REM: Classic or dud?

seems like they always had good taste in openers in the 80s -- feelies, minutemen, go-betweens.
when i saw them on the monster tour luscious jackson opened.

ugh – Radiohead opened for them in mid '95.

then Thom Yorke sang Patti Smith's bit in "E Bow The Letter" and added harmonies to "Be Mine" at the Tibetan Freedom Concert.

i think i saw them in mid-95. we had bought tix for the show w/ sonic youth listed as the opener, but the aneurysm thing happened and the show was postponed. and SY were out by then -- and LJ was in!

Looking at those '80 shows, they opened a few for Gang of Four. That's a classic mismatch for me, although I'm sure R.E.M. themselves were big fans.

IIRC, Wilco & Mercury Rev opened on the Up tour.

Never got to see them live. The time I cared most was the post-Monster tour and all three Chicago shows sold out almost instantly, I got shut out back in those olden days of calling the local Ticketmaster outlet.

from that REM timeline --
1 November 1995 - The Forum, Los Angeles, CA
support: Luscious Jackson
set: I Took Your Name / What's The Frequency, Kenneth? / Crush With Eyeliner / Drive / Try Not To Breathe / Binky The Doormat / Wake-Up Bomb / Losing My Religion / Bang And Blame / Undertow / Strange Currencies / Revolution / Tongue / Man On The Moon / Country Feedback / The One I Love / Pop Song 89 / Get Up / Star 69
encore: Let Me In / Everybody Hurts / So. Central Rain / Departure / Driftaway / It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
notes: Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac playes guitar on Everybody Hurts

toootally forgot about lindsey buckingham! weird.

Saw them once on the Green tour, and Indigo Girls opened.

notes: Lindsey Buckingham from Fleetwood Mac playes guitar on Everybody Hurts

ok waht

it's LA, baby! that kind of thing happens all the time.

xpost Early R.E.M. and Gang of Four are not totally unlike one another. I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STKVCwP486I&feature=related

Or especially:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y675-eb3QOU&feature=related

yeah was gonna say, them opening for the police is a bit more of a stretch.

General R.E.M. question here... how worthwhile is the bonus material on the Deluxe reissues? I've been staying away from these so far, but I'm wondering if its time to fill in a few of my gaps from the IRS years.

Buckingham is not on the album, btw. But I guess he did sit in live once. This is some Mac forum tale I dug up about talking to Scott M. at a Baseball Project gig:

"Preshow, I could chat with Scott and I took the opportunity to ask him if he was there in (I believe) 1999 when Lindsey played on the live gig with REM to provide the solo on Everybody Hurts . He said he was there and that he totally enjoyed playing with him especially because he could witness Lindsey’s special guitar technique, apart from his modest but charismatic persona.Of course I asked him: “What was the story behind this collaboration?” And he answered that as far as his knowledge Peter Buck, who apparently is a big Lindsey fan, had ran into him in LA and invited Lindsey to have dinner preshow with the band. Lindsey accepted and they got along so well during diner that Peter asked Lindsey “why don’t you play with us tonight?” He simply said OK, and went on stage with them.

After the Baseballproject show ( which rocked bigtime!), I talked to Scott some more and he said that he went to the same college as Lindsey and Stevie, and that there was a photograph of The Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band in his yearbook. He also had good memories of seeing B/N opening for Ike and Tina Turner and he saw Lindsey on tour in ’93."

did pete let lindsey take the arpeggio or did lindsey just wild out on the climax? xpost question answered!

xp i've been listening to some of the deluxe stuff on spotify. as far as the live recordings go, i'm not sure why they chose them -- feel like there are better bootlegs. Still good. Demo stuff sounds interesting, don't know how much I'd listen to it, though?

By the way, the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band? Stevie Nicks in '67, ladies and gentlemen:

http://cubberley68.com/images/cubberley-stevienicks.jpg

Thanks tyler, I'm thinking I'm just going to dl the remastered albums proper from iTunes or wherever, much cheaper.

