REM: Classic or dud?

Hang on, I'm reading this correctly? You're basing R.E.M's post-Berry stature on Peter Buck not making some list in SPIN!? Christ.

― Dog Man Star took a suck on a pill... (Turrican), Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:01 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink]

hey, would you mind taking the fanboy fury down a tad? It's an anecdotal implication that a group whose sales went from millions to hundreds of thousands is also losing some canonical weight.

when a brand traditionally associated with a genre makes a list of of the best guitarists associated with the genre, and leaves out the guitarist from the band traditionally associated with popularizing the genre, it's noteworthy.

xxpost:

If by "vital music" you mean that the albums didn't manage to reach an audience beyond their (large) fanbase in the same way that Out Of Time or Automatic For The People did, then fair enough. I don't think that sort of thing is truly representative of the qualities/merit of the records when taken as their own thing. If by "vital music" you mean that the albums aren't worth checking out or listening to, then I'd definitely disagree: Accelerate, for example, I would rank as one of my Top 5 favourite R.E.M. albums. No joke!

i think it was the millions of copies of monster in the dollar bins that did them in. how many damn copies of that album did they make???

Spin is exactly the right place to look for a discussion of rockist canon although maybe the torch has passed a bit to other sources - where does Pitchfork stand on those late records? The point isn't that fans thought those albums sucked (most of us liked at least some of them, to varying extents).

It's just that if you're a kid now, and learning about the important rock music of the last x decades that you NEED TO HEAR, R.E.M. have sloughed down the priority list in a way that I don't think they would have had they not put out those albums. Maybe there was a backlash waiting to happen, and of course Murmur continues to make those lists. But these same sources love BIG TRAGIC NARRATIVE and if R.E.M. had quit RIGHT IN THEIR PRIME, at the HEIGHT OF THEIR POWERS, New Adventures would make big countdowns, and not just those of active fans of the band. Post-96 it was just so obvious that whatever the band did, they weren't "important" or an "event." I could see this trend reversing itself just with time, to be honest, but I could also see it being cemented and them becoming one of those bands that were huge and sold lots of records, but have no radio homeland and no guaranteed spot in the canon (though they'll make Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without a doubt).

hey, would you mind taking the fanboy fury down a tad? It's an anecdotal implication that a group whose sales went from millions to hundreds of thousands is also losing some canonical weight.

― da croupier, Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:14 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It has nothing to do with being a "fanboy" (I'm not a "fanboy" of anything). I just don't think that Peter Buck not making it into a list in SPIN automatically means that R.E.M. stopped being highly regarded. Maybe less popular, but still highly regarded nonetheless.

For me, there's a final period of theirs that starts with Reveal. Stipe's lyrics became more less, I don't know, narrative oriented? I think they become more concise to the point where some of those tunes from the final album - "Uberlin," "Every Day Is Yours to Win" - are just so direct. I really like that aspect to them. Collapse Into Now is definitely one of my favorite R.E.M. albums.

iirc from stairway to hell, led zep's next-to-last album with their drummer was a cutout bin regular initially too

rem straddled the indie scene and the college rock scene to $$$$$$ back in the day but between their refusal to either bail or go megabig U2-style, and the post-pitchfork world, where Our Band Could Be Your Life leads to Nirvana and nobody's giving five stars to Diesel And Dust, that's gonna cost you more than a few cool points.

maybe they just put out too much stuff. they put out a zillion singles in the 90's and beyond and lots of best-ofs and comps and albums and they toured a bunch. maybe it was just too much without big hits on their side.

though looking at the indie scene now, maybe they were just a decade too soon with all the wan synthscapes

even U2 only have 12 albums to their name and they're still going. and they started a lot earlier.

but jeez its not like they didn't have a good run. they lasted so much longer than probably any of their original fans ever thought they would.

i saw them twice in the 80's in big places and i was impressed both times by their ability to fill such big spaces. so many bands that they started out with never could have done that or done it for long. you certainly didn't THINK of them as that kind of band early on. though i guess in retrospect i did think that big john cougar sound on LRP was them heading there in a big way. that's the first time i saw them. for that album's tour. and they had people going crazy. i was impressed.

Big. dif with U2 I guess is that they never released an album they did not tour behind, right? REM released a few. Or at least three, correct? Gave them more time to record.

REM's biggest years were when they didn't tour!

They would have had to have radio hits from New Adventures and Up to have sustained more success. They did in other countries. Six top ten hits in the U.K. after Monster (the last one being "Leaving New York").

R.E.M. also never had a record nearly as big as The Joshua Tree. Automatic was their biggest seller, and sold half as much in the US as Joshua Tree.

And I think U2 only started a year earlier than R.E.M.

xxp

I'd argue that was their New Jersey period in the UK.

xpost

If it was a New Jersey period, then it was a fucking long one. 'Imitation Of Life' was a massive hit here.

yeah i was just thinking how amazing it is they had ZERO hits stateside on those last five albums (closest they got was the off-album "The Great Beyond"). Even with those European sales staying decent, it's funny considering the news of their big 80 million deal in '96 reportedly earned a standing O from Warner Bros staff. Though ZZ Top's megadeal with RCA in 1991 was even crazier.

i think they rushed Monster. in retrospect. less than two years after automatic. they had serious momentum. the kind that people kill for. and they sold a buttload of Monster and it was a number one album but then people couldn't get rid of it fast enough. and then it was the long (but still financially successful) decline. but hey it happens.

