The R.E.M. Thread (For the People)

[Fourthisto]

You could make the case that its not as archetypal "R.E.M." as those other records, and that's valid.

This is what I usually say to people who slam Monster, which I love to death. It doesn't fit the cookie cutter... but Up to me just seems lazy, forced.

I just remember buying it the day it came out and being almost pissed off about it. The only reason it's not in last place is because of "At My Most Beautiful", which is delicious pimp juice to my sappy soul.

But I think this might be where time would be on an album's side, so I'll sit down and give it a listen for probably the first time in a decade tonight, just to give it a fair shake.

Out of Time gets jumped a few spots in my rankings for having the band's biggest song (the album's second track) as well as its best song (the album's second to last track).

Losing My Religion, Shiny Happy People and Radio Song absolutely RUIN that album for me.

[Fourthisto]

Saw them in Omaha on the Green tour and my whole world changed in one night. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians opened the show which is the reason you just felt a tinge of jealousy.

Jesus! Way more than a tinge, actually!

[HandBanana]

Fourthisto, even tho we disagree our disagreement is actually a really potent testament to how great this band was.

They had so many distinct styles and eras that we could have a dozen of us all arguing in favor of totally distinct eras and they could all be right.

[Miroir Noir]

Thanks for sharing, HB. Your comments reminded me of this excellent piece that Stephen M. Deusner wrote in Pitchfork several years ago -- especially the parts where he writes about staring at that "R" in the tracklist of Green and inverting the sleeve artwork for Out of Time.

Out of curiosity and largely off-topic, what did you think of Peter Saville's New Order work when you first encountered it?

[HandBanana]

Saville took a bit longer to get in to since I was coming from the "If I cant see it, how do I know its art?" point of view.
In my story above I was like 13 or 14, so minimalism wasnt really ripe for me yet. I was more floored by (my hero) Vaughn Oliver's Doolittle sleeve that year (which I still maintain is the single best full album design in the history of music)

However eventually I came around to Saville and his work on Suede's Coming Up is my inspirational "go to" when Im trying to get myself into a headspace to come up with something blindingly fresh and new, not that it has ever worked.

[HandBanana]

And the shiny "4" on the Green sleeve is infinitely awesome

[Fourthisto]

Fourthisto, even tho we disagree our disagreement is actually a really potent testament to how great this band was.

They had so many distinct styles and eras that we could have a dozen of us all arguing in favor of totally distinct eras and they could all be right.

I wholeheartly agree with this, my friend. Over their lifespan they've appealed to many different people in many different ways - the best bands have that effect on people. There's no right or wrong answer really, just the fact that we the fans came together and rocked says something.

[Fourthisto]

especially where he writes about staring at that "R" in the tracklist of Green

Wow... I have never noticed that before. Talk about late to the ball game...

[faxman75]

Actually, i was thinking it would have been great had they finished their career at Coachella. Final two shows. Now, lets talk marketing. Coachella week 1 seems to be the much more popular weekend to attend next year. If they got REM to finish their career at Coachella. Weekend 2 would be their official final show and ticket sales for weekend 2 would be in bigger demand than they currently are. If only Paul Tollett could talk them into it. Win, win!

[bmack86]

Im sure I have yammered this story around here before, but I had to type it all for a discussion in a thread elsewhere so I figured i’d put it in here too...


Saw them in Omaha on the Green tour and my whole world changed in one night. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians opened the show which is the reason you just felt a tinge of jealousy.

So much of my development sprung out of that one night. I was blown away. I had to start watching Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes just to be able to see R.E.M. videos, so that of course opened up my world to XTC, The Replacements, Husker Du, The Smiths, and literally a world of other music apart from the safe edge of slightly modern pop I’d been a fan of before (stuff like INXS and late-era OMD)

The very next day, I took my $11 to the record store at the mall and bought two cassettes: the Chronic Town EP and They Might Be Giants’ Lincoln and my transformation had begun.

Everything about R.E.M. at the time excited me.
I had never seen a band with their kind of dressed-down image, their arty stage show, their arch sensibility, their catalogue of wide-ranging songs (in 1989, a rock show with a mandolin was a pretty rare thing), their political awareness - which I suspect was a gateway into grasping politics and environmentalism for a whole lot of kids of our generation.

