REM: Classic or dud?

qualmsley's constant griping about the line of conversation is so funny i might start discussing Up at length soon. fyi divisive later records make for more lively conversation than the canonized 80s.

it seems so shallow, and low

i am totally in favor of a lengthy discussion of up

it feels much more bloated/overlong than New Adventures at the same length, but there are some moments i really enjoy on it, definitely could edit it down to a lovely little record

yeah it's not like the songs are indistinct but it could be edited pretty easily. like i said earlier my main problem is that it's pretty much an arrangement nightmare--i guess the late 90s were the last time it was cool to use "primitive drum machines"? (i guess moon safari did come out in '98). anyway, a song like suspicion is actually a really nice little song that has a good melody and good chord changes but it's totally sedated to death.

Up is overlong but I like its three-part structure & think each works on its own. I'd cut Parakeet as redundant.

The "I'm the real thing" line in "Crush w/ Eyeliner" is among Stipe's more annoying deliveries. Thinking about Monster, I just didn't believe any of it -- the lyrics, Stipe's delivery, the guitar -- the whole thing struck me as fake. But not just a put on, a bad put on. That coming from a band that always did sincerity incredibly well. The show I saw at the (then) Rosemont Horizon sucked. Flat out sucked.

I dunno, I still own it, which is as more a function of resale market dynamics (scanning the used bin, I'd see like 8 copies in a row) than ever going back to it. Maybe I'll take it to work tomorrow and give it a listen.

The comment above about New Adventures being what Monster wanted to be or should've been, otm. Maybe they just got better at bombast over the course of that tour...

qualmsley's constant griping

A blue jay hectors from a felled catalpa tree.

the dragonflies are trying to lecture me

New Test Leper could have worked as a single. It's easy to envision an alluring video at least.

"new test leper" was released as a promo and has a video

New Adventures best potential singles, I reckon = New Test Leper, The Wake-Up Bomb, Be Mine, Electrolite. So Fast, So Numb would probably have gone down really well in that era too.

I think I remember reading an interview where they said they considered releasing Be Mine but were nervous about it becoming an enormous ubiquitous radio ballad that everyone got sick of. I've always loved that song.

Still find it amusing how much of an after thought New Adventures felt, if not to critics but in the kind of media and places REM would be found 2 or 3 years previous

Less than a year on from the end of the gaudy Monster tour, the Nico/L&K line is good but it seemed to happen so quickly, as if their fanbase average age suddenly jumped 10 years. Then again, an album in 1991, 1992, 1994, and year long world tour in '95, there must have been an element to some of 'just fucking go away for your own sake', they almost seemed to know it going by the NAIHF cover.

New Adventures is the last great REM album cover IMO, everything since has been poor to horrible. Some of those 80's covers are beautiful.

New Adventures is also, I think, the only album where the idea of REM as a stadium rock band feels like a great one. Monster is kind of forced, the earlier Warners albums a little too low-key.

Wasn't that fabled 96-97 span when even Sub Pop was signing bands like Saint Etienne?

yeah it's definitely true they were over exposed in that early 90s era. re: their audience's age, they managed to get a much younger audience along for the ride with the oldsters, up until Monster but the Monster tour did a very good job indeed of baffling/disenchanting the new more mainstream audience they picked up. the night i saw it they played nothing before Document, played a LOT off Monster itself and threw in THREE brand new tracks. don't think it did them any favours.

I seem to recall from interviews that until that 2003 tour, there were a lot of old songs the band simply forgot how to play. Though really, how hard could it be for R.E.M. to relearn R.E.M. songs? #lazyrockstars

How would playing nothing before Document put off a newer more mainstream audience?

Dunno, the night I saw them, Milton Keynes in August 1995 (Radiohead supporting), they killed it, even if there was quite a lot of Monster in the set it was very hit-heavy as well.

They were one of the bands who ran into a juggernaut of UK jingoism very shortly afterwards as well, that needs to be factored in.

well i dunno it just lacked variety. it just lacked.. the magic, instead we got long LONG versions of Departure and Circus Envy and gawd knows what.. oyyy. Revolution sounded pretty good that night i recall mind.

mm every britpop band supported on that tour. Blur, Echobelly, Oasis, Sleeper.. Dodgy? a shedload anyroad.

"Suspicion" is a good song from Up.

xp The covers of the 00s albums are distressingly bad. Around the Sun was at least a fair advertisement for the music - three boring, indistinct figures. There was such a strong sense after Berry left that they never knew what the hell to do next.

All their album covers are terrible, but yeah those last few were reaching.

Nah, some of the 80s ones were great. The kudzu image on Murmur was perfect.

On the Monster tour's Edinburgh date, we got Belly, Spearhead and Cranberries supporting. An odd bunch. Belly were pretty good, if rather dwarfed by the stadium. Spearhead were cheesy but put on a good show. Cranberries were absolutely hideous, unveiling the terrible songs from their 3rd album - I Shot John Lennon, stuff like that. Grim.
REM were good, although they ruined Try Not To Breathe with a grunged up arrangement. They did play the hits and crowdpleasers - we got Everybody Hurts, Man on the Moon, Losing My Religion, End of the World etc plus a lot of the upbeat songs from Green. But it's true to say that it was quite a weird stadium show: pretty noisy and a maybe bit too arty for a mainstream crowd, with all the surrealist films and backdrops.
They didn't really fit into that long hot summer of Britpop jingoism either. The press were going crazy for Blur and Oasis and REM seemed to belong to a different world and era.
I must I have a copy of the Milton Keynes show I taped of the radio somewhere. Would be interesting to revisit it now.
Saw them at Stirling Castle on the Up tour and that was great. A much more atmospheric venue, quite a scale down from the stadiums of yore, but still pretty big. They played early 80s stuff: Cuyahoga, Pilgrimage, Pretty Persuasion, and did a fine job of the new material. They only played Everybody Hurts on one of the nights though. Perhaps my memory fails me, but there wasn't a huge amount of NAIHF the night I went. The setlists are probably online somewhere.