At least New Adventures hadn't come out when Warner Bros backed up the money truck, ZZ Top scored those numbers AFTER Recycler.

We've definitely worked this vein before but I do think it's interesting to imagine a world where they worked a little longer on Monster, tested the stuff out on tour more first, enriched the songs more, something. I've come to really like the record so I can no longer tell how much of the backlash was "this thing sucks" and how much was "this isn't another album in the style of Automatic." But anyway, as you sort of suggest, they would have been crazy not to put it out - standing on a peak that few bands ever see, that might not (indeed, didn't) last. It could be that some kind of comedown was inevitable, Monster or no.

Was there a way to sustain American commercial success after 1996? I doubt it. New Adventures was the best they could do. By 1998 Backstreet Boys used drum loops more interestingly.

what big alt album from 94 on ISN'T $2 on used cd now?

but jeez its not like they didn't have a good run. they lasted so much longer than probably any of their original fans ever thought they would.

In 1981 the idea of any band lasting that long would have freaked me out. Even the Stones and the Beach Boys had only been around for 18 years or so.

I think Berry leaving really hurt them on the charts.

I like Monster but it was definitely a missed opportunity. In some ways it seems more over- than under-worked to me, at least in terms of production.

it's not like people should be asking what Green Day and Hootie should have done differently on Dookie or Cracked Rear View just because they sold a ton and a bunch went back to CD stores by the late '90s.

New Adventures was doomed to sell poorly no matter what, it came out in the year almost every established alt band took a bath: commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

They might have been able to pull off "wait forever, put out classicist comeback album" a la U2 after Pop, but REM's choice seems much more defensible, and probably the only thing they could do.

Monster is a pretty good record, just wrong thing wrong time. But as I think I said in either the poll thread or the "versus Achtung Baby" thread, there's something about its sound that makes even the more interesting songs feel like a samey drag. Compared to Automatic or even Out of Time, it's a rather inconsistent set of songs to begin with. "King of Comedy" and "I Don't Sleep, I Dream" are both underdeveloped and overproduced, and "I Took Your Name" kind of drones on...but your mileage may vary.

I dunno -- it sounds right place right time to me! Best time to make a distorto/glam thrice removed record that would sell millions and end in used Cd bins.

One interesting curveball is if they didn't tour in 1995 at all, and kept the live thing to one side even further. I think the message was for the sake of the band they physically had to go there and do it.

It's hard to think of Monster without thinking even a little bit of how it was as a vehicle to play loud live stuff, unlike the previous two. I think for many fans it's hard to see it anything more than that.

What if they had returned in late 1994/1995 with a New Adventures instead?

i don't get how it can be the wrong thing wrong time when it sold a ton and was the fodder for their biggest tour. like yeah, a lot of copies went back and america said "no mas" to "e-bow the letter" but still. It was the perfect time to put on sunglasses and modern rock out.

lol xpost

It's weird they didn't do a live album until 2007

"what big alt album from 94 on ISN'T $2 on used cd now?"

1994 albums i can get more than 2 bucks for: nirvana unplugged, vitalogy, the downward spiral, crooked rain crooked rain, bee thousand. nothing as big as r.e.m. though. i can't remember what the huge alt albums were that year. well, downward spiral was huge here. uh, yeah, weezer you can probably find for 2 bucks.

yeah i did think about downward spiral as a survivor, forgot about unplugged (and of course indie albums are worth more)

listening to Up for the first time in forever. Really of its time (lol at following a long Yo La Tengo tribute with a shrill "HEY! HEY!") and it didn't need to be 15 minutes longer than their previous albums, but not bad at all.

it's possible they could have gained more of the OK Computer market if they stopped dressing like goofy rock dads (and put lotus at, like, track 9).

The thing about Monster is it's essentially a document of a band warming up for a tour, shaking off the rust and learning how to become a live band again rather than being in the FULL RAWK mode that its material demands. If they'd played a few live dates to bed the material in first before recording it, it may have turned out better. Instead, they went straight into the studio after not playing live for ages, and tried to capture their "live sound" without actually doing any playing in front of a live audience. But, could you have imagined R.E.M. doing a low-key tour post Out Of Time and Automatic?

I don't have much of a problem with Monster these days, but if you play it back-to-back with New Adventures In Hi-Fi, where they went "wrong" with Monster becomes glaringly obvious. Monster feels like a studio band trying to re-teach itself how to rock, whereas New Adventures In Hi-Fi is a document of a band in full rock mode.

pearl jam just keeps chugging along. man, who would have guessed THAT? their old vinyl is gold. you see any cheap old pearl jam vinyl in good shape, you grab it. doesn't matter what album it is.

sorry, off-topic. pearl jam are a mystery to me...