Hell, R.E.M.’s (at the time) incredibly sharp design and aesthetic sensibilities are almost certainly a driving factor in my getting into graphic design (my lifelong career) and DEFINITELY a factor in my making gigposters these past 7 years, a hobby that has allowed me to meet and sometimes even work for/with my musical heroes. Though sadly I never got to do a piece for R.E.M.

I used to sit with my copy of Remarks and look at the pages of beautifully designed 7” sleeves from their IRS years and those tiny thumbnails sparked my imagination like crazy. I would spend hours drawing and trying to recreate the designs, the logos from their different eras. It was through their design that I first began understanding typography, since Stipe would usually direct a strict set of type styles for each album/tour cycle. This being the late 80s and me being broke, I would redraw all the type by hand, or photocopy and manipulate type samples from Mecca Norma and Letraset catalogs. I redrew entire alphabets from R.E.M. sleeves. From Document’s heavy use of classic Futura and Franklin Gothic families to Lifes Rich Pageant’s Cooperplate Americana. I would try to decode how and why the sleeves looked the way they did and getting into that headspace taught me a lot about unified dsign concepts.

You can snark all you want about bands aspiring to “change the world” but changing the world isnt always about one grand sweeping gesture. Sometimes its just about encouraging a whole bunch of people to be a little bit better than they had been previously. And sometimes that is exactly what happens.

Wow dude. Most eloquent post I've ever seen from you.

Gonna miss these guys.

[TomAz]

REM was probably my favorite band in the world for an extended period -- say 1983 to 1988 or so. I mean I probably liked them more than the Replacements at the time. I saw them in a small auditorium in 1985, which was very cool.

I won't rehash my musical falling out with the band, I've posted that various places before.

1. Reckoning
2. Murmur
3. Document
4. Lifes Rich Pageant
5. Reconstruction of the Fables
6. Chronic Town
(everything else, in no particular order, and then)
99. Green

[algunz]

I seriously want to cry. This is like a piece of my childhood gone. All of your comments have been great. REM can bring out the best in us.

[HandBanana]

One of my favorite R.E.M. songs even though its not theirs...

[Miroir Noir]

[TomAz]

[Rosemont17]

sux that they broke up. i never got to see them live and always had hoped they would play coachella. gonna pull out my live bootlegs of REM live and have a beer and enjoy. such a great band!!

[kreutz2112]

A few more posts and this thread will have seen more action than when they were a band.

[Rosemont17]

sometimes we forget how great certain bands are. REM was very cool. hoped they come back someday.

[downingthief]

I am truly numb over this. I would venture to say that I am the biggest R.E.M fan that never saw them live. They were tops on my "Bands I need to see" list. I grew up with this band. From hearing "Perfect Circle" and being entranced, to "Uberlin"...they have never disappointed me. I have everything they ever put out. Yes, some albums were better than others, but I cannot say that they created a "bad" album in my eyes. I am glad they ended on a high note. Collapse into Now is the best thing since Automatic for the People to me.

My personal top 10 R.E.M songs (not an easy list to make for me):

1. Perfect Circle
2. Driver 8
3. Nightswimming
4. Country Feedback
5. Cuyahoga
6. Pilgramage
7. Fall on Me
8. Begin the Begin
9. World Leader Pretend
10. So. Central Rain

[algunz]

Stop. I can't take anymore.

[faxman75]

[Fourthisto]

One of my favorites...

[bballarl]

I just heard about this. RIP REM. Automatic for the People was the first album of theirs that I heard all the way through. A guy in my math class in college (he was a senior, I was a freshman) and I would trade music back and forth, and he turned me on to that record. It is one of my absolute all-time favorites. It made that year so much more bearable, and it made me check out the rest of their amazing records (which I kinda knew but had never really given the time to before.) Peter Buck's guitar playing has been a huge influence on mine since then, and they contributed majorly to me finding my voice as a songwriter. This is a bummer, but I'm glad they could end amicably and have the wisdom to know that it was time.

[bmack86]

That may have been the best show I saw with you, Andrew. They were so damn fantastic.

