REM: Classic or dud?

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.

Taking the craft songwriting into your forties and beyond is more of a rarified terrain, isn't it? Being in my forties now myself, I appreciate R.E.M.'s efforts at treading into this territory.

it's weird that it was this 'gotta get hep' career move (plus i think an actual attempt at doing something interesting by mellencamp)(here's where i part w/ ilm and stand beside bob guccione jr in saying i greatly prefer john mellencamp to say tom petty), this attempt at getting some relevance, staying on the charts, and instead it kinda represented the end of the line for what had been a pretty successful hit-making string of years (if not as successful as say 82-87).

man i cannot believe i'm only half way through reveal

it's aggressively not bad (esp now that I'm not having the reactionary offense to "Up II: The Multitrackening" I did in '01) but dear god...no more loops...and then "Imitation of Life" shows up just to say they could make 'em peppy if they wanted to...

'imitation of life' is like 'breakfast can wait', where the act is finally writing that song they could write in their sleep and showing yeah they can still write it but maybe not as well as you might've expected. what i'm saying is it's no 'mixed emotions'.

For a long time REM wouldn't even release a "real" video; moving from that point to Green was a big change, there was definitely a backlash at that point

Up was valiant and much better than I expected it to be but in some ways not the same band anymore

hat i'm saying is it's no 'mixed emotions'.

it doesn't grab the world by the scruff of the neck

watching the 'mixed emotions' video to confirm that yes, he does wear blue sweatpants in it and i am apparently now at the age where mick jagger in the 'mixed emotions' video doesn't look that old to me. thank god for bill wyman.

It celebrates something, though. (And it was awfully good live.) Collapse Into Now is like "Imitation of Life" as a whole album.

re: looking old, metallica is older today than the stones were on steel wheels

god the stones were so great, best rock n roll band of all time. top five music anything for me, i tell ppl this, that i might have bach and miles and mozart and maybe james brown or dylan ahead of them, maybe schubert, but that is it and they look at me like 'really?' and then i ask them who their pinnacle is and it's like 'joy division' or something, give me a fucking break.

if we'd been in our thirties in 1989 how many Steel Wheels vs Oh Mercy polls would have cluttered ILM

ha freedom excluded for obv it would win reasons

fewer! It's not like we make our generation's fogeys battle on here nearly as often.

gen x man, we've seen too much to do that shit, children of divorce, etc

get off the fence now
it's creasin your butt

I mean, I don't see no Lightning Bolt vs Hesitation Marks thread.

button yo lips.

aaaand I just got to Q-Tip

i like that he shows up at a point in Around the Sun where someone could really miss '91 REM and then it's all "be careful what you wish for"

i saw stones in philly on steel wheels tour and they were awesome. i felt like i was 10 years old watching them. i was so impressed. they had a gazillion people in the palm of their hand.

i've known so so many OLD stones fans that have told me the best stones show they ever saw was steel wheels or voodoo lounge. whether it's a case of the band being cleaned up and together or the fan being cleaned up and together i don't know.

wonder what a michael/keef album would sound like

In college the kids with cars and money went off campus and came back wearing Steel Wheels '89 tour t-shirts.

wonder what a Mick Jagger/Automatic Baby would sound like.

I copied Flashpoint in the late nineties from a friend and it's damn tight, even the new song about how the first Gulf War pissed Mick off.

re choosing to do Monster: I remember after OOT many interviews with the band where they insisted the next record would be a back to basics four track recording, and then they did Automatic instead. and then the same party line in interviews after that. and then Monster. which wasn't back to basics! later figured out that was Berry talking, figured sick or not he wanted to get out by then.

Funnily, an actual back-to-basics REM record would have been gangbusters in the world of Hootie, etc. They paved the way for this hugely successful sound, then turned away from it really just as it was peaking, in order to have huge success with a related but rather different sound on the mandolin/strings albums. Obviously ''Stand'' etc were successful but an album like Lifes Rich Pageant, or a slightly glossier Reckoning, would have sold millions in 1993-95 IMO.

Circa "Steel Wheels" so many of the sixties / oldies crowd were doing the state fair circuit ... at least the Stones were still a working rock and roll band, even if you didn't care for the more recent albums!

i just had pretty much NO expectations (get it?) when i saw stones on that tour. some people i knew were going and had an extra ticket and i thought what the heck it will be something different to do anyway. hadn't been to a mega-show in years. that's why i was so shocked to have my hands in the air the whole night just screaming for stones. they worked 100,000 people like it was nothing. you'd think it would be impossible to connect like that with a crowd that big but they made it look really easy. a seriously professional party machine. they could make anyone a believer. i'm pretty sure springsteen could do the same. i always loved that greg tate live springsteen review where he sees the power of bruce first-hand. bruce obviously another dude who is just pro to the bone. in a good way. and r.e.m. definitely had that thing you need to have too to get a crowd to follow your every move. they were good at it. on a smaller level. never saw them in some football arena.

Track from the upcoming Buck LP here, with Patterson Hood from Drive-By-Truckers:

http://www.spin.com/articles/rem-peter-buck-second-solo-album-roswell-stream/

an album like Lifes Rich Pageant, or a slightly glossier Reckoning, would have sold millions in 1993-95 IMO

"Bittersweet Me" from New Adventures successfully recaptured that Reckoning/Pageant sound, in my opinion. Should have been the lead single instead of "E-Bow The Letter."

Bittersweet Me is my favourite song on the album and is ostensibly the obvious go to song for a single but as a first single it lacks the fanfare of Kenneth. Maybe Wake Up Bomb although I don't think it's a better song.

yeah i don't think there's any perfect lead single choice for that album that would've dramatically improved its reception, beyond the undeniable truth that anything would've worked better than "E-Bow"