{"id":22628,"date":"2022-03-22T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22628"},"modified":"2024-04-29T13:48:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T17:48:02","slug":"march-through-time-r-e-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/22\/march-through-time-r-e-m\/","title":{"rendered":"March Through Time: R.E.M."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in Atlanta, so R.E.M. was considered a local band (Athens is just over an hour\u2019s drive). One didn\u2019t even have to be particularly hip or plugged into the music scene to know about them, and I\u2019m not claiming any particular inside knowledge on that score. They were just a really good, unusual band that played a lot locally. When they made their first big jump in popularity with <i>Fables of the Reconstruction<\/i>, they organized an impromptu free concert at Legion Field on the campus of University of Georgia, ostensibly to test out their brand-new sound rig. My friends and I road-tripped to the show. The date was April 22, 1985. I recall that Michael Stipe performed nearly the entire set with his back to the audience. Still, great show. It\u2019s a hopelessly clich\u00e9 thing to say that you dug a particular band when they were unknown and lost interest after they made it big, but to some extent that\u2019s my history with R.E.M. Only now am I working my way through their later material \u2013 which is better than I remember \u2013 so I don\u2019t have much to say about it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i><b><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-22629\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_rem.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_rem.jpg 350w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_rem-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_rem-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Chronic Town<\/b><\/i><b> (1982)<\/b> \u2013 While Peter Buck\u2019s jangling Rickenbacker rooted R.E.M.\u2019s sound in the Byrdsian \u201860s, for the most part, this debut EP didn\u2019t sound like anything I had heard before. \u201c1,000,000\u201d is a standout, but the whole thing is essential.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Murmur<\/b><\/i><b> (1983)<\/b> \u2013 Building on the EP with an album\u2019s worth of good songs, credit is due also to the superb production team of Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. This record sounds as fresh and exciting today as it did 40-plus years ago. A must-have.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Reckoning<\/b><\/i><b> (1984)<\/b> \u2013 The debut EP, <i>Murmur<\/i> and this record are of a piece. The songs are even better, Easter\/Dixon worked their magic again, and we could even make out some of the words. \u201c(Don\u2019t go Back to) Rockville\u201d is a personal favorite. This album looms large in my life; I named my daughter after the last song on Side One.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Fables of the Reconstruction<\/b><\/i><b> (1985)<\/b> \u2013 We thought of this as R.E.M.\u2019s \u201cpsychedelic\u201d album. Weirder song structures, weirder arrangements and two spectacularly great songs in \u201cDriver 8\u201d and \u201cCan\u2019t Get There from Here.\u201d Horns on an R.E.M. song? Unexpected. Perhaps the group\u2019s most literate effort.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Lifes Rich Pageant<\/b><\/i><b> (1986)<\/b> \u2013 The production on this album was jarring to longtime fans like myself; it felt too mainstream by half. But some of the best songs of the band\u2019s career made it irresistible.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Dead Letter Office <\/b><\/i><b>(1987)<\/b> \u2013 R.E.M.\u2019s <i>Odds and Sods<\/i>. Quirky in the extreme, it was a refreshing revelation of the group\u2019s playful, experimental side. And covers can reveal a lot about a band\u2019s influences; the Aerosmith cover here surprised some fans.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Document<\/b><\/i><b> (1987)<\/b> \u2013 At the time, I couldn\u2019t help feeling that this record was a shameless bid for widespread acceptance. That disappointment wore off soon enough thanks &#8212; again &#8212; to excellent songs. And to be fair, the strangeness that defined all of the band\u2019s music was still there; you just had to dig a bit deeper to find it.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Green<\/b><\/i><b> (1988)<\/b> \u2013 The move to Warner Brothers brought with it accusations of selling out. Even more mainstream than <i>Document<\/i>, it\u2019s a very good album but was somehow harder to like than previous efforts.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Out of Time<\/b><\/i><b> (1991)<\/b> \u2013 Everything suddenly changed with this one. The most commercial-sounding R.E.M. album to date, it was so damn good that accusations of \u201csellout\u201d didn\u2019t, <i>cou<\/i><i>l<\/i><i>d<\/i><i>n<\/i><i>\u2019t<\/i> have any weight. I was working in London when this album was released, and was tickled to hear my hometown heroes\u2019 music being played everywhere I went. A mature album that built on the group\u2019s sound in new and interesting ways, it\u2019s easily their best since the first three.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Automatic for the People<\/b><\/i><b> (1992)<\/b> \u2013 Leaving their indie character completely behind, R.E.M. became an arena rock band. They weren\u2019t afraid to craft non-rocking songs with all manner of intricate arrangement details. It\u2019s a dark and moody album, though.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Monster<\/b><\/i><b> (1994) <\/b>\u2013 I\u2019ll admit that it\u2019s not an original perspective, but I actively disliked this album on its release. Part of that was that it wasn\u2019t easily found on vinyl. But more significant was that it felt in places like a conventional hard rock album, the kind of thing that any mainstream band could have cranked out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">UPDATE 2024: I&#8217;ve since received vinyl reissues of some late-period R.E.M. albums, listened to them (in most cases for the first time) and discovered musical riches therein. What follows are links to my reviews of those releases.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/04\/03\/album-review-r-e-m-up\/\"><em><strong>Up<\/strong> <\/em><\/a><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">(1998)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/12\/album-review-r-e-m-reveal\/\"><strong>Reveal<\/strong> <\/a><\/em>(2001)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/24\/album-review-r-e-m-around-the-sun-part-1-of-2\/\"><strong><em>Around the Sun<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (2004)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/13\/album-review-r-e-m-accelerate\/\"><em><strong>Accelerate<\/strong> <\/em><\/a>(2008)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/26\/album-review-r-e-m-collapse-into-now\/\"><em><strong>Collapse Into Now<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (2011)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">(And there&#8217;s also my 2018 review of <em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/05\/album-review-r-e-m-the-best-of-r-e-m-at-the-bbc\/\">The Best of R.E.M. at the BBC<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>With a young family at home and a conventional office-based business career, I found myself less engaged in what R.E.M. was up to in the years that followed. My tastes diverged with their sound, and I spent time with music that moved me more, like Matthew Sweet, Ben Folds Five, Jellyfish and Radiohead. None of which should suggest I didn\u2019t <i>like<\/i> R.E.M.\u2019s music of that era; I simply didn\u2019t hear it. Not long ago I found a used copy of <i>Accelerate<\/i> (2008) and quite enjoyed it; the album didn\u2019t remind me of the <i>Chronic Town<\/i> era band I fell in love with, but it\u2019s a solid, enjoyable record. I\u2019m told it\u2019s better than the previous three or four albums I pretty much had ignored.<\/p>\n<p>Well worth seeking out: <i>We Are Having a Heavenly Time<\/i> is a bootleg LP \u2013 quite possibly sourced from a tape made by my friend Fred Mills (no relation) \u2013 that captures the band firing on all cylinders at a 1984 live date in Durham. The much more recent <i>R.E.M. at the BBC<\/i> has some great moments, but there\u2019s some less compelling material in there as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in Atlanta, so R.E.M. was considered a local band (Athens is just over an hour\u2019s drive). One didn\u2019t even have to be particularly hip or plugged into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,65],"tags":[1773],"class_list":["post-22628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-review","tag-r-e-m","cat-27-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22628","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=22628"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27475,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22628\/revisions\/27475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}