a strain of deliberate perversity
November 25, 2024 12:30 AM Subscribe
At the level of infrastructure, R.E.M. showed how a band could break through to mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal. Their spiky but lovable sound and their alternative approach to that sound’s promotion and distribution influenced two generations of American bands. from How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music [The New Yorker; ungated]
A review in part of The Name of this Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin
A review in part of The Name of this Band is R.E.M. by Peter Ames Carlin
I listened to the Chronic Town cassette I bought at Kemp Mill all through high school, back when it was College Rock. I heard “1,000,000” on WHFS and I was like, these guys are cool!
Then when I was a senior Dave Sitek played “Superman” at the English Festival, which was awesome and way way way before TVOTR, we were still hanging out in his basement listening to his dad listen to his big furniture short wave radio: “Hey guys, listen! I think it’s Poland! From Behind the Iron Curtain!”
I saw REM at Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv, it was a huge show but by then I was much more excited about the opening act, Radiohead.
I bought Pablo Honey in college and tried to get the band to play Creep but our crowd was into Skynyrd and Priest. Even at a Quaker school you don’t want to alienate a party full of “What up, football!”
I can’t believe I’m flexing about REM. Irredeemable!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:30 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Then when I was a senior Dave Sitek played “Superman” at the English Festival, which was awesome and way way way before TVOTR, we were still hanging out in his basement listening to his dad listen to his big furniture short wave radio: “Hey guys, listen! I think it’s Poland! From Behind the Iron Curtain!”
I saw REM at Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv, it was a huge show but by then I was much more excited about the opening act, Radiohead.
I bought Pablo Honey in college and tried to get the band to play Creep but our crowd was into Skynyrd and Priest. Even at a Quaker school you don’t want to alienate a party full of “What up, football!”
I can’t believe I’m flexing about REM. Irredeemable!
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:30 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
As much as my hackles were raised by the “irredeemable” aside, my cockles were warmed by Mark Krotov standing up for Up, which is the R.E.M. album I return to most often, along with Reckoning.
R.E.M. was one of the first bands I got into, getting copies of Out of Time and Automatic for the People. Unlike a lot of the music I got into when I was 12, 13, 14, R.E.M. have stayed with me, providing comfort, joy, distraction, and a selection of songs that can be found in even the dingiest of karaoke joints, which I can be confident not to mess up.
posted by Kattullus at 2:47 AM on November 25, 2024 [5 favorites]
R.E.M. was one of the first bands I got into, getting copies of Out of Time and Automatic for the People. Unlike a lot of the music I got into when I was 12, 13, 14, R.E.M. have stayed with me, providing comfort, joy, distraction, and a selection of songs that can be found in even the dingiest of karaoke joints, which I can be confident not to mess up.
posted by Kattullus at 2:47 AM on November 25, 2024 [5 favorites]
R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for an estimated eighty million dollars
Please cite source.
posted by scratch at 3:05 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
Please cite source.
posted by scratch at 3:05 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
One of two bands that have been constant companions since I encountered them (Low were the other, before the heartbreaking death of Mimi relatively recently; it took a while to listen to them again after that because of how moving their music already was). I first came to them through Eponymous and went from there, lateish 80s, and still listen to Reckoning and Fables regularly. To this day, they're both so richly of a place and yet simultaneously so otherworldly that they feel like some kind of musical enchantment to me.
Just a year or two ago, I randomly came back to New Adventures, a record I remembered far better than I thought I would (I wasn't that bothered when it came out, and stopped buying their records after). It sounds to my far older ears far far better than I remember, patchy of course, but still absolutely vivid with that feel only REM ever gave me. Their poise - from music to how they handle breaking up - remains absolutely undimmed to me. Stand is a terrible song, though...
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 3:06 AM on November 25, 2024 [6 favorites]
Just a year or two ago, I randomly came back to New Adventures, a record I remembered far better than I thought I would (I wasn't that bothered when it came out, and stopped buying their records after). It sounds to my far older ears far far better than I remember, patchy of course, but still absolutely vivid with that feel only REM ever gave me. Their poise - from music to how they handle breaking up - remains absolutely undimmed to me. Stand is a terrible song, though...
