Which sorta makes me, born in the mid seventies, part of Generation Pavement, I guess (though I think I narrowly prefer R.E.M. to Pavement).

If you're my age R.E.M. were a big gateway act. Especially if you lived in a town without a college radio station. You'd hear R.E.M. on an FM channel and that would lead you to the Replacements, who would lead you to Husker Du, etc.

a big difference is that fleetwood mac have excellent hits while it's hard to have much fondness for most of rem's

i guess that settles it!

rem were my third favorite band after smashing pumpkins and radiohead in high school so i have no objective perspective on this. they were the first band i ever encountered with an enormous discography where every album seemed worth hearing and like a distinct step forward from the previous

stipe was a big deal to me as a lyricist too, even in the later more lucid albums i loved the way he just tightrope-walked on the edge of sense. i was a stupid bisexual teen obviously aware of stipe’s queerness but i never thought about it much when i listened to the music; now a lot of it kinda reads as gay shit that never outs itself as gay shit*, something that resists direct translation or legibility. “bittersweet me” is prob my favorite lyric he ever wrote, god knows what’s going on there but all those words sound so good together

*except of course kinda-sorta on monster, god it was amazing to watch interviews with stipe in the monster-era while researching the pfork piece i wrote, nothing has changed (derogatory)

i have brought this up in rem threads before but i was a big enough fan that i convinced myself to love around the sun in hs. i never feel like revisiting it but i remember thinking at the time it was the only post-9/11 album i’d heard that was appropriately depressed and insomniac about it

It's their worst but it's not actively bad - Reveal (which I love) if almost nothing on it was as good as the actual Reveal. Pleasantly reminds me of when it was released, really.

I always found it fascinating that indie nerds five years older than me all worshiped R.E.M. and indie nerds five years younger than me all loved Godspeed. Which sorta makes me, born in the mid seventies, part of Generation Pavement, I guess (though I think I narrowly prefer R.E.M. to Pavement

I was an R.E.M. nut in high school and became a Pavement nut in college, but I know that transition wasn't universal (my h.s. buddy, who was/is even more gonzo about R.E.M. than I am, never really got into any indie rock I think). I realized (much later) that I technically first heard Pavement due to R.E.M. – the Born to Choose comp, which I bought for "Photograph," also contains "Greenlander." I don't recall that song making an impression on me at the time (despite it being one of Pavement's best), and it certainly didn't send me running to check out their stuff... I wouldn't get into them until a few years later.

Time After Time was my least favourite song
Time After Time was my least favourite song

Time After Time has always been my favourite. One of many ways me and Malkmus do not get on.

I doubt he meant it.

It’s funny that Pavement have been brought up because they’re a band that never really clicked with me, I think because the rabid fanbase vs quality of actual songs always seemed like a howling void

IDK, part of the appeal of Pavement is the deceptively slipshod quality that makes a listener think "I could have written that!" It collapses (or appears to collapse) the band/audience barrier, makes the experience of listening to them feel more intimate. The whole indie rock thing of "we're not rock stars, where just regular schlubs like you." It's a real parasocial relationship kind of thing. Especially if you first encounter them as an adolescent and the whole smart-but-slacking, impish smirk sort of vibe resonates with you (as it did with me).

For my part, I never clicked with REM! Outside of a handful of hits which are undeniably great, they just don't move me.

so we have consensus

I greatly like a handful of R.E.M. albums, then a number of singles beyond that, but never quite fell in love with them the way one high school classmate did - he was almost fanatical! (He later attended another school, and when I asked another classmate what became of him, I was told that he “became a shaman”.)

(I’m 46, for whatever that’s worth.)

Pavement, on the other hand, etc etc

You gotta wonder how many of their fans have become shamans

Is it weird that I associate Pavement with "sensitive" straight dudes and the straight women who love them? I dunno, your description is perfect, zchrys, but it gets down exactly why I find them tiresome.

That is weird for you to have that association, IMO.

I mean, I’m a sensitive straight dude, so

yeah more like "arch" straight dudes

The archness is a front for their wounded sensitivity.

I totally get what you mean though table and I get why it can be tiresome

I loved Automatic for the People as a young teen and liked whatever other REM songs I heard on the radio, but didn't really dig much further than that until I got into Pavement and found out what a formative influence REM had been on Malkmus and David Berman. Became a bigger REM fan after that, but never really a completist.

