TS: R.E.M.'s "Life's Rich Pageant" vs "Document"

Put a gun to my head and demand I choose one over the other, I'd probably go with LRP. That being said, Document heads into some interesting sonic territory on side two, once you pass "The One I Love." I'm thinking of "Fireplace," "Lightning Hopkins" and "Oddfellows 151" in particular. The band cooked up some new studio ideas with percussion and guitar for those, leading to a new style for them, kind of a feeback laden, Mission of Burma/Gang of Four-ish style, with maybe even some Sonic Youth moves dropped in (I'm pretty sure Peter Buck was name dropping SY in the press by 1987).

But, recently a friend gave me a dvd of an rem concert on some german show (the same show that wire dvd is from) and it was in support of fables and they played hyena and fall on me (with improvised verses), so they definitely wrote those themselves.

whoa! can anyone else substantiate this?

It's tough.

it was a secret supposedly to the public, but in athens people were like "oh yeah that guy just lives off of rem royalties because he wrote most of lifes rich pageant". and these were mutual friends saying this. i never knew him well enough to hear it from his mouth, but that's what his friends said. i remember thinking at the time it was weird that someone could just live off of songwriting royalties but now that i know more about bizzzzzzzzzzz it makes sense.

i had a friend who went to iu at the time, she told a funny story about stipe showing up at hoosier parties.

interesting. i wonder if that's all it was then.

No, because Fables was so damn slow and boring. It was good that they started rocking again.

LRP, no contest. I remember thinking at the time that, if not as mumbly as Murmur-but how could it be?- it was a bigger and better return to form.

LRP for me. Begin The Begin and These Days make politically conscious arena rock sound like a good idea. Cuyahoga was magnificent when they played it on the Up tour. I Believe is ace and Fall On Me possibly my fave REM song. The goofy stuff is great too. Anyone who doesn't like Superman is a humourless curmudgeon. I remember getting the reissue of Horses with the My Generation cover and had one of those euraka moments with the "I'm so young, I'm so goddam young" bit.

Document's a good album, but the production dates it. Still, some interesting G04 moves on there, as mentioned xpost. I'm a bit bored with The One I Love to be honest, but End Of The World is great fun (again, what sort of humourless curmudgeon do you have to be to hate this?).

LRP has infinitely better cover art too. Bill Berry's monobrow in a lo-fi collage!

So was I, for a long time, until I first listened to the live acoustic version, which was the b-side of the ITEOTWAWKI single. (You can find it on one of the "IRS Vintage Years" reissues as a bonus track - that's where I heard it). It's not radically different, but it has a strong folk-country sound which gives the song a new flavor. In a couple of interviews I've read over the years, Peter Buck as described the song as an Appalachian folk ballad, or something similar. I had no idea what he meant until I heard the b-side version.

Document had "King of Birds" and a really grand set of acoustic B-sides, but not near the record that LRP is.

Nonetheless...

YOU HAVE BEEN VINDICATED

LET'S BEGIN AGAIN

birdie in the hand

As for Docment...the second side is pretty damn weak. Only "Finest Worksong" and "Exhuming McCarthy" on the A rock/swing as much as, say, "Just A Touch."

Oh, that's too harsh. I like Side Two of Document. Fireplace and King Of Birds especially have a weird, hypnotic vibe. And, from Side One, Welcome To The Occupation, Exhuming McCarthy, and Disturbance At The Heron House are pretty powerful political screeds, for a rock band.

Worst thing about Document to me is that it's the first R.E.M. disc that really abandons their Southern Gothic rock sound. That sound wasn't too prominent on Life's Rich Pageant, but it's there. Frankly, to the extent that even small elements of that sound make it onto Document, they do so on Side Two (which is probably why it's the side I prefer on the disc).

I've embarrassed myself elsewhere on ILM repping for side 2 of Document and won't reprise that here. But I'll take side 2 over side 1 of it, and even over side 2 of LRP. The songs on side 2 of Document are still so mysterious to me, and I think their lack of straightforwardness confounds the standard account that REM was "selling out" at that time. Those songs are just as murky as those on Murmur.

billboard's preview of the new album mentions '...pageant' as a reference point. it's less than 35 minutes long too!

I've been let down by those comparisons before ("New Adventures in Hi-Fi is a throwback to the early R.E.M. sound!"). I ain't hopeful.

(And mind you, I like New Adventures a lot, but there's no comparison to their early stuff. . . .).

shorter, faster and louder is all well and good, but I dunno if recent songs would suddenly become great if they were shorter faster and louder.

i have both these albums on one CD-R now! I used to own them on cassette. Still probably would go with Document.

The second side of Document really feels "of a piece" to me in a way that no other sections of these records do (unless you count "Begin the Begin" and "These Days" as a section.)

"The insurgency began and we missed it" EERILY PROPHETIC SHOCKAH.

Have any of the songs from the new record been heard, e.g. live or leaked?

I think one is streaming on R.E.M.'s Home Page.

there was some song that someone put the youtube link on ilx it had a riff worthy of side two of New Adventures and Michael was standing sideways, reading the lyrics from a laptop. I stopped the video when I saw him visibly scrolling down.

Does he have a memory disorder? Is there a reason he's incapable of memorizing songs he's written?

He's distracted.

I began listening to live versions of a couple of the new songs on Hype Machine. Couldn't even get through them. Again, I'm not hopeful for the new disc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRVxOmu87MA

THERE it is, that desperate thing.

It's been a bad decade, please don't take a youtube.