REM: Classic or dud?

I'd kind of forgotten that, at one point, r.e.m. were one of those bands by which i'd buy both cd single 1 and cd single 2.

admittedly, this was a time when you could quite frequently pick up cd single for 99p.

Wikipedia (drawing from sources I haven't bothered to check) says Berry was the primary songwriter on a bunch of tunes, including "Perfect Circle," "Driver 8," "Man on the Moon," "Can't Get There From Here." But anyway they supposedly worked out most of the songs together, I think there was a lot of collaboration all the way around.

(which presumably means on the later albums, the three of them worked out the songs before bothering to call in a drummer.)

"And then telling him exactly what to do..."

No, but there's a big difference between having a guy there while you're writing the song and then having him come in after it's written and saying "Here's the song, play something that goes with it." I've been in both situations as a drummer, and it's a completely different experience. I mean, studio aces have been adding crucial stuff to songs forever without getting songwriting credit because there's a difference between the songwriting process and the recording/arranging process. (Unless you're a full band that really collaborates on everything, like R.E.M. did in the original quartet.)

lol, dismissing a direct quote contradicting one's position from one of principals with "lol he must have been drunk" -- yeah! Rhetoric 101.

I agree completely. Was just reacting to Josh's silly comments.

xp

WHO CARES

also, <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_QG6tr9mjo

From the 2010 interview I linked to above:

Bill: My aim was for R.E.M. to sound like R.E.M. I wanted to be true to the spirit and the letter, for each song. This meant learning both the notes and the feel. I was largely unfamiliar with the details of their catalog, so I had a lot of catching up. I made charts for everything. The notes are easy enough, but getting the feel was another matter. I was committed to knowing what made [original R.E.M. drummer] Bill Berry tick, to knowing how and why he played what he played, to absorb him through osmosis. I had about three months and listened to the records constantly.

I would listen until I noticed something. Anything. Eventually I'd notice something else. Soon, patterns emerged. A big challenge for me was pulling back when and where it was needed; I was still used to playing pretty full-on most of the time. "Maps And Legends" was the first song where I felt I'd achieved something. I still always enjoy playing that song.

Learning the old R.E.M. material opened up my approach and my thinking about feel. The analogy is something like character acting. It has to do with embodying the spirit of someone else; I wanted to embody Bill's spirit. As time went on and I got more comfortable and confident, I put more of myself into the songs. Mow the older material is pretty much a hybrid of the two Bills.

So if you want to give Rieflin some sort of credit for the two records he's on, fine. But dude was a session hand all the same, and I'd be shocked if his contributions deviated significantly from the drum parts on the Mills/Buck demos (because by "Up" I'm pretty sure they were working on songs separately, leading to much conflict when it came time to pick the songs for the record; my understanding is that "Accelerate" was a specific Buck-centric compromise to the band a going concern, much as "Monster" was made in part to sate Berry).

Anyway, my fave Rieflin is his awesome art-prog solo album with Robert Fripp and Trey Gunn (!) called "Birth of a Giant." Sounds like David Sylvian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Siba1wuCaS0

'He’s totally free to play whatever he seems to feel makes sense."

This Rieflin discussion reminds me of Peter Holsapple's departure from the band. As I recall, he was kicked out for playing his hand too hard and demanding writing credits and ended up touring/sitting in with Hootie and the Blowfish.

yeah, it's gonna be contentious. I'm inclined to trust the songwriting credits as the last word (following the money), but it doesn't matter. Does Rieflin want credit for those records, anyway?

Did we ever poll Berry Buck Mills Stipe?

Fwiw, I quite like the last few records, think Rieflin is really good, and that it's cool that they got him in the band. He's probably not the kind of drummer someone might have expected to end up in R.E.M., but it's awesome that he did and, I think, a bit of a testament to R.E.M.'s musicality that they would have gone with him.

This is something we can agree on. Whatever his contributions, he did not make the band worse, and did make them better live.

Seriously, I saw them in '03 and it was like 'Wow, who is this guy?'

Can we all agree on these two things:

1) Bill Berry was involved in REM's songwriting and was a key contributor (chords, melodies) to a number of their classic songs.

2) The new Bill wasn't involved in the songwriting but created his drum parts, in consultation with the producer and the other band members, like pretty much every drummer.

Not sure we can agree on that. How much have you had to drink today?

One of my favorite Bill Berry stories stemmed from the "Out of Time" stories/sessions, when Berry was apparently sitting at a piano playing what would become ... something or another, and the other guys realized that after all those years they had no idea the guy could play piano until he was doing it.

Also, and this is a total aside, I always felt (as a drummer and a novice guitarist) that Berry played drums sort of like drums were not his first instrument. Not that he was a bad drummer - to the contrary, he was great - but there was always something a little brilliantly odd/off about the way he approached the set. He sat so high, for one.

Berry plays quite a few instruments on OOT.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that he came up with the arpeggio in "Everybody Hurts."

Re. Berry's key role in writing "Everybody Hurts", see this interview with Mike Mills from a few years back.

