REM: Classic or dud?

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"

Was surprised listening to Around the Sun again how much it still sounds like New Adventures period. "Electron Blue" and "The Outsiders" (in somewhat different arrangements, I guess) wouldn't be out of place on that album.

I like the return to more rock classicism like the garage psych of "Wanderlust" and then whatever "Mr. Richards" is on Accelerate.

Ha, I'm listening to it now and it's kind of "What's the Frequency, Kenneth," isn't it?

A little early 1981 for ya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyUvmu1IIss

so, has anyone listened to this deluxe unplugged they just released? i didn't even know they did a second unplugged in 2001

haven't heard but I'll certainly get it; the 1991 is among my very favorite things they did. the version of "Disturbance at the Heron House" is the best version of it.

me too. apparently there are six (!) previously unreleased songs from the 1991 set

http://theseconddisc.com/2014/03/17/r-e-m-unplugged-set-to-complicate-your-life-on-record-store-day/

really curious if the second set can illuminate some of the post-berry songs they way the first one did stuff like "radio song"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/rem-unplugged-ive-been-high_n_5190602.html

Yes. I remembered this one was good live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ46Y6xt2pU

that's awesome. i forget how good they still were live post-berry. the unplugged "imitation of life" is a revelation. all that studio glop didn't do the underlying song any favors

very early r.e.m. tapes.

i like.

oh man I love that

this bootleg helps explain why Chronic Town and especially Murmur came as surprises to most of their local audience

(stands up and leans on walker)

40 Watt Mark 2, The Teeveez in support ... iirc it was about 100 degrees in the room and the loft floor was flexing up and down underfoot through the whole set

heyyy i wrote that early REM thing. wait, you were really there Brad C.? that is pretty amazing.

that's a good article, tyler. i love the version of baby i, which is so raw and energetic that it threatens to totally go off the rails.

Yeah Tyler, that was a cool piece. I had never heard anything this early from REM I don't think, and it is a lot of fun.

no surprise to see the byline on that, tylerw, you always bring the hightone

I think the May 30 show was the second time I saw them; the first was when they opened for the Brains on campus a couple of weeks earlier

this is representative of how they sounded well into 1981, when their setlist started to include more of the material that appeared on the first two IRS records

They definitely sound a bit like Wire at times in this, which isn't that surprising, but yeah really punchy and tight at times. Would have been a fun show I am sure.

radical, brad, you have eternal bragging rights.
yeah this stuff is so much fun - you can imagine them putting out a record of some of this early stuff in 1981 or thereabouts and having a totally different career.
another good early thing, from a week after the 40 Watt show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F2G7L6vLNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JTNM5aRl4k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58ceTXVcoMI