R.E.M. news - yay

"Drive" a standard? I mean, that just came out, right?

that's from automatic for the people.

oh yes there have been albums since then, i forgotted

They played "Feeling Gravity's Pull" in 2002.

The only R.E.M. could excite now is if they got Christine McVie to join.

Nitpicker! It would be fun to see them play "Harbourcoat" and "Carnival of Sorts" and "Kahoutek!"

I know you can't accpet Bill Rieflin, Alfred. : D

http://www.remhq.com/cms_files/images/cms_image_14825.jpg

Dude still sets up the dinosaurs on his amps.

one day, when we are all old, we will sit through a tribute to R.E.M. including Thom Yorke moaning through "Swan Swan H" while Johnny Greenwood plays the backing on a pupil-tracking sequencer

or at least billy bragg and natalie merchant

I always thought "West of the Fields" sounded like it would've killed live

OK guys, as a point of comparison, when the critically-lauded, recently reunited Mission of Burma play concerts, does anyone in the band JUMP IN THE AIR and do a SCISSOR KICK?

oh please, james brown was doing the splits during his own eulogy

i was comparing them to mission of burma.

(i.e., not james brown)

This is exciting. I am excited. Also, scissor kicks are neat.

Harborcoat— wow!

WOW!

(no irony).

don't worry, tim, it was mostly a joke -- although seriously, a scissor-kick from a barely-middle-aged guitar player is really not stop-the-presses exciting, is it? most instances of this phenomenon that i have personally witnessed have been more embarrassing than anything else.

PLZ TO NAME EMBARASSING SCISSOR KICKS YOU HAVE WITNESSED. PETE BUCK ONE IN THE PHOTO LOOKS SWEET.

http://www.abqjournal.com/shock/s_hagar306-19-02.jpg

that said I am all for REM to start playing good songs again, though "Gardening At Night" at the hall of fame show implied that Stipe sadly can't re-learn mumbling.

and Burma's pretty damn enthusiastic live

lol Hagar's pants

that's Mike Mills.

rofz

okay mikey, maybe the nudie suits weren't so bad after all.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2005/06/16/stipegall3.jpg

they really haven't played Harborcoat since '85???

(^^^ ALSO TIM PLZ NOTE CORRECT SPELLING)

That's probably true. It doesn't seem like they were playing it by the time of the Lifes Rich Pageant tour.

I love "Feeling Gravity's Pull", I should like to see them do that live, its a wonderful song.

I'm glad it only took them about ten years to realize that the fans who're still with them love that material. [Back in '99 I cringed when people booed 'Cuyahoga.' Somebody needed to sit down with a focus group before the Up tour it seemed.]

ugh, except Cuyahoga sucks and Harborcoat doesn't!

Wait, I really like this Christine McVie idea!

people booed them during 'cuyahoga'? jeez. i thought that was pretty much the highlight of the 99 show i saw.

The Dublin clips i've seen show Stipey mostly turned to one side, reading "Feeling Gravity's Pull" and "1,000,000" off a piece of paper. This tempers my jealousy toward the concertgoers a bit.

How can we talk about middle-aged rockers kicking up their heels & not mention GBV?

do GBV have heels? can they kick them?

Converse have heels, yes.

R.E.M. could have been the college rock Led Zeppelin if they just broke up when the drummer died. Instead they're the college rock Stones, right down to OMG THEY DID PARACHUTE WOMAN.

Tim, Mission Of Burma bring it live, esp. Conley. They all look like they're having tons of fun. I don't think I saw a scissor kick though.

This does seem like a welcome resurgence.

R.E.M. could have been the college rock Led Zeppelin if they just broke up when the drummer died

They could have asked Phil Collins to join too! What's he doing lately?

Mission of Burma could have asked Zak Starkey to join if their drummer had quit.

Umm dude I believe REM still have time left to "break up when the drummer dies."

Also: is it just me, or has Stipe's voice progressed kind of backwards? He spent his youth being husky and mumbly, and slowly converted into bleaty projection and clarity -- it's hard to imagine him now getting back at the vocal tone of those early songs.

("Progressed backwards" meaning over his life span, of course -- it seems like aging usually makes people more soft and husky.)

Umm dude I believe REM still have time left to "break up when the drummer dies."

Gee, you'd think I was making a joke or something.

Heavens! ;)

Sorry! He had that whole brain-aneurysm thing, I thought maybe you thought he died then!

I saw Zombie Bill Berry play on the Monster tour and didn't notice a difference

You know what's weird? Really weird? Right now I find myself wishing R.E.M. made another album that sounded exactly like Monster. If you think about, in all this time since 1994 not a single band has made an album that sounded like that (vox amp + digital delay as the main instrument).