"Wrong thing wrong time" sort of meaning if it were the right thing people would have been championing it and quoting it in yearbooks, not selling it back to the store the next year. But I do get the point about its disposability being quite right for the time and so on.

I can totally see them doing a live album instead - one of those "consolidate the catalog for the new fans" deals. I guess you need an album to have something to sell at the shows, though. In another era they could have put out a single or two along the way, putting out the big album somewhere along the way (swap "King of Comedy" for "Bittersweet Me," etc.) and maybe had a really different career arc from that point. But Berry's health problems and general exhaustion were, presumably, inevitable regardless. I dunno.

Probably the most sure-fire commercial success, with limited used-bin factor but dubious long-term critical standing: R.E.M. Unplugged.

(xxposts - I think Turrican nails it here)

have you heard PJ's new ballad, scott? it sounds like the early '90s, but early '90s vh1. like marc cohn. it's amazing.

man that was a really badly-written post of mine, sorry

The idea of Vedder covering "Walking in Memphis" is eerily plausible. WHAAALKHIN IN MEMPHEEEEEY

i can remember that the months leading to up in athens there was very weird interest and speculation in town (and r.e.m. weren't 'cool' in athens for as long as i'd been aware of them though at the same time even if you faux dismissed them or whatever you somehow knew every song on every album well enough to have detailed thoughts on them within a week of release)(pylon were the cool band), not only had bill berry left but jefferson holt was gone also (under cloudy circumstances to say the least) and the last album had been the first one they'd released that wasn't in any way as big a hit or bigger as the one before it (monster gets treated as a joke now but at the time it did very very well on radio, performed as well as yr usual rem album in critics polls, and was the album their biggest tour supported), and for reasons that didn't seem obvious either ('ebow' as first single didn't help but 'difficult' credibility demonstration first singles hadn't hurt achtung baby or vitalogy). there had been mumurings (eh?) of 'synths' from the rem camp as well, rumors of 'elton john meets suicide'. when it came out the local alt-weekly ran multiple reviews, one of which was ambivalent but hardly a slam and the next day bertis downs called up to complain about it - they were definitely nervous. among ppl i knew there was this kind of shocking disappointment though it sounds better to me now (not enough to be one of those 'up is one of there best albums' weirdos but 80% of it is salvageable at worst). then up kinda flopped (or at least flopped relative to monster and automatic and oot and green and document, it performed a hell of a lot better than any album after it did) but 'the great beyond' was a hit and sounded great, they'd found their footing maybe, and they sounded good on the tour and at two of the shows they had neutral milk hotel and elf power open so everybody loved them. when 'imitation of life' first came out ppl were ecstatic - now HERE was a hit - and alot of ppl thought reveal sounded good, better than up that's for sure, and definitely some hits there, i can remember several ppl thinking 'i'll take the rain' would obv be a big hit but i'd tell them i thought the moment had passed, radio was different, and 'i'll take the rain' sucked anyway. i wasn't even aware of around the sun coming out until i saw it in a starbucks that first month or whatever it was out - no presence on local radio, did not come up in conversation. by the time accelerate came out the only ppl i could have casual conversations about rem w/ were in their 30s, if they were in their 20s and gave a fuck about rem they were specifically big rem fans. at karaoke the only ppl who sang rem were old fuckers like myself, couldn't say this about the pixies, couldn't say this about the smiths, couldn't say this about b-52s. the night they broke up the bar i do (and casino used to do) karaoke at had a rem themed karaoke night last minute, i was busy to my everlasting regret but a small group of regulars were there but only knew one rem song so they just sang it over and over. mills was there (he's often there, to casino's everlasting regret) and apparently he sang it w/ them, once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKqLl_ZEEY

rem managed to court and not court success for over a decade - always saying they wouldn't care if it ended tomorrow. When it DID fade, and they missed their chance to go out gracefully with Berry, it must have been a weird time to be wearing sunglasses and a nudie suit.

"R.E.M. Unplugged."

bingo! totally. would have been a brilliant idea. they would have sold millions, they could have done select tour dates with electric/acoustic sets. then come back with another album in a year or two after that that was more "ready" and better prepared. and i think things would have been different.

it's weird that their peak commercial period had this sound that was considered 'untourable', specifically going in the direction cuz of the need to tour, when now it doesn't seem 'untourable' at all - lumineers, mcmurphy and sons, arcade fire to an extent all tour extensively w/ something around that sound.

balls, somewhere else you've posted about the release day of "Reveal" at Wuxtry - I'd like to find that post. Despite my vicious and wholly justified personal grudges, I find it really sweet that on the night REM broke up, Mike Mills was just hanging out at the --- Bar in Athens and singing "Stand" with a bunch of twentysomethings...

As for the idea that only the oldsters sang REM, I can only remind you which of the two of us provided the karaoke DJ with "Trout" as well as "Binky the Doormat" etc. etc.

Wait, they did an unplugged, didn't they? Or was it just tv/no record release?

there's a song or two on their Out of Time-era VHS but yeah no record relase