REM: Classic or dud?

One of the big selling points pushed on the copy for the DVD edition of Velvet Goldmine is that the film was "Produced By Michael Stipe!".

I think REM basically played the game right. They were indie weirdoes from the start and that's what they sort of are now, like a Feelies that convinced millions of people to buy their records. We're talking about a band that didn't even bother touring behind its two biggest records. Possibly their two weirdest, most eccentric records, at that. They always seemed happy keeping it low key, playing clubs, going to house parties/shows in Athens, etc. Pretty private and insular. The nicest thing about them fading back into the ether is their albums have remained vital, viable things ripe for rediscovery.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, February 3, 2016 9:37 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I basically dig this, but I do think they or their management have made some moves that - while no doubt smart business-wise and who could knock them for it? - do probably in an incidental way diminish this sense of them as "fading back into the ether." I mean they are sort of too big, especially outside the US, to have ever become one of those spooky "Were they really here, or was it just a dream? Some say their songs still haunt this kudzu-covered train trestle" sort of band. They show up on this best-selling music artists of all time Wiki entry ranked in between Shania Twain and Van Halen for crying out loud. More to the point, since they started slipping in their critical and commercial acclaim there's been kind of a lot of other product that suggests a bit of a "cash in on the other stuff" thinking: not counting digital-download-only, since 2003 there's been three different best-of albums, two best-of music video DVDs, a box set of other TV appearances, and three live DVDs.

None of those are things that I hold against them - just saying that they make them feel, I dunno, more slick and packaged, like any other band really. Like... I dunno. My dad gave me the Perfect Square live DVD back when it came out, and I remember watching it and basically not minding the performances but being struck by how big and expensive it all seemed. Lotta lighting work, lotta cameras. That just means, I guess, "they reemained an arena rock band long, long after the records that really made their reputation" which is fine... just not quite the same as an apparition fading back into obscurity. And I do wonder if that bigness will change the ways in which they could be rediscovered and reclaimed. Always interesting to see in that kind of process which records/aspects of the work become canonized and which fall away. For all we know Around the Sun will become some kind of touchstone for a different group of listeners, I dunno!

going back to an earlier point, the myth abt bill berry's contributions is one of the most fascinating random rock trivia things to me. driver 8 is a fabulous song and i love the idea of a drummer writing it quasi-anonymously

"Don't Go Back to Rockville" is pretty much all Berry too, right?

All mills

before they did a GREATEST HITS! tour without their original drummer.

I think I saw them on this tour. I mean, they did tour when a greatest hits album came out, but it wasn't a GREATEST HITS! show. It was a normal R.E.M. show, I think. They were like three or four years in between albums during that time and I don't know why the tour should be criticized.

They were great with Reiflin anyway. I like their last period more than the mid-to-late '90s period, probably Collapse Into Now best. So many good post-Berry singles - "The Great Beyond," "Imitation of Life," "Leaving New York," "Aftermath," "Supernatural Superserious," and probably all the singles from the last album, which rules.

We've talked about this I think, but from the start Berry contributed all sorts of stuff. Guitar, vocals, drums, piano, songwriting. Most importantly, he was the buffer tie-breaker between principal songwriters Mills and Buck, a vital balance to the band.

And yeah, live with Rieflin they were great. Now Joey Waronker, he was a little hacky.

I only caught them live once, with Waronker. This was the first time they came over here in my country, and really the last time I was really interested in seeing them (they were touring Up). I was naturally excited about it and enjoyed the gig, but the consensus seems to be that it was really boring.

i listened to around the sun until i liked it, really helps if you think of it as a document of post-9/11 exhaustion

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson),

what a charming idea

idk that kind of is what it is

and explains its completely destroyed energy. around the sun was originally going to be what accelerate turned out as

When I think New York City, I think REM.

lol

Michael Stipe/Despite the hype/I still wanna suck/your big long pipe.

https://books.google.com/books?id=rOtx9nPM4ncC&pg=PA82&lpg=PA82&dq=michael+stipe+despite+the+hype&source=bl&ots=iHzhNdNZhU&sig=19IthTPTt46QyRW5FiHDsVThumo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQtvO7wd7KAhWLPT4KHe3JD8QQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=michael%20stipe%20despite%20the%20hype&f=false

When did people start stop liking REM?

Green?