If I'm allowed I'll post a tracklisting for the demo's disc later.

I think LRP might be my favourite REM record, but I just don't listen to it as much as say Up.

Wow! Maresnest, I feel exactly the same way! I've always felt like "Up" was made by a different band yet still showcasing what makes REM great.

:) There's something consistently bright, optimistic and headrush-y and also weirdly a bit post-hardcore about it, like those tours with Minutemen got to the core of Buck's songwriting for a while.

Here we go:

Disc Two: The Athens Demos – all previously unreleased
(Recorded March 1986 at John Keane’s Studio, Athens GA)

1. Fall On Me 10. Cuyahoga
2. Hyena 11. I Believe
3. March Song (King Of Birds) 12. Out Of Tune
4. These Days 13. Rotary Ten
5. Bad Day 14. Two Steps Onward
6. Salsa (Underneath The Bunker) 15. Just A Touch
7. Swan Swan H 16. Mystery To Me
8. Flowers Of Guatemala 17. Wait
9. Begin The Begin 18. All The Right Friends
19. Get On Their Way (What If We Give It Away)

Oh jeez..

Disc Two: The Athens Demos – all previously unreleased
(Recorded March 1986 at John Keane’s Studio, Athens GA)

1. Fall On Me
2. Hyena
3. March Song (King Of Birds)
4. These Days
5. Bad Day
6. Salsa (Underneath The Bunker)
7. Swan Swan H
8. Flowers Of Guatemala
9. Begin The Begin
10. Cuyahoga
11. I Believe
12. Out Of Tune
13. Rotary Ten
14. Two Steps Onward
15. Just A Touch
16. Mystery To Me
17. Wait
18. All The Right Friends
19. Get On Their Way (What If We Give It Away)

I love "Cuyahoga" so much.

1) "Let's put our heads together & start a new country up"---been feeling this a lot lately; & Stipe sounds so earnest about it, a totally suitable attitude imo. I want to do this too.

2) The rush from the third chorus into the bridge ("rewrite the book")---sublime. And the idea goes too far & it dies out, into the opening again.

3) How the rhythm section swings: the opening bass riff gets it started, and then whilst the first verse kinda thuds on the drums, the pre-chorus bit ("this is where we walked...") just dances; and so does the chorus; you could dance to this & it wouldn't be that awkward!

4) "We are not your allies, we cannot defend."

5) Is that feedback on the second verse? Or is that an organ? It adds to the menace, whatever it is. I think there's an electric piano in that second chorus at the end, so it's probably keys. I don't have any session notes handy.

euler you are otm. the whole album's galvanizing. the first two songs are calls to arms

The bridge of Swan Swan H has always been one of my fav rem moments

My main problem with this album is that "What If We Give It Away?" & "Just A Touch" are the worst songs on an REM album until "Ignoreland". I know they're old songs & I love pre-Murmur REM but they don't fit the flow of the album. They'd work ok as singles, though they're still sub-par. The chorus of "What If We Give It Away?" is a whine; & "Just A Touch" doesn't pop like the raver they're envision, plus its chorus sounds like a mishmash of lines ending up in "I Believe" with, well, just a bunch of garbled words---the kind of thing REM haters accuse Stipe of! I'm happy when it ends because that moment of Stipe falling off is a highlight & it leads into a couple of great songs.

"just a touch" works for me like a reassertion of "little america" -- "i can't see myself at 30" to "i'm so young, i'm so goddamn young." never been a huge fan of "what if we give it away" though either

yeah that last bit is the good part of "Just A Touch". They must have been struggling for material to put those two old songs on there.

man "The Flowers of Guatemala" is REM's first power ballad & it's a great one. Another ace bridge! that feedback blast on it is a hook, & then into a rare guitar solo. I'd kinda like to have heard more Mills vocal on it, maybe even a lead or a duet? Stipe hits a few too many drones that I think helixing with Mills could have cured or at least blurred.

maybe we'll hear more mills on the demos?

true! I didn't find the Fables demos to be much of a revelation but tbh I only listened through once & anyway I like the murk of Boyd's production.

ok I take that back, the demo of "Auctioneer" is really swell; it ends with Stipe saying "another...engine....another...engine" à la "Horses" & then someone yells really loudly & then it ends; really tense!

What is it with PSA? Surprised at it popping up here, I thought it was written around the time of Green, odd to be reiterating such an obvious lame duck.