IMO, Pavement's whole vibe is "friendly, enthusiastic dudes who could've been in a frat if it didn't involve getting up early and doing other dumb pledge stuff; and who are tight / hang with some of the cooler frat guys." Malk's relationship/hookup lyrics are also notable for their... lack of sensitivity.

Anyway, the biggest Pavement fans I've known are either (a) women (and not in the "Ladies Auxiliary" way suggested in the post above), or (b) guys with a more or less similar vibe as the band itself.

i got into rem in high school and have listened to them plenty, i've been a fan, but that's worn off to a large degree and i don't really ever want to listen to half of automatic for the people again.

pavement don't quite have any classic albums either but they're a way better band overall. probably helps that they broke up when they did though, i might think of rem similarly if they'd broken up after lifes rich pageant. but i love malkmus' solo career too and think real emotional trash is the best album he ever made

malkmus has always really set off my gaydar even though he's straight.

i got into R.E.M. w/Out of Time, i'd heard about them before but only starting paying attention when "losing my religion" hit the radio. my indie awareness was fairly limited up til the middle of high school (pop radio, AOR, hard rock and hair metal were my jams up til then) and so when i started listening to some of the '80s college rock regulars i was catching them on the tail end or after they'd split (i.e. replacements via westerberg solo, husker du via sugar, camper van beethoven via cracker, etc.)

earlier R.E.M. was a harder sell at first, but eventually those first few albums really burrowed in. Reckoning might be my favorite overall, though Document and NAIHF are in the running too.

i never really completely jibed with Pavement, though i do like them.

The second side of OTT unlocked early R.E.M. Even today I can't believe they got away with "Texarkana," "Half a World Away," "Belong," "Country Feedback," and "Me in Honey" on a #1 album.

Speaking as a 46-year-old who was a teen when OOT, Automatic, Monster and Hi-Fi all came out, my ebbing and flowing lifelong fandom of R.E.M. was a thing unto itself. It would never occur to me to think of them in any sort of context relating to Pavement. If I were to really interrogate myself I think I could probably reflect on my (self-conscious) feelings about what was mainstream/popular vs what was "mine." I always loved their singles, going back to my junior high days and seeing End of the World or Stand, and later Losing My Religion on MTV. I was more of a metalhead at the time so it wasn't about being "alt/indie" but more about me staying inside my espoused genre lines. When I was 16 I started to disengage from that mentality and that's when I bought Automatic--the first REM album I actually owned and when I finally declared myself an REM fan. Though in those days, you still had to shell out $15 bucks for an album so I didn't jump into their back catalog right away. I did buy Monster and NAIHF when they came out. Then I went to college and sort of lost any sense of urgency about them. I met my now-wife about four years later and she had both Up and Reveal and somewhere in the stew of young love and the distance from my prior interest in REM--and also, in a way, their own distance from their peak of fame--that I really fell for both of those albums. I still think Reveal is really, really good. It was only then that I did a deep dive into all of REM's old albums and became truly awakened to how wonderful they had always been, and appreciated all their permutations. They've been one of my very favorite bands ever since.

Interestingly I *did* sometimes think of my music fandom in some form of opposition to Pavement. That had more to do with how "indie" was defined in the latter 90s/earlu 00s. There was what I viewed as a more typical indie that was epitomized by Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided by Voices - all bands I was aware of but didn't much care for. And yet I defined my tastes at that time as "indie" despite leaning more toward Slint, Tortoise, Codeine etc. These felt WORLDS APART to me at the time!!

interesting that REM was mentioned as an entry point for people who didn't have a college radio station (which is true) because they're very often mentioned as one of the bands that really kicked off that era of what college radio became for the next decade

These felt WORLDS APART to me at the time!!

half a world away

i think R.E.M. worked as a gateway backwards into '80s indie for other people too, and for me it probably did lead to those other groups in an oblique sense. i also never really associated R.E.M. with Pavement; by the time i got into the them, they were imo more readily associated with Fly-era U2 or more directly with Love Shack-era B52s.

Adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) is a radio format. Its roots trace to both the "classic album stations of the ’70s as well as the alternative rock format that developed in the ’80s."

https://i.discogs.com/rprarJBB7O0NVhqMaTlFNV3H0ge8jKXwRmTHI_XXXWY/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:597/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTM5MDgy/OTctMTQwNzc4NzQ5/Ni01OTQ2LmpwZWc.jpeg
https://i.discogs.com/cvH1C3ZJjzNOFLQABQhSLfoJGaR6loCFZU3-hpXrKts/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:597/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTM5MDgy/OTctMTQwNzc4NzQ5/OC01NTA1LmpwZWc.jpeg
Oh my [proto-corner-brightening, from the 25th Anniversary 2CD edition of Document (#5 in a series.)]

i've always associated REM with talking heads. they both started out with influential takes on the evolution of post-punk, both were brainy, sensitive, and unaggressive. fast strumming of clean guitars. but they're also both some of the first music i can remember hearing around the house as a kid, so that's certainly why i initially formed that connection

^I was just revisiting this (great) 1992 Stipe interview this morning:

Did you have any interest in art in high school?
I love photography. I photographed children for a long time. And buildings. I’m beginning to sound like David Byrne (laughs).

Btw – and I know we're getting way off-topic here – I was startled to see Stipe criticize (then-)President GHW Bush on the grounds that (among other things) he had "never uttered the words 'greenhouse effect'". I did not recall the "greenhouse effect" already being so front-and-center back then.

It was a hot topic in the US since 1988 which was the hottest US summer ever at the time and a massive midwestern drought was slamming farmers. There was testimony by scientists to Congress about this.

And I’ve been panicking about it for 35 years now!

Carl Sagan was talking about it in the late 1970s and on his very popular Cosmos series in 1980.

again, nothing has changed

fwiw (probably nothing) Pavement do very little for me. In fact there's a lot to irritate me but this may be a wider problem I have with (specifically) American indie rock. Whatever the case my belov'd R.E.M. avoid every pitfall.

of that epoch that was mentioned of “indie” rock, the band that i love the most is Guided by Voices. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Man, I listened to the first few songs of Crooked Rain earlier (due to this thread)... just the feel of the instruments on those tracks, the way they keep stumbling and tugging forward; it's like the music is this itchy, sloppy, organic thing trying to find its footing, but barely content to hold still. And the dry sound + loose swing of those drums beneath it all... there's really nothing else like it!

I'm fascinated by the microgenerational differences in our collective responses to REM. As a teen in the '90s, REM already seemed like dad music to me and my peers, on a similar level to Talking Heads. Even my older brother wasn't into them - he was into Nirvana etc. I was huge on Pavement, Sebadoh and SY at the time. But I got really into REM (and Talking Heads) after learning more about their post-punk roots on AMG or something. I dunno, wherever I was getting music info while browsing on Netscape Navigator back in the day.

I remember tracking down Murmur and liking it, but I had no idea how this jangly guitar stuff related at all to Husker Du or Pixies or whatever. I know the history and all, but REM just seemed like a world apart from everything else that was happening in the post-punk underground in the '80s. Anyway, I didn't really get them, but I still came to really dig their first few albums. I love Green and Monster, and enjoy many but not all tracks on OOT and Automatic. But I felt like an anomaly. It seemed pretty uncool to like REM as a teen in the mid to late '90s. Maybe not as bad as the time I brought a Tom Petty CD to a pool party, but close.

I guess after all that I was still more of a Pavement girl. Couldn't get enough of Wowee Zowee as a 15 year old. Don't get me started on GBV though, I can't stand them, even though a friend whose taste I generally like swears Pollard is a genius and owns about 10,000 of their records. I'd rather listen to Superchunk or East River Pipe, which is saying something, because I dislike their records too.

I remember hearing R.E.M. on the radio — "Superman," "Can't Get There From Here," maybe one other song. The only album of theirs I ever actually bought (or heard all the way through) was Document. Then I saw the videos for Green or Out of Time, I forget, on MTV and basically dismissed them. The last song I liked of theirs was "Tongue." Earlier today I tried listening to New Adventures in Hi-Fi and lasted five tracks, during which time I came to the conclusion that every major label rock album released between 1996 and 2005 should be recalled and re-edited so it has nine or ten three- to four-minute songs instead of fourteen five- to seven-minute songs.

Not college radio — regular New York rock radio.

have you ever heard "is this it?" ?