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 3:06 AM on November 25, 2024 [6 favorites]
R.E.M. re-signed with Warner Bros. for an estimated eighty million dollars
posted by chavenet at 3:28 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 3:28 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty sure there's a parallel universe where Michael Stipe died and Kurt Cobain lived, and REM is considered the epitome of cool credibility by three generations, and Nirvana is considered to be embarrassing Dad Rock.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:44 AM on November 25, 2024 [11 favorites]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:44 AM on November 25, 2024 [11 favorites]
I feel like REM is a band where you pick the era you liked. During OOT, the fans always complained how "commercial" it sounded now, how twee. I remember thinking that same thing when "Everybody Hurts" was playing non-stop in every coffee place in San Francisco. I didn't know I'd actually heard Radiohead until 2010, because I assumed that what I'd heard was just the continued decline of REM.
Of course all this is unfair snobbery, and I don't really feel that way about the band, but I still remember folks in the 90s mourning the loss of "early REM".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:22 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
Of course all this is unfair snobbery, and I don't really feel that way about the band, but I still remember folks in the 90s mourning the loss of "early REM".
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:22 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
Of course all this is unfair snobbery
If you can confuse Thom Yorke's voice for Michael Stipe's, you're not any kind of musical snob I'm familiar with.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:29 AM on November 25, 2024 [3 favorites]
If you can confuse Thom Yorke's voice for Michael Stipe's, you're not any kind of musical snob I'm familiar with.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:29 AM on November 25, 2024 [3 favorites]
Oh, you thought I was actively listening to Radiohead instead of just having it played in supermarkets and other places where I was trying to concentrate on something else?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:33 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 5:33 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
I preferred R.E.M. when they were more of a rock band. The ballads got a bit too much for me.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:38 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 5:38 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
I'll never forget the 1980s college-radio joke that R.E.M. was a punk rock band that was stuck with folk music instruments, while Hüsker Dü was secretly a folk music band stuck with punk rock instruments.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:22 AM on November 25, 2024 [25 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:22 AM on November 25, 2024 [25 favorites]
There’s a bit in the linked article where they talk about how REM found venues to play on their tours, playing where others wouldn’t, and I thought “hey, that sounds like Fugazi”. I don’t think the article itself is wrong, but I do think it’s a bit too close to the subject to really answer the questions it’s asking . REM seem like a band that followed the business rules of the Music industry, but managed to stay essentially normal-ish people. They also got out of the music biz just before streaming took off, so their entire career is both more profitable and higher status than acts that followed them
posted by The River Ivel at 7:54 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 7:54 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
I heard my first R.E.M. song, appropriately, while listening to my college's campus station on the car radio. I can still remember the exact spot on the road I was on when that happened. There's no other band I can say that about.
posted by tommasz at 8:17 AM on November 25, 2024 [7 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 8:17 AM on November 25, 2024 [7 favorites]
Love REM and this is a great read, but I reject the notion the band behind Shiny Happy People isn’t at least a little cheesy.
posted by poploser at 8:59 AM on November 25, 2024 [3 favorites]
posted by poploser at 8:59 AM on November 25, 2024 [3 favorites]
A great Peter Buck quote I read years ago, before massive fame, about R.E.M.s place in the indie underground: 'We're the acceptable edge of the unacceptable.' I thought of it while reading this article.
I saw them in a night club in Vancouver in the summer of '85, it was a great show, still one of my personal top ten as far as gigs go. They played faster and punkier than their records, and ended the show with a wonderful 5 or so song encore, ripping through great, trashy garage rock classics like Wild Thing and You Really Got Me better Buck and Stipe dove into the crowed audience at the front of the stage. It was also the same night as Live Aid so the two are permanently conjoined in my mind. I was 20 and slowly learning about the massive underground indie scene and R.E.M. seemed to straddle the divide between that and the mainstream in a rather unique way.
Over time I move into different things but for a brief time, in 1985, I was right there with the band whom I loved, and would never like as much again. My favourite of their later records is Monster, which was their first album since Life's Rich Pageant I played over and over.
This article resonates deeply with me, and quite nicely evokes a very specific time when I was young, somewhat callow, and had a deeply optimistic idea of the future.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 10:12 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
I saw them in a night club in Vancouver in the summer of '85, it was a great show, still one of my personal top ten as far as gigs go. They played faster and punkier than their records, and ended the show with a wonderful 5 or so song encore, ripping through great, trashy garage rock classics like Wild Thing and You Really Got Me better Buck and Stipe dove into the crowed audience at the front of the stage. It was also the same night as Live Aid so the two are permanently conjoined in my mind. I was 20 and slowly learning about the massive underground indie scene and R.E.M. seemed to straddle the divide between that and the mainstream in a rather unique way.
Over time I move into different things but for a brief time, in 1985, I was right there with the band whom I loved, and would never like as much again. My favourite of their later records is Monster, which was their first album since Life's Rich Pageant I played over and over.
