REM: Classic or dud?

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

I'll play Monster and Hi-Fi tonight but they certainly didn't sound then and now -- to me -- like "This album failed, while this album did it RIGHT." Hi-Fi then (and a couple years ago) sounded like an excellent grab bag -- "routine" even, as Christgau acknowledged.

Maybe they shoulda released Hi-Fi as a B-side comp: a Louder Than Wake-Up Bombs kinda thing

more like DUM

xxxxxxpost:

Not to mention they ended up playing many songs from Out Of Time and Automatic For The People live on subsequent tours anyway!

"untourable" an interesting idea - was it so much that you "couldn't tour" on that kind of sound, or just that they were ready to ROCK and go ROCK and be a ROCK BAND on a ROCK TOUR?

Somehow it reminds me in this weird way of the Beach Boys realizing they couldn't tour on their increasingly studio-heavy material and that people would have laughed at them anyway. Wonder if at some level Pete Buck's rockin' heart couldn't imagine going onstage, in a decade where every other magazine cover was some ALTERNATIVE ROCK BAND, ROCKING EVERYBODY, ON STAGE. I mean, their tour hiatus more or less exactly corresponds to alt-rock, there had to be some element of "goddamn it, this triumph should be ours, I'm sure as shit not going on stage with this goddamned mandolin."

NAIHF is great - one or two songs too long but very rich, textured, and subtle: a passable sequel to Automatic though different in so many ways (and missing a "Man on the Moon" perhaps).

er, again, should have edited that second paragraph down a bit, the one sentence doesn't finish and the following tries to do it over again. I'm gonna go hop on the subway now.

and yeah 'should've broken up w/ new adventures' is obv cw but still correct enough (depending on how you feel about 'legacy' etc), they spent the first half of their career as this model organism showing how to navigate every trap and be cool and have integrity and maintain some aura and then their last half doing the opposite in many cases. i can remember reading some interview w/ john mellencamp whenever he made his trip-hop album asking him about rem and him saying he was curious to see what they did when they weren't cool anymore, when their relevance had faded, when they were john mellencamp making a trip-hop album basically, and they never really seemed to come up w/ a good answer - their post-berry albums didn't work as hit albums obv (and not in any case where you can really blame the marketplace), they didn't really work as weird later experiments that were fiascos at the time but years later watch out, and they didn't work as refinements or maturations of what they'd done before. i'm ok i guess w/ up and reveal and accelerate and collapse into now but i thought for the longest time that if i pared up and reveal down to a single album (and throw in 'the great beyond' obv) i'd come up w/ something that could stand beside document at least and when i actually did it it wasn't really the case (never tried w/ accelerate and collapse). they ran out of ideas, they ran out of songs. it happens.

"John Mellencamp going trip-hop" is Reveal tbh

don't forget the Mellencamp album with Chuck D and Babyface

now on Reveal and while time has revealed the songwriting ain't so bad after all, i still think this needs a few more sound effects and synth overdubs

like maybe an actual cow mooing and an accordion loop here and there

and a producer reigning in those leeeenngtthhhhs

what are you talking about. It was 2001, and after Up everyone was like "I have a fever, and the only cure is MORE OVERDUBS"

"The Lifting" is an excellent opening, but it doesn't....lift? The arrangement restrains it.

they didn't really work as weird later experiments that were fiascos at the time but years later watch out, and they didn't work as refinements or maturations of what they'd done before.

Yeah, I'd argue that there's maturation there.

I'll play Monster and Hi-Fi tonight but they certainly didn't sound then and now -- to me -- like "This album failed, while this album did it RIGHT." Hi-Fi then (and a couple years ago) sounded like an excellent grab bag -- "routine" even, as Christgau acknowledged.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 11, 2013 12:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I see it from the recording perspective of "capturing performances", really. To me, a "traditional rock record" (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) of the type that Monster was trying to be, depends as much on the performance aspect of the band as well as the songs. A live band that has been playing together night after night after night and is familiar with the material will undoubtedly do a better take/less self-conscious performance than a band that hasn't played together in that configuration for a while, is still writing the material and hasn't road tested the material first. You can hear on New Adventures In Hi-Fi that the performances all sound very natural and have an energy to them, no doubt because their heads are in that space and because they have an audience to feed off. Monster has much less energy to it and has this real unnatural feel to it.

I don't want to make a Beatles comparison here, but it's the only one that I find fitting: it's the difference between the ensemble playing on something like Rubber Soul (where the band had been used to playing together as an ensemble unit for a while) and what they attempted to do with Let It Be, which was make a back-to-basics 'live' rock record of the type they used to make before they became a "studio" band. I think that the Get Back/Let It Be material would have also been improved a thousandfold if they'd road-tested the material first, because the material depended on that type of performance and they were so unused to being a 'live' band at that point. However, it's pretty well-known what happened there: it ended up being a salvage job because the band broke up and the recordings captured display a really fucking rusty band.

i think coming out of the 80s the idea that you could play an arena just jammin on a mandolin would've seemed a stretch, consider how BIG they went w/ their arena tours before and after that period. of course it wasn't so 'untourable' that ppl didn't find it odd they didn't tour, cf the rumors they didn't tour cuz stipe had aids. i do wonder if they just opt out of touring and if buck doesn't get divorced and move out of town how things go. maybe not that different - radio still changes, stipe's still an out gay man, there's still enough rem knockoffs clogging up altradio to make the original not seem like such a good idea, ppl still get tired of these earnest bores, backlash happens regardless. i mean if i'm tracing to when the rem backlash goes mainstream (it had existed in indie circles for AWHILE obv) it's denis leary talking about 'shiny happy ppl' and stipe and those t-shirts at the vmas.

there's some maturation there, but it's not the leap that say murmur->automatic is

Maturation not like Automatic for the People taken to some other level in the vein of like classical music. But thematic maturation - I think so.

don't get all the hate for Monster, it's one of my favourite REM albums. I find Out of Time a struggle to get through, but Automatic is excellent.

I have a copy of New Adventures on CD, so I must have listened to it a couple of times, but for the life of me I cannot recall it at all. Worth a listen?

um

haven't actually heard the mellencamp trip-hop album (hello spotify) but would not be shocked if it's much much better than reveal

while everyone tonight has fought about which version of REM he wants to place in post-nineties alt-rock history, we all like Hi-Fi to varying degrees.

speaking of Mellencamp, he scored HIS last top forty hit in '96 from that trip-hop Junior Vasquez album.