REM: Classic or dud?

Loving this set.

Turns out that 40 Watt set had been previously released--it showed up 3 tracks at a time across 4 Monster CD singles.

Speaking of that set...there's now official video, via the band's own YT channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52sMbXI22gg

Ah, gather this was the Facebook stream. But anyway, here it is.

awesome. great sound!

always loved stipe's stage presence

a bunch of my friends were there, if I'd have gone to UGA with the rest of them I'd have been there too. a few hung out with the band after the show too, got to meet Mike Mills' parents.

i really like the version of "drive"

I don't. It's like, let's do "Drive" minus the brooding. What's left? Kinda nothing

It has an increased urgency and simplicity I really like.

it has a different, more uneasy atmosphere than the studio vers. Not saying it's better or anything

It's definitely weird. I've actually never not liked the live version (which afaik always sounded like this) til this time, so maybe I'm just lounging to hear the original

Longing. Or lounging

;_;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=KVT0S0j7F9Y

every streetlight reveals a picture in reverse

It gives me joy to know that Mike Mills tried to beat up an audience member at a club in my city and the band did a 21-song triple encore, with 17 covers (including "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" and "Sweet Home Alabama"): https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/rem/1985/barrymores-music-hall-ottawa-on-canada-7bd6fac8.html

Seeing this thread pop up this morning inspired me to put on "Automatic for the People." It really goes to show what a special band this was that their two most eclectic albums that they also decided not to tour behind turned out to be their two biggest successes.

I've been going back to Fables and Murmur in the last few days.

The Bingo Hand Job show finally got an official release for Record Store Day but I haven't heard it yet.

I'm tempted to go with Murmur in the 1983 poll but I haven't heard it in so long. I'll rectify that later today.

i never understood what people heard in murmur. the other album besides monster i did not get all was reckoning. so dull and unsubtle.

I like how Murmur murmurs.

Hm, those early records still evoke something unique for me. You don't like "So. Central Rain"? xp

I can't imagine not liking Radio Free Europe

I am actually that strange person, an REM fan who likes the IRS records a hundred times more than Automatic but who doesn't really care for "So. Central Rain" (but for whom Radio Free Europe is a monumental classic, to be clear)

So Central Rain is great but so are Harborcoat (which won the best REM song of all time in the ILM poll, IIRC) and Rockville. The whole of Reckoning in fact.

the one that doesn’t float my boat like it should is Fables but it’s a deep catalog, everyone’s gonna have one of those.

sometimes the bassline in "So. Central Rain" and in particular those four steps b4 the verse are my favoroite thing in the catalog

"so. central rain" is probably the one song from reckoning i would save. harborcoat is ok, i kind of like the bouncing rhythm. rockville isn't bad neither. maybe i should give reckoning another chance i haven't listened to it for more than 20 years.

"Pretty Persuasion"!

first 4 tracks are v classic imo

When did 10,000 Maniacs (or maybe Natalie solo?) cover "Rockville"? Heard it on NPR Mixtape a couple weeks ago.

made me think of PAVEMENT song:

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is REM,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
R - E - M
Flashback to 1983,
Chronic Town was their first EP
Later on came Reckoning
Finster's art, and titles to match:
South Central Rain, Don't Go Back To Rockville,
Harbourcoat, Pretty Persuasion,
You were born to be a camera,
Time After Time was my least favourite song,
Time After Time was my least favourite song.
The singer, he had long hair
And the drummer he knew restrait.
And the bass man he had all the right moves
And the guitar player was no saint.

xp was on the "Candy Everybody Wants" single, i think

“Letter Never Sent”!

Reckoning is the best

XP Yup. Paired w/their Morrissey cover too.

abjectly insane opinions in this revive

During one mid-’80s tour, Stipe started sporting bleach-blonde hair, inspired not by fashion trends but a condiment. According to Edwards, Stipe spotted a bowl of mustard backstage one night and said, “Doesn’t it make you want to stick your head in it?” Edwards said no, but Stipe did it anyway, emerging on stage with a new, rather pungent look. For a few weeks, Stipe wore a different kind of mustard on his head every night (“his favorite was French’s,” says Edwards) until finally taking the easier route and dyeing his hair.

classic

i remember this anecdote from the old Tony Fletcher bio

Hadn't read about the new biography. Interesting about Berry.
There's an Addicted To Noise interview online where he is pretty upfront that he felt the band had gotten too big.

Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years is pretty amazing. Lurie did a ton of research, found and interviewed a lot of people who haven’t gone on the record before, and as far as I can tell from my own experiences 1979-83 gets all the details right. As a biography of the band, it’s definitive. In many ways it’s more informative as a history of the early Athens scene than Party Out of Bounds and Athens, GA Inside Out.

The first show at the old church, the opening scene in most R.EM. origin stories, doesn’t occur until page 73. Before that Lurie explains in detail how each of the band members arrived in Athens, along the way answering questions raised waaaaaay upthread about Stipe’s early bands in St. Louis. He’s equally methodical through 1984 or so, speeds up a bit after Reckoning, and ends the book just as they’re signing their first Warner Bros. contract in 1987.

This is a timely piece of work, not necessarily because anyone wants to read about R.E.M. in 2019 but because the people who can tell this story won’t be around forever. (I might as well add this here: Jeff Walls, of Guadalcanal Diary and the Woggles, one of Lurie’s interviewees, is in critical condition and needs help: https://www.gofundme.com/jeff-walls-medical-fund.)

That sounds great, I definitely want to read it.

Yeah, I'm not a big R.E.M. fan at all, but if it comes anywhere near Party Out of Bounds I'll definitely check it out. Love that book so much.

there's an entertaining discussion of the theory that the name of the band might come from Ralph Eugene Meatyard, whose photography Stipe studied and whose aesthetic is suggestive of r.e.magery

Yeah, I can't wait to read this, although my ideal R.E.M. book would be where the band go through each song from beginning to end and detail inspirations, who wrote what, studio experiences, what some of the more cryptic lyrics mean etc.

This band meant so much to me that I've been reluctant to pick up any books about them but I totally recommend the Lurie book. It took me back to times related to the band (discovered them between Reckoning and Fables) and not (the description of Athens circa ~1980 reminded me of early 90s Champaign). Didn't much appreciate his theorizing on the meaning of songs on/after Fables, but so much of the book is lovingly researched and thoughtful. I was kind of sad to finish it.

Begin the Begin: R.E.M.’s Early Years is pretty amazing. Lurie did a ton of research, found and interviewed a lot of people who haven’t gone on the record before, and as far as I can tell from my own experiences 1979-83 gets all the details right. As a biography of the band, it’s definitive. In many ways it’s more informative as a history of the early Athens scene than Party Out of Bounds and Athens, GA Inside Out.

I'm reading Begin the Begin and wholly enjoying it so far. I'm at the part where R.E.M. have opened for XTC and signed with I.R.S. instead of RCA. It's acronym pandemonium.

R.E.M. and XTC played at the B&L iirc

https://flagpole.com/music/music-features/2018/04/18/random-athens-memories-remember-when-xtc-and-r-e-m-shared-a-bill

Gonna have to read that book. I'm always intrigued to learn more about all the early '80s Athens stuff that I was living right in the midst of and had no idea was happening because I was four.

the drinking age in Georgia was 18 then so you could probably have gotten into the clubs with a fake ID

can't believe four-year-old lunch was such a square smdh