REM: Classic or dud?

having missed the monster tour - which would've been awesome as a high schooler - i was equally thrilled to see them on the UP tour as a college senior. they were ecstatic and did their best to include some older stuff...that the crowd booed!

once they moved from dance clubs to theatres

Middle ground between what and what?

May I say that this is just an utterly DIRE portrait of the people that like their music?

The Klosterman thing is patronising, but it is true that REM had a certain arty liberal outsider appeal. They were a great band to be into when you're first discovering music. They and Nirvana were the first bands not in my parents' record collections I got into. Both were non-macho, arty rock bands and a great gateway drug into more esoteric pleasures.

So Classic! Despite the undeniable dudness of Reveal and Around the Bum.
(That said, Reveal had Beat A Drum, which is terrible on the album, but beautiful in its spare piano demo form).

i don't think people were saying the words were inaudible; just indecipherable. stipe didn't really start enunciating until lifes rich pageant, a rumored concession to their label.

That rant above is kind of ridiculous, though. R.E.M. were a power pop band who liked Gang of Four and Fairport Convention. If other bands were influenced by them in crap ways, it was their own fault.

Tell me they don't look more kick-fucking-arse here than at any point since pre BINGO HAND JOB.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRVxOmu87MA

staring sideways at a laptop while singing pretty much removes all "kick-fucking-arse" from a performance

fuck is Stipe's problem? You don't see a goddamn music stand in front of Peter or Mike.

It is a good song, though.

I would be 'anticipating' Accelerate in this thread if only I could listen to their watermarked promo on my computer or in my car. I may need to borrow a discman.

L£ak£d.

So the weather in the UK has turned at last and out of the blue I have some strange and nostalgic feeling toward the first four or five REM albums. What gives?

You can see yourself at 30?

Ha, well I'm 38

I still haven't worked up the courage to listen to Accelerate, not to mention the two recent live albums either. Soon! I've been enjoying a lot of 80s-era REM bootlegs recently; "Baby I" is such a hot song.

yeah i'd say it's more "you can see youself at 40" for early REM nostalgia.

i get that feeling in early summer, too.

you know what sounds especially good as summer really begins to swelter? fables of the reconstruction.

Daniel, don't you live in Florida? It's always swelter there!

lol, yeah. we actually had a cool -- sometimes cold -- winter. but the swelter has returned now.

i used to have about five rem bootlegs on cassette. they had some of my favorite rem songs. i can't find them, and if i could find them, i couldn't play them (it's all discs and mp3s now, sadly).

Reunited! (in their appreciation of Michael Shannon)

heh, I suspected at least most of them would show up, but this is cool.

My friend Dag (plays guitar in the band, lifer) shared this fun pic of him and Stipe last night.

That's a great pic! (I'm friends of friends with Dag, he's sort of replacing my guitar teacher.)

wow!

This is a great show, with a few special guests in the encore... highly recommended, if you ever put concert recordings up on the TV while you putter around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JulR2TPAUfA

My friend Dag (plays guitar in the band, lifer) shared this fun pic of him and Stipe last night.

― paisley got boring (Eazy),

I can't tell them apart!

nice, I was just watching that REM-in-Jersey show a week or so ago. really kicking myself for not going to the Michael Shannon thing in Chapel Hill (pretty sure it was reading an interview with Shannon that prompted me to watch that old REM show).