^

ha, i've talked to people who say it was all down hill after chronic town

Ha! I do remember not liking Reckoning as much as Murmur. I stayed mostly interested until the switch from IRS to Warner, so yes Green.

i didn't pay that much attention after murmur until their john cougar mellencamp album which i really liked.

I was annoyed that they titled the album Green, since the Chicago band Green seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough at the time, and the confusion didn't help.

So Green put out a 7" called REM:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ee/Green_-_REM.jpg/220px-Green_-_REM.jpg

(Peter Buck later went on Chicago radio saying he'd been a Green fan, but that wasn't behind the title.)

that band is one of my favorite finds this year, I think i've played "curry your favor" 1,000 times

I stopped after New Adventures in Hi-Fi

But I had been tapping the brakes for a couple albums before that.

that band is one of my favorite finds this year, I think i've played "curry your favor" 1,000 times

― rip van wanko, Thursday, February 4, 2016 1:41 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the debut is surely one of the greatest ever. The next two albums (Elaine MacKenzie and White Soul) are nearly as great, and while subsequent albums don't always hit the mark, there's a few amazing things on each.

green = selling out to corporate cash. but who cares. they didn't record a dud till bill split. murmur - new adventures is an epic epic run. peel back the mountain, peel back sky. stomp gravity into the floor . . . time and distance are out place here

Which ones you don't like Reggie?

every one through new adventures had something immediately captivating on first listen. i 'tried' to like the final five but they never took. can't say why, just that nothing felt like 'oh man this is awesome' as i guess i'd come to expect

A couple of things...

It seems really clear now but, even though Stipe was always the spokesperson, I can't think of any other of the big bands that was less about the individuals and more about the band than R.E.M was.

I agree, but I think it was always clear that R.E.M. were about the "collective" rather than the individuals in the band and that they operated as democratically as they possibly could. I'm not sure that Stipe was "always the spokesperson", even if he was the frontman - in the early days it seemed to be mostly Buck that was the "mouthpiece" of the band in interviews etc., or Mills.

(wasn't most of Perfect Circle written by Berry?)

That's one, and "Driver 8" is another supposedly written completely by Berry.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, February 3, 2016 8:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Everybody Hurts', 'Strange Currencies', 'Leave', and 'Man On The Moon' all had major input from Berry, and I think 'Can't Get There From Here', too, although I'm not 100% on that one.

My obligatory contribution to talk of late REM: Up is amazing, my favourite by them.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, February 3, 2016 9:45 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like it, but I think it'd be an even stronger record if it were 3 or 4 tracks shorter. I tend to think albums that are slower-to-mid tempo tend to work better if they're shorter - you can only sustain that kind of mood for so long before it gets tiresome.

When did people start stop liking REM?

― Sam Weller, Thursday, February 4, 2016 4:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I got on board, as did many people in the UK, circa Out of Time/Automatic For The People - bought all the previous records, enjoyed them, and followed them up until Reveal, which didn't really do an awful lot for me at the time bar one or two highlights admittedly. I got back on board again with Accelerate, which may have only been a couple of albums after, but there was 7 years in between Reveal and Accelerate. I like Reveal more now than I did at the time, and appreciate more what they were attempting to go for - a really slick, summery record. Around The Sun continues to be the only R.E.M. album I out-and-out dislike.

green = selling out to corporate cash.

― reggie (qualmsley), Friday, February 5, 2016 1:51 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think signing to Warner Brothers changed R.E.M.'s approach to their music at all, and I think that if R.E.M. had stayed with IRS then they probably would have went in the direction of Green anyhow - half of the album sounds like an extension of Document and half of it was, at the time for them, new territory. If they really wanted to sell out, they could have attempted to write a whole album of 'The One I Love's, which of course they didn't. Green doesn't really strike me as being a typical, calculated "we're on a major label now and time to sell some rekkids" album.

I actually suspect the main reason that R.E.M. signed to Warner Bros. was because Warner Bros. were able to distribute their records better worldwide - and it obviously paid off, because in commercial terms here in the UK, those IRS-era records sold next to fuck all at the time.

I always assumed REM were firmly cemented in the "pantheon," at least as far as post-Beatles/Zep rock went. Surprised that some people here wouldn't put them up there, even if they did fall off near the end. To me, growing up in the 80s/early 90s in suburbia, they were ever-present on MTV and all my friends knew and liked them. But NONE of us ever owned or heard anything before "The One I Love." It's only when I got to college that I got the first records. Are they really not name-checked much these days? I can't believe it.