Jon via Chi, the remastering is so good on the first couple, which alone is a reason to buy these records. "Murmur" especially I heard all sorts of stuff I'd never noticed before.

yeah, that's true, murmur does sound great on the reish.

xp Not according to Shakey, you didn't.

rock on, ancient queen!

i wonder if the production on those early records made a big difference in REM's success -- you listen to most amerindie bands from that era and the production is so cruddy. Sometimes in a good way, I guess. BUt like the replacements, husker du, etc...

I was at this show at the long-gone Capitol Theater in Passaic NJ on 6/9/84:

Performance for 'Rock Influences: Folk Rock' on MTV. Roger McGuinn guests on 'So You Want To Be A Rock'n'Roll Star' and 'Gloria'. John Sebastian guests on 'Do You Believe In Magic' and 'Gloria'. First performances of Driver 8, Old Man Kensey and Hyena. The performance was broadcast on 17 July

The Smiths served much the same purpose overseas, no? Clean guitars, clean production ...

(xxpost) Plus the distribution that came with being on IRS wasn't the same as being on Twin/Tone or Reflex.

It's been a long while since I've listened to anything from Murmur beyond "Radio Free Europe"--played it constantly when it came out--but yes, I can definitely hear the Gang of Four in the jaggedness of the tracks posted above. Not so much in the vocals, though; for me, R.E.M. still come out of an Everlys/Byrds tradition of harmony, which would explain why I connected with Murmur immediately while the Gang of Four left me cold way back when.

The LRP reissue with All The Right Friends is worth picking up.

When the reunited Gang of Four played in Athens a few years ago, Stipe was there and acting all excited. He and Vanessa from Pylon sang backup on "I Love a Man in a Uniform."

Oh, boy - should I be afraid to read ur-rockist Bill Wyman's career assessment in Slate, titled "R.E.M.'s Revolution: How a post-punk band from Georgia changed rock 'n' roll forever?"

Yeah, couldn't make much sense of the piece. Like:

Still, in the overheated industry of the period, the band's sales were middling, and it wasn't as though the Replacements were moving product either. It took a few more years, until the rise of a band with a leader who plainly looked to R.E.M. for career if not musical inspiration, before the Amerindie movement could truly assault the industry. After Nirvana's Nevermind, everything changed ...

But this makes no sense, since R.E.M. was selling millions before "Nevermind," and millions of weirder records, at that. I wouldn't link the concurrent success of "Nevermind" and "Automatic" at all. They're almost opposites of one another in nearly every sense.

yeah that's just wrong.
and even if cobain professed to be an REM fan, it did not show in his music.

well, Document broke them to a Top 40 audience and OOT made them superstars, six months before the release of Nevermind. No wonder writers conflate REM and Nirvana's successes.

except Out of Time was released in April and Nevermind that fall, and didn't get big until that next spring

But he's saying it was "Nevermind" that changed everything, when if you go by R.E.M.'s success, it was R.E.M. that changed things for Nirvana. But again, I don't see the connection.

check out this insane picture

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/2066611/2281252/2303818/110922_MB_REMBand_EX.jpg

document (and the one i love) both made the top 10 iirc

I think ppl aren't picking up on Alfred's blatant sarcasm...?

yeah srsly guys

Now, per the writer's odd, rushed thesis, there is an obvious case for "Nevermind" making good on the failed promise of the Replacements and Husker Du, for sure. But in terms of breaking down the doors, R.E.M. was in the big leagues already.

rip sarcasm, rem

R.I.P.

RIP
an interesting thing about the our band could be your life book was how REM, to most of the bands of the time, were godlike rock stars, even from the early days. at least relatively speaking. from their perspective REM led some kind of charmed existence.

there's that quote from Cobain's last RS interview in which he praises'em for behaving "like saints" during their period of mass success.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1671211/r-e-m-michael-stipe-nirvana-kurt-cobain.jhtml

So looking back, I guess R.E.M. was already playing arenas by '89.

Might be covered in that article buzza linked, but weren't there tons of rumors flying around about a Cobain/Stipe collaboration around the time of Cobain's death?

Stipe used the project as an excuse to check on Cobain, Stipe said.

REM were def playing arenas in 1989, at least in the southeast. I still regret not going to the last show on the Green tour, at the Omni in Atlanta.