REM: Classic or dud?

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.

yeah, the tourfilm doc shows them playing a pretty large space.

I do think it odd that there was never any creative overlap between the Smiths and R.E.M. Contemporary peers, (broadly) similar sounds, (broadly) Marr/Buck guitar style, Stipe/Morrissey, all obvious analogs. Even now Marr and Buck live in the same city. But never the tween shall meet, I guess.

[2-disc grrrrrreatest hits coming out in Nov: Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011]

buck and marr both appear on robyn hitchcock's last album.

I saw them at Mud Island, a fairly large amphitheatre, in 1986.

when did stipe become bill murray?

http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Michael+Stipe+2011+Can+Awards+Dinner+FWNewDHpoE4l.jpg
http://beardporn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bill-murray-475x289.jpg

You know, there's a good case to be made that Metallica actually deserves credit setting the stage for Nirvana.

R.E.M. basically followed U2's trajectory, albeit on a lag, and with a more wayward approach. People forget they didn't even tour behind "Out of Time" and "Automatic," their two biggest records!

That's why the Monster tour was so huge with multiple nights at big arenas that sold out so quickly.

Smiths & REM: I lived in Atlanta in the late 80s, & when Strangeways the buzz in my hs was that Stipe & Morrissey were regularly seen in Athens holding hands, & that the end of "Unhappy Birthday" ("the one you left behind") was a sly note to Stipe. I don't know if it's true! But that was the word from kids going back & forth to Athens (I was too young to drive at that point).

when Strangeways came out, I meant

can't write today, trying to do too much at once

You know, there's a good case to be made that Metallica actually deserves credit setting the stage for Nirvana.
i think this is true ime. in 7th grade, during lunch hours on fridays, they let kids play music over the PA at my school. first it was the black album, and then it was nirvana. this seems like pretty hard evidence, i know.

R.E.M. certainly were like the American kings of having all sorts of crazy rumors flying around!

Mozz and Stipe used to be pen pals, I believe.

Stipe also befriended Morrissey in the early nineties; he had a Mother Hen instinct for stars-in-need.

Was Morrissey really a star-in-need at that point though? Iirc that was when he was doing really well (relatively) with his solo singles

Kill Uncle?

mozzz could always use a hug.

Okay fair point, but to be fair most of his 1990-1992 singles charted higher in the U.S. than any of the late 80s stuff did.

i saw 10ooomaniaks open for them in arena. that sucked. but saw feelies open up for them and arena rock feelies was heavennnnnz.

Time For a Witness is a great record.

10ooomaniaks

Is this another one of those goddamn ghostwave bands?

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

Busted out Monster from storage and am listening for the first time in yoinks...forgot Thurston Moore did backing vox on "Crush W/Eyeliner".

Michael Stipe played with a punk/new wave band called Bad Habits who were from St Louis, before moving to Georgia

The Minutemen were already on the REM tour and had completed it when D Boon died.

Bands I saw open for R.E.M. in early days - dbs (twice), Three O'Clock and True West, Guadalcanal Diary.

guadalcanal diary were pretty good iirc.

Circling back to the Wyman/Nevermind thing, as somebody who followed R.E.M. from pretty much the beginning, their success to me seemed gradual and linear (and totally unrelated to Nirvana). By the time Reckoning came out, they were already getting a little play on the mainstream rock station in my city -- I remember hearing "So. Central Rain" -- and then "Can't Get There From Here" and "Driver 8" both got some spins too, and "Fall On Me" was in regular rotation. (That was when some of my non-college-radio-listening friends started really noticing them.) So the success of "The One I Love" and "End of the World" seemed to follow logically. By Document they were playing 5,000-seat halls at least, maybe bigger. And Green was bigger again, and then OOT. It was a long, steady build.

ack, I just remembered that the closing show of the Green tour was at the Fox, not at the Omni. Still, they played the Omni on the Green tour, since it's one of the Tourfilm sites I think.

I wrote at the time (and still think) that they had Nirvana in mind when they wrote "Drive." It's kind of an oblique reaction, but I think it's there. (Love Guadalcanal's "Gilbert Takes the Wheel.")

it's well-documented that they had cobain in mind when they wrote let me in, from monster.

And then obv there was Kurt's lost night at Stipe's place.

btw while I've been repping for 90s REM, I'd love them to do an archive series, & at the top of that list would be the show from April 10, 1981, on the boot Georgia Peaches: Ripe!. They rip that night: "Baby I"! "Liza Sez"! "Narrator"! They dropped all these songs before Murmur but the songs smoke. btw this show is "out there" for the looking & it's well worth your time.

The 1991 Unplugged would be great too---another classic set with the definitive "Disturbance At The Heron House".

Yeah, the Cleveland stop on the Green tour when I saw them was the Richfield Coliseum, also the then-home of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. It was the big leagues.

Green was a platinum album.

With their second top ten hit ("Stand").

Re Unplugged... I've got a bootleg cassette at my mum's house of the 1991 Unplugged. Ah, those halcyon days of buying dodgy bootlegs at provincial Record Fairs. Hideous pre-Photoshop cover art. Also got one called "It's REM Jim, but not as you know them" that kicks off with their cover of Where's Captain Kirk then studio versions of Television's See No Evil and Mission of Burma's Academy Fight Song. Finding MOB records in mid-90s central Scotland was no easy task (well, I probably could have in one of the better Glasgow shops, but those were beyond my ken then), so I really appreciate how REM covered interesting bands and planted seeds. This bootleg also has their Christmas fan club releases, including the version of Good King Wenceslas where Buck plays a tasty vacuum cleaner solo.

That It's REM Jim tape also had their version of Spooky (Mike Mills vox) and a version of Dallas with Billy Bragg. Not sure it's the same as this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek9IO-0a4Jk