I was at the Murrayfield gig in Edinburgh and confirm just how bloody awful The Cranberries were.
The first night at Stirling Castle was the best of the REM gigs I went to. One the best gigs I've ever seen - despite it pouring rain for most of it!

does anyone actually like the way Michael Stipe would yell "COOOOOOOOL!" after the chorus on live versions of "Man On The Moon" - I feel like it might be the alt version of "Does anyone remember laughter?"

lol i remember that yell, was he really saying "cool"?

No he wasn't.

wait so if he wasn't yelling "COOOL!" after a chorus that ends "nothing is cool," what was he yelling? "FOOOOL"? "DROOOOL"? "

maybe it was "hoos"

I thought he was just yelling 'COME ON!' or something.

I saw them just before Accelerate came out, in a room above the Apple Store on Regent Street, which is about the least rock and roll venue ever but it was sort of amazing because there were about 100 people in the room, and they played West of the Fields.

that is definitely "COOO-ULLLLL!!!!"at 2:30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTtixBih0PM

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqrrylVyfU1qkb66ro1_400.jpg

Jealous! Shame I didn't see them around that time, as they were playing loads of classics. The Live At Olympia sets are something of a fan boy's dream. Think their last Scottish show was Balloch Country Park around the time of Around The Sun? Didn't have much desire to go cos the album was so dull, and there wasn't a huge amount of fanfare around the gig. That's a big space - Oasis did two nights there in their pomp - perhaps too big for REM at that stage? Scratch, that it was T In The Park, an awful corporate festival. Wish they'd done a headline date as well, back then. A friend saw them at Twickenham and said they were brilliant, but tellingly, the venue wasn't quite full.

For some time I've wanted to start a thread about Stipe's inexplicable tuneless chant during live versions of Man On The Moon, speculating as to WHY.

Like to think of Stipe as a good singer with some real chops but every once in a while he does something to make me ask that question, but maybe it is some deep stuff, some Ornette Coleman stuff or something.

It would have been better had he done likewise throughout Leaving New York instead. Perhaps then they'd still be together

One of the things that really bothered me about Monster was the short bridge on "Bang and Blame" that sounded like a lazy rip off of the one from "Orange Crush". I always fill in the vocals from the latter when I hear the former. It's like they couldn't even be bothered coming up with something new...

god, that live clip...stipe with the black bar painted across his eyes, that stupid hand wave thing he does in time to every "yeah yeah yeah" and when the camera pans to the audience every fucking person is doing it back to him..."coool" almost doesn't even rate as one of the most embarrassing things happening there.

always hated bang and blame, chorus just super shrill and annoying. and i like most of monster.
sort of hated the video for it too, whereas most of the monster videos were cool.

I was absolutely floored by this acoustic version of "Let Me In" they were bringing out on the last (final?) tour:

http://youtu.be/hDt29lklkUc

VERY comprehensive REM setlist guide here http://www.remtimeline.com/

xp re the venues, yeah in Cardiff on the last tour they had to move from a 48,000 cap venue to an arena with a cap of 7,500
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7548038.stm

wow. that makes me more sad than the news of their breakup.

I hated the REM set I was in Baton Rouge on the Monster tour. Looking back at the setlist shows me why. Michael was helped offstage at the end of the show. Saw them again at Bumbershoot in Seattle in the early 00s and the sight of Peter Buck doing windmills and jumping around turned me off for good. Wish I had seen their show at the Crocodile when they played all the old stuff though.

was = saw in that first sentence, btw.

In the wake of the split, listened to all of the REM albums in discographical order after having not listened to them for quite some time...

Murmur - ****
Reckoning - ****.5
Fables Of The Reconstruction - ***.5
Lifes Rich Pageant - ****
Document - ****
Green - ****.5
Out Of Time - ***.5
Automatic For The People - *****
Monster - ****
New Adventures In Hi-Fi - ****.5
Up - ***
Reveal - ***
Around The Sun - **
Accelerate - ****
Collapse Into Now - ***.5

People hating on Bang & Blame are wrong. Not mad on the chorus, but I love that shivery "Shakin' All Over" guitar tone and eerie "If you could see yourself now ba-by" verse...

this was the first REM gig i went to:

2 December 1984 - Lyceum Ballroom, London, England
support: The Lucy Show, The Lyres
set: Second Guessing / Harborcoat / Seven Chinese Brothers / Hyena / Talk About The Passion / Auctioneer (Another Engine) / So. Central Rain / Good Advices / Letter Never Sent / Driver 8 / Gardening At Night / 9-9-Hey Diddle Diddle-Frogmore / Windout / Old Man Kensey / (Don't Go Back To) Rockville / Pretty Persuasion / Little America
encore 1: White Tornado / See No Evil / We Walk-Behind Closed Doors / 1,000,000
encore 2: Moon River / Wendell Gee / I Can Only Give You Everything / Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars)

Even at the time it seemed like a really long show!