LRP's second side is weak in the songwriting dept - they didn't have enough songs, had to flesh out old 1980/01 live numbers. Disappointing given the first side is so cohesive. Would say the same for Document (ace first side) but I like the oddball stuff after the big hit - people obviously don't. But it was more interesting than LRP's.

Fables better the whole way through both albums.

xp
It sounds like "I Believe", so maybe it's a version of that? It also sounds like "It's the End of the World..." so I dunno.

Can't wait for this, as this is my favorite R.E.M. album by quite a ways. This was the one where I REALLY got them as a band. And if these songs benefit from the remastering as much "Fables" did, I'll probably listen to it exclusively for days on end. "Begin the Begin"/"These Days" is as good as it gets for a one-two punch in the whole R.E.M. catalog.

That half acoustic, half electric thing they were after on Green should/could have been LRP - Guatemala, Swan, Fall on Me, Cuyahoga on one side and Begin the Begin, These Days on the other - problem is they didn't have enough examples of the latter and fleshed it out with light stuff like Superman/Bunker/JAT, which don't fit on the album IMO. Superman I love, but better as a standalone single.

"My picture that I have of us breaking up is that we'd do a couple of really bad records...and then we'd go to a Chinese restaurant and get drinks with umbrellas in them and say 'you know guys it's been a really haul but we just don't have it anymore', you know, and have a good toast and go home"

Peter Buck 1998.

How many bad records had they made at that point?

<- got off the bus with Out of Time

4

I just wanted to see Buck with the Baseball Project but he hurt his back and skipped a month of gigs.

So is Stipe gonna do an album with Patti Smith now that REM are broken up ?

heard some REM news - yay

lol

wait until you get the Bill Berry ''they've sucked the last decade'' interview now

album of the year?

when I heard this my first thought was 'but don't they have an album that is coming out pretty soon?" and then I remembered that it already came out, and I listened to it, and didn't remember anything about it. so I guess that says it all.

it's good, i find myself whistling the beginning of "it happened today" quite a lot

hearing "blue" now as their "riders on the storm." what a great band

do we think they knew it'd be the last album so threw their all into 'Collapse...' to go out with some dignity? i mean you know even the title suggests it.

http://r-e-m-cycle.blogspot.com/

http://www.uncut.co.uk/rem/rems-peter-buck-working-on-solo-album-news

Spotify is crazy comprehensive on these guys now; all the recent IRS years 2 disc remasters are there and even UP which was weirdly missing on there for years.

I don't which REM thread to put it on so I am putting a link to this nice live version of "Harborcoat" here
http://open.spotify.com/track/3xRaBjpIWB444tvpxAeP87

Although this one is good too
http://open.spotify.com/track/3HvhvwCvKUbuIlxPNgUXfv

except for the harmonica solo

whoa

http://www.remhq.com/news/r-e-m-at-the-bbc-coming-october-19th-read-press-release/

Looks 99% shit, unfortunately. One good show from 85, and the rest is garbage mid 90s / 2000s.

99% great, you mean.

It'll be great to have an official release of Milton Keynes '95 and that Jools special performance is where I heard the Up tracks for the first time prior to getting the album. It was so good it put all my fears of them continuing without Berry to rest.

rest is garbage mid 90s / 2000s.

― brotherlovesdub, Thursday, September 6, 2018 8:35 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a seven minute "country feedback" from 1998 is not going to suck

they never really stopped being an incredible live band imo. live versions of "walk unafraid" really cook, they're the reason its still one of my favorite r.e.m. songs

Clearly it was of interest to a lot of people or it wouldn't have been compiled and released. Unfortunately for me, I don't care to hear anything live from REM after 1991. Country Feedback being the exception, so good shout on that 7min version. I am very happy others are excited. It's good to be excited.

I could do without a couple of the Around the Sun tracks, but that's about it. Live versions of the 1998-2004 stuff have generally been better versions.

a seven minute "country feedback" from 1998 is not going to suck

Is it the Neil Young one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CERhzm6t7I

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/05/michael-stipe-new-songs-webster-hall-video-performance/

The fact that he's doing something is brilliant news. It'd be a shame if he'd let that great voice of his go to waste.

Producer Marc Urselli posted this seven weeks ago on his Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwhxx9GHL2U/?hl=en

I love my musical life: yesterday I was in Oslo listening to extreme metal today I’m in New York City recording the mesmerizing #BillFrisell @billfrisellsmusic at @eastsidesoundstudios with the revolutionary producer @willnerh #HalWillner doing to overdubs for #MichaelStipe of #REM

No more info though...

Up vinyl preorders are presumably coming this week (maybe even Tuesday morning). FINALLY