REM: Classic or dud?

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!

turrican they are regs in my listening life. this is how i rate them

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

you all aren't rating chronic town? it should get a ******

wow now i feel like an asshole for discussing a 4 and a half star album so much the other day

lol

Chronic Town A
Murmur - A+
Reckoning - A-
Fables Of The Reconstruction - B/B-
Lifes Rich Pageant - A-
Document - Side 1: B
Side 2: D+
Green - D
Out Of Time - D
Automatic For The People - C
Monster - Give me a fucking break.
New Adventures In Hi-Fi - Stop it
Up - Are you kidding me
Reveal - Would you guys just break up already
Around The Sun - [throws up]
Accelerate - [eats his own throw up]
Collapse Into Now - [throws up his own throw up]

Chronic Town through Monster - memorized in adolescence, unable to accurately judge, own all in entirety
New Adventures - thought it was bloated from the get-go but still the work of geniuses, kept about 7 tracks, most from side 1
Up - convinced myself it was a 7 out of 10 when it came out, now have "daysleeper," "hope," "suspicion"
Reveal - shit sundae, only ever liked "Imitation Of Life"
Around The Sun - heard "Leaving New York" stayed away
Accelerate - heard "Superserious Shit Sundae" or whatever, stayed away
Collapse Into Now " - heard "Discoverer," stayed away

Now curious to force myself to hear the last four albums in full

Is there any other post-1980 band that seems to have such strong lines drawn along generational gaps?

I really like the production on The Lifting, the first song on Reveal, it's got this awesome swirl of sound going on. The song itself is only okay.

How can people be giving Out Of Time Ds and 2/5 stars? Other than Radio Song, what the fuck is wrong with it?

I don't know if I'd love shit like "Texarkana" if I heard it for the first time as an adault

On Out Of Time, they don't sound like they enjoy playing with each other...or at all.

how do you determine this?

I get the opposite impression from "Near Wild Heaven": a band so happy to trade instruments that everybody acts a little goofy.

"chronic town" ************************.5. if this was side one of a record with a side 2 as strong it would about the best debut album ever

yeah, i'd say that out of time is a pretty natural sounding record, don't see how it sounds like a band tired of each other. on the contrary, it sounds kind of joyful for a band that had been together for a decade already.

Is there any other post-1980 band that seems to have such strong lines drawn along generational gaps?

probably not. doesn't help that they sound like a totally different band after, say, Document. there's nothing wrong with bands changing and stuff but what they had pre-Document sounds to my ears fairly unique and afterward they became blander and blander.

"Other than Radio Song, what the fuck is wrong with it?"

sometimes it sounds like a weak version of 'green' (sorta the same way "finest work song part ii" -- "turn you inside-out" -- made 'green' come off a little weak (though i prefer 'green' to 'document'!)

radio song < pop song 89
shiny happy people < stand

great jams on side 2 though -- "belong," "country feedback," "me in honey." those last two especially continue the REM tradition of finishing albums with a pair of awesome songs

I rate every song apart from the bookenders Radio Song and Me In Honey very strongly on Out Of Time.