[santasutt]

Wow. The tributes here have been wonderful. Feeling a huge void today after reading the news. I entered college and the ear-expanding world of college radio in the fall of 1982 and recall finding the "Chronic Town" EP too scratched up to play on the air (we did anyway) and then Murmur came out the following spring and well, I was enlisted, enrolled, enraptured and enamored with one of the finest American bands of my time.

Last saw them live in 2004 at Mohegan Sun Casino, which is usually a shitty venue as much of the house is comprised of comped high-rollers and their guests who have little enthusiasm for the band du jour. I was in the upper bowl and remember my wife and I being called-out by some asshole creeps for standing up and dancing during the first encore song, "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" The band was lively and tight and left us wanting more.

With apologies to Nick Hornby, My Top 5 R.E.M. concert memories:

5. May 1995 Shoreline Amphitheater. First show the band played after Bill Berry's ruptured cerebral aneurysm and Stipe tried to lighten things up with some banter: "We're going to call this the Aneurysm Tour." They played most of "Monster" (in my personal top 10) and played it loud. First two songs of the encore, Let Me In" and "Everybody Hurts" had us weeping for Kurt. Sonic Youth opened and crowd was lukewarm.

4. November 1986 New Haven (War Memorial) Colosseum. This building doesn't exist anymore. There's probably a Youtube video out there of it's synchronized implosion. We skipped the opening act, the Feelies, in favor of pounding down a cooler of Rolling Rocks in the most unglamorous of tailgate sites: the adjacent multi-story parking garage. If I had a do-over, I would have gone in to catch the Feelies. Had lousy seats but managed to slither down past biker-goon-squad security for the two encores and recall a long-winded tale about Elvis Presley by Stipe before they closed out with "Fall on Me', "Cuyahoga" and "Radio Free Europe." This was the first time I had seen them in an "Enormo-Dome" setting and thought to myself, somewhat wistfully, after the show that these guys had come a long way from being Kings of College Radio; they were huge rock stars now.

3. October 1987/April 1989 Worcester Centrum. I lump these two shows together kinda like I lump the two albums they were supporting then: "Document" and "Green." I remember the critics really didn't like these albums much and the songs were not as strong coming in the wake of "Reckoning," "Fables" and "Pageant." No matter: the band was tight and hitting it's arena-rock stride. I recall having decent floor seats for both shows and enjoying some "Bonus-Stipe" both shows. He came out with 10,000 Maniacs to sing his bit in "Campfire Song" and did the same with Indigo Girls during "Kid Fears." Gotta say that the latter was one of his finest vocal performances I'd ever seen/heard.

2. August 1985 Hartford Agora Ballroom. No air conditioning. Foggy recall so I might be embellishing here. Must have been 100 degrees up near the stage and we were packed in like sardines. "Fables" tour and the band went on late and played late. Security guards were were hauling limp bodies up on stage and loading them God knows where. At one point, Stipe stopped the show and remarked: "we will never play this fucking place again." Amazing, fun show as the band were channelling their inner Replacements. The final encore sequence of "Satisfaction" / "Tired Of Waiting" / "Wild Thing" / "Louie, Louie" was cut short when Stipe pulled the plug on Buck's guitar and got everyone off the stage.

1. July 1984 Hartford Agora Ballroom. Long time ago. Dream Syndicate opening. When I think of my fondest R.E.M. memory, I think of this show. Playing all those jangly songs from "Murmer" and "Reckoning" and a few from "Chronic," they convinced me they were the coolest band ever when they threw "Smokin in the Boysroom" into their 2nd encore. Top of the world, Ma.

Thanks for indulging.

[bballarl]

That may have been the best show I saw with you, Andrew. They were so damn fantastic.

Agreed. What a great last show to see them at.

Santasutt, those are some awesome memories. I've really enjoyed reading everyone's stories in here.

[Mr. Fuzz]

I couldn't care less

[Miroir Noir]

Thanks, santasutt. It's hard for me to get my head around the concept that once upon a time R.E.M. really was one of those "Our Band Could Be Your Life" entities given what they became and how I came to know them. I loved reading your memories.

[obzen]

Crushing.

[obzen]

However, not surprising.