Apologies if this has already been linked (I missed a few posts), but here's the original Stephen Hague version of Catapult:

http://thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com/2011/09/rem-did-we-miss-anything.html

Weird isn't it? Far too slow and lifeless. Berry sounds unhappiest here, but the guitar and bass, while competent enough, lack the vim and vigour of the Murmur version. Interesting to hear it now though. The synths aren't particularly obtrusive, but they don't really add anything. Definitely a mismatch.

if you're gonna go out, it's always good to go out with a bang. or this video. hahaha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITh-XIikgI&feature=relmfu

christ i was just reading about the Hague session only yesterday in the original edition of It Crawled From The South, and wondering if it had ever become available. they pretty much hated him it seems and they hated nobody.

i take it back, i just watched the horse piss video and that is an EXCELLENT way to end a career. with horse piss. kudos, r.e.m. no, for real. and the song isn't bad either.

enjoyed this video too. and the song! sounds like an r.e.m. song anyway. after all my trolling, i'm actually listening to the newest one. via youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHcg7m68x20&feature=relmfu

Uberlin is rather a good song I must say. As is Walk It Back. I'll need to give Collapse Into Now a proper chance.

They've got some interesting film makers in for this. Albert Maysles! A worthwhile project. Reminds me of the non-single videos they made for Out of Time which gave me a nice early teenage introduction to the look of art films.

Sam Taylor Wood's video for Uberlin is lovely. Nice to see someone dancing around familiar East London locations. And the Horse Piss video is great! She looks so joyous dancing away.

http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1322

The All The Best vid is by James Herbert. Presumably not the horror writer...

That song with Peaces isn't very good, but the video has nice colours and modernist architecture. Enjoying Stipe's deadpan expression in these - quite the opposite of his earnest expression and goatee of empathy in the Everybody Hurts promo, say.

Did we ever poll Berry Buck Mills Stipe?

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-V4rHwHfzNR8/SodyZ2zZMMI/AAAAAAAACU0/G6thqwaqnjE/michael-stipe-rem.jpg

what is the horse piss video? first one i've seen from the new one is "uberlin" just above scott posted (which is pretty great)

Figures:

"R.E.M. Caps Career With First-Ever Definitive Greatest Hits Album." It was a marketing gimmick!

Huh, I listened to Automatic for the first time in forever, probably at least a decade. I might actually like it more than some of the early stuff!

Lot of nice touches in the arrangements/production: mandolin, strings, accordion, pretty noise on "Sweetness Follows".

I'd totally forgotten how much I liked "Try Not to Breathe".

I even like "Ignoreland" these days.

oh, c'mon.

C'mon, what took me so long, or c'mon, the song still sucks?

(b)

It's definitely a weak spot, but after years of simply skipping it I really don't mind it anymore. Maybe it took a couple of albums of almost entirely weak spots to put it into perspective?

The track list for the new greatest hits thing is pretty silly -- basically pretending that it makes sense to give equal weight to pre-Automatic and Automatic-->forward. Two tracks from Fables and LRP? C'mon now.

is the term "bandwagon" still applicable when a group dissolves in some way or another? i find myself listening to more r.e.m. since their break-up than i ever have in my life ... gotta be another word for it, no?

For me, "Ignoreland" is crucial to Automatic for the People. The album is such a piece and somehow that track works within the overall feel of the album even though it's its own stylistic entity. Same thing with "Drive" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight."

The unified feel is a big part of the album's aesthetic triumph, but the eclecticism working within that framework is also big.

The track list for the new greatest hits thing is pretty silly -- basically pretending that it makes sense to give equal weight to pre-Automatic and Automatic-->forward. Two tracks from Fables and LRP? C'mon now.

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Monday, September 26, 2011 8:04 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

bands of their statures always end up with several best-ofs -- period specific ones, ones that are "just the hits," multi-disc collections that are evenly spread across their entire career. it makes sense for them to do the latter right now. disc 1 covers the first 10 years and disc 2 covers the last 20 years, so it's still pretty well weighted toward the early years, and it's not like Eponymous and And I Feel Fine don't already exist to give the IRS years their due.

that said it is kind of a funky selection with a few fairly notable singles not included.

For me, "Ignoreland" is crucial to Automatic for the People. The album is such a piece and somehow that track works within the overall feel of the album even though it's its own stylistic entity. Same thing with "Drive" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight."

for me it was an awkward, cringe-inducing moodkiller.

not that AFTP couldn't use some up-tempo songs -- it certainly could -- just not this one.

gotta be another word for it, no?

newstalgia?

fonky REM will never not be awesome and hilarious to me -- "Ignoreland" was my favorite song on the album when it came out and i thought REM were kind of old and square compared to the newer alt-rock bands i was into, and even now i like it a lot

chall ops

::shrug:: i know i don't have the 'typical REM fan' pov and i don't present myself as such

I like the shrillness of Ignoreland as sort of a final blow against Reaganism at the dawn of the Clinton era.

Plus obv not like it ever stopped being relevant. I don't mind an old-fashioned anthem in the middle of Automatic's slackerism.

as anti-Reaganism it was incoherent -- I just liked the sound of Stipe distorted; he was like a second guitar.

Was it an official single or an airplay hit? On my college station it got massive play, as much as "Drive" and far more than "The Sidewinder..." or "Man on the Moon."