{"id":15401,"date":"2018-11-05T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T10:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15401"},"modified":"2025-08-06T07:49:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T11:49:56","slug":"album-review-r-e-m-the-best-of-r-e-m-at-the-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/05\/album-review-r-e-m-the-best-of-r-e-m-at-the-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: R.E.M. — The Best of R.E.M. at the BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There was a time \u2013 a pretty long time, actually \u2013 during which R.E.M. was among the most popular groups on the planet. Without being pretentious or self-important (I\u2019m lookin\u2019 at you<\/i>, U2), the foursome from Athens, Georgia did things its own way, uncompromisingly. Over the course of the band\u2019s history \u2013 1983 to 2011 \u2013 R.E.M. explored a number of different approaches; in some ways, there\u2019s nearly no connection with the music on the Chronic Town<\/i> EP and the songs on 2011\u2019s Collapse Into Now<\/i>. In other ways, they\u2019re clearly the work of the same group; merely an older, more mature version of it.<\/p>\n

Early R.E.M. was famously inscrutable; nobody knew what Michael Stipe was singing about on tunes like \u201cHarborcoat,\u201d but we didn\u2019t mind because the music was so real, so direct, so great. In later years the band explored its more acoustic-leaning side, and Stipe started singing words we could hear. Peter Buck\u2019s Rickenbacker jangle was a kind of \u201880s rethink of Pete Townshend\u2019s lead-and-rhythm-at-once guitar style, and Mike Mills \u2013 the band\u2019s most overlooked creative force \u2013 always came up with supremely melodic bass lines that did more than move the songs along. (And Mills\u2019 backing vocals always, always always<\/i> slay me.)<\/p>\n

A hardcore fan from early on (I lived in Atlanta, so they were a \u201clocal\u201d group, more or less), I bought each new release when it came out. I saw them several times during their rise to fame. Fairly or not, though, I lost interest around the time of Monster<\/i> (1994), and to be honest I have heard very little of the music R.E.M. made between then and 2011. As noted war criminal Dick Cheney said in another context, I had other priorities.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve recounted elsewhere, in 1991 I had the unusual experience of being stationed by my employer in London. That summer, Out of Time<\/i> was everywhere on the city\u2019s streets and airwaves. I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but the group had an ongoing relationship with the British Broadcasting Company that went on even longer than the Beatles\u2019 affair with Auntie Beeb.<\/p>\n

That part of the band\u2019s history has heretofore been available only to collector types who traded tapes \u2013 then CDs, then files \u2013 of the radio broadcasts. But a new and massive box set is sourced from radio recordings R.E.M. made between 1984 and 2008. R.E.M. at the BBC<\/i> is available in a number of configurations and formats; the most exhaustive is a box set containing eight CDs and a DVD.<\/p>\n

A perhaps more manageable (and certainly less costly) alternative is a 2CD best-of culled from the larger set. Tidier still is the 2LP vinyl version, The Best of R.E.M. at the BBC<\/i>. With 21 songs drawn from across the band\u2019s career, it works as both a live overview and a sampler of the larger set.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s wonderful, sly idiosyncrasies are on display throughout: the first LP opens with a 1991 acoustic reading of \u201cWorld Leader Pretend,\u201d a song first heard on the 1988 Green<\/em> LP. Here Stipe sings it against an instrumental backing that sounds pretty much like \u201cLosing My Religion\u201d from Out of Time<\/i>. Most groups wouldn\u2019t make a point of highlighting the similarity between two of their songs.<\/p>\n

The minimalist \u201cUnplugged\u201d approach so popular in those days actually works in the band\u2019s favor on these live radio dates. Sure, the uptempo vibe is often missing, but the songs remain. And hearing later cuts like \u201cLotus\u201d (originally from 1998\u2019s Up<\/i>, and presented here from a John Peel session) makes the point that even if some of the band\u2019s longtime fans had moved on by the late \u201890s, R.E.M. still made some fine music that \u2013 hearing it now \u2013 clearly builds on the qualities that made them a force to be, er, reckoned with.<\/p>\n

Full band songs from the post Bill Berry era inevitably sound different. Longtime fans may say different equals not quite as good. Inevitably, something important was lost, but R.E.M. still had plenty to offer, as these recordings demonstrate. Still, listening to a 1984 performance of \u201cDriver 8\u201d will be a more rewarding experience for those who came of age with Murmur<\/i> and Reckoning<\/i> as a soundtrack.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting, too, that the November 1984 live reading of \u201cDriver 8\u201d predates the song\u2019s release by nearly half a year; Fables of the Reconstruction<\/i> (released at the tail end of the band\u2019s \u201cmumbly\u201d era) came out in summer \u201885.<\/p>\n

Occasionally \u2013 but more in the earlier recordings on this set \u2013 Stipe seems a tad disinterested, or perhaps mannered. But I do wonder if that impression is a distorted one, influenced by having witnessed his more direct onstage persona of later years.<\/p>\n

The arena rock years are a little unsatisfying, too, but that as well may be bias on the part of someone who knew them when they weren\u2019t yet stars. There\u2019s a \u201cbig rock\u201d vibe to \u201cDrive,\u201d a cut from a 1995 show at the Milton Keynes National Bowl, but one shouldn\u2019t begrudge R.E.M. their high-profile years. And \u201cPop Song 89\u201d from that same show is uncompromisingly (there\u2019s that word again) awesome.<\/p>\n

The Best of R.E.M. at the BBC<\/i> serves, too, as a kind of best-of, though not every single one of every fan\u2019s favorite tunes is here; understandably, material from the early years is under-represented. And the LP distillation doesn’t include the transcendent \u201cFall On Me.\u201d (For those who insist, the box set has two versions \u2013 virtually indistinguishable from one another \u2013 from 1995 and four years later.)<\/p>\n

But in the end, this set \u2013 in whatever form one encounters it \u2013 is simply wonderful. See if you don\u2019t get a lump in your throat, a glistening in your eye when you hear the 2004 recording (live from St. James\u2019 Church) of \u201cLosing My Religion.\u201d Subtly different from the studio counterpart, it\u2019s very nearly its equal. That\u2019s true as well of the song that closes all versions of this collection, \u201cMan in the Moon,\u201d also from the St. James gig.<\/p>\n

Fans who followed R.E.M. from start to finish will find these BBC sets indispensable. Those who caught on when the band broke big will treasure it. And those early-days fans will find music that both reaffirms their passion for the Athens band’s music and opens them up to discovery of the later material. I don\u2019t know if all that is specifically the goal of releasing R.E.M. at the BBC<\/i>, but it seems appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time \u2013 a pretty long time, actually \u2013 during which R.E.M. was among the most popular groups on the planet. Without being pretentious or self-important (I\u2019m lookin\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,62,65,73],"tags":[1773],"class_list":["post-15401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-r-e-m","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15401"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29872,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401\/revisions\/29872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}