Yes, it does feel like R.E.M.'s stock is at an all-time low at the moment, but I can only really put that down to timing... from the years prior to them splitting up and up until recently, there doesn't seem to be much music around that seems to be directly influenced by R.E.M., and nor are there many new bands/artists out there proudly stating that they're an influence. I suspect it'll be another few years, once the dust settles, before R.E.M.'s stock begins to rise again and you have newer bands discovering or re-discovering their catalogue.

I can see why Up would try a lot of listeners patience, but I like the length (of course that wouldn't work if I didn't like all the songs). It's like a big long night of someone pacing around their room and working through things. With some lighter and funner moments.
I love long mood pieces like that. Lycia's Burning Circle And Then Dust is 2 hours of gothy contemplation, another one of my all-time favourites.

I doubt REM compromised their music at all. Stipe said he wouldn't even budge on cover art for anything. Wasn't that a big part of why a lot of indie bands liked them so much? But I think they probably felt an obligation to play certain songs.

the 2001 Unplugged set does a lot to reveal the first couple of albums after Berry

I don't think signing to Warner Brothers changed R.E.M.'s approach to their music at all, and I think that if R.E.M. had stayed with IRS then they probably would have went in the direction of Green anyhow - half of the album sounds like an extension of Document and half of it was, at the time for them, new territory. If they really wanted to sell out, they could have attempted to write a whole album of 'The One I Love's, which of course they didn't. Green doesn't really strike me as being a typical, calculated "we're on a major label now and time to sell some rekkids" album.

― The Dave Grohl of ILX (Turrican), Friday, February 5, 2016 7:42 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree that the Warners move itself didn't change their approach, but there were incremental changes/compromises along the way. Someone in their management/at I.R.S. might've said, "You know, if you guys just enunciate on your next record, and use Mellencamp's producer, we can get you into arenas." "Hm...welp, enunciating isn't a dealbreaker, and Scarecrow sounded good..." But as Mills himself pointed out (on either Behind The Music or The Seven Ages Of Rock), bigger halls necessitate broader gestures, and I think Green was a reflection of that. Sometimes it works ("Get Up," "Pop Song 89"), sometimes it very much doesn't ("Inside Out," "Orange Crush"). But that fleet, charging dynamic/tension that made their early-80s shows so thrilling was gone forever.

Oh but Orange Crush does work.

I think both of the latter work better than the two opening tracks. And I like those!

Huh. Orange Crush may be the first REM song I flat out hated.

I think "Orange Crush" is amazing. I seen them play twice on the Around The Sun tour and to be honest I didn't enjoy it much, probably a lot of my own fault for playing their stuff too much and catching all their tv appearances but "Orange Crush" was still thrilling. "Me In Honey" was a really pleasant surprise, the highlight.

The idea that Green, my least favorite in their canon before 1998, is a sellout album is bizarre!

it's been years since I've listened to Green but I remember Orange Crush being the highlight

one of my favourite things about a lot of songs on the first few albums was all the overlapping vocal lines, shame they abandoned that around Document or so

Yeah, 'Orange Crush' definitely works - it's one of my all-time favourites, that's for sure, and I don't think it's lost its impact for me even though I've listened to it hundreds upon hundreds of times at this point.

I've got no problem with "Green," at least no more than I have with "Out of Time" or even "Document." As almost always with late REM, I love a third, like a third, and don't like around a third.

"Turn You Inside Out" is my favorite song on Green imo, has been so since 1988. tbh I like Green more than all the IRS albums save the first two.

yeah Green is great -- funny to think that "Stand" is the first REM i ever heard.

(that said, i can totally understand why a Murmur fan in 1989 would not be into the album)

yeah the first REM I heard was "The One I Love" but Green was the first REM album I got, on cassette for Christmas 1988.

I'll admit that the transition from "Turn You Inside Out" to "Hairshirt" could have been handled better (maybe by sticking "Hairshirt" on a b-side instead).

Orange Crush was a really quite intense highlight of the Green Tour show that I saw.

Green was the moment when they went full-on MTV, it felt like a big change of direction after the IRS records

yeah on Tourfilm "Orange Crush" rips, "be all that you can be... bababababbababababa", more menace than the album take