This article resonates deeply with me, and quite nicely evokes a very specific time when I was young, somewhat callow, and had a deeply optimistic idea of the future.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 10:12 AM on November 25, 2024 [4 favorites]
I'll never forget the 1980s college-radio joke that R.E.M. was a punk rock band that was stuck with folk music instruments, while Hüsker Dü was secretly a folk music band stuck with punk rock instruments.
Is the joke that REM is punk, at all?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:21 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
Is the joke that REM is punk, at all?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:21 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
As a cynical mid-30's guy in 1983 "Radio Free Europe" cut through the schlock of the times like a hot knife through vinyl. Loved their records.
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana was another such song for me. You weren't going to go back from these records.
posted by pthomas745 at 10:26 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana was another such song for me. You weren't going to go back from these records.
posted by pthomas745 at 10:26 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Ah, the late 1980s, when alternative music was R.E.M. and craft beer was Sam Adams. Rebels, I tell you, we were rebels.
It set them apart, too, that Stipe was unusually self-contained for a front man.
Tiny bit of an understatement.
posted by Sphinx at 10:45 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
It set them apart, too, that Stipe was unusually self-contained for a front man.
Tiny bit of an understatement.
posted by Sphinx at 10:45 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
As someone who was 20 when Monster came out, found this to be a strange Millennial take on a band that I loved so much, my roommate and I wrote a letter to a guitar magazine about how much Peter Buck ruled.
Reading this piece though I wonder if the '60s generation felt this way when us Gen X'ers got into The Doors and wore psychedelic shirts and missed nuances of their era's music.
I found myself puzzled by not just by the "irredeemable" thing (redeemed from what?) but the description of the Losing My Religion video as "overrated." I don't remember anyone rating it at all. To us it was just the video.
posted by johngoren at 11:13 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Reading this piece though I wonder if the '60s generation felt this way when us Gen X'ers got into The Doors and wore psychedelic shirts and missed nuances of their era's music.
I found myself puzzled by not just by the "irredeemable" thing (redeemed from what?) but the description of the Losing My Religion video as "overrated." I don't remember anyone rating it at all. To us it was just the video.
posted by johngoren at 11:13 AM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
"irredeemable" means "impossible to correct, improve, or change."
That's not exactly an eccentric opinion about "Nightswimming," though of course not everyone will agree.
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
That's not exactly an eccentric opinion about "Nightswimming," though of course not everyone will agree.
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
@chavnet my New Oxford American dictionary says "irredeemable" means " not able to be saved, improved, or corrected" -- and I was left pretty confused over whether Krotov was offering an obtuse but high complement, or an obtuse but blistering burn.
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:48 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:48 AM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
REM was always around when I was young and I liked quite a few of their songs but the only album of theirs I ever bought was New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which was and still is a great album.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:13 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:13 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
Oh, you thought I was actively listening to Radiohead instead of just having it played in supermarkets and other places where I was trying to concentrate on something else?
No?
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 12:45 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
No?
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 12:45 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
Don’t go back to Rockville.
posted by whatevernot at 1:29 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by whatevernot at 1:29 PM on November 25, 2024 [1 favorite]
Love REM and this is a great read, but I reject the notion the band behind Shiny Happy People isn’t at least a little cheesy.
That's actually the only song of theirs I like, though that might just be the Kate Pierson factor.
posted by signal at 2:35 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
That's actually the only song of theirs I like, though that might just be the Kate Pierson factor.
posted by signal at 2:35 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Have loved them for 40 years. Will continue to love them until the end of (my) time.
posted by spilon at 2:59 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by spilon at 2:59 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
IMO, REM got slightly worse with every album they did, like they ran out of gas, or people told Michael Stipe his lyrics were the best part of the band, so they slowed tempos down to fit more of those in and simplified the music, or everyone was like "The One I Love' is a great song and they were like "OK Let's do full albums of it".
That's actually the only song of theirs I like, though that might just be the Kate Pierson factor. She also sang some backup vocals (I think) on Near Wild Heaven, which is equally as good. And they were definitely occasionally cheesy. Stand is cheesy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:11 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
That's actually the only song of theirs I like, though that might just be the Kate Pierson factor. She also sang some backup vocals (I think) on Near Wild Heaven, which is equally as good. And they were definitely occasionally cheesy. Stand is cheesy.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:11 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Kate's closing duet with Stipe on "Me In Honey" is even better than Shiny Happy People. Probably the best ending track on any R.E.M. album.
posted by JoeZydeco at 3:41 PM on November 25, 2024 [6 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 3:41 PM on November 25, 2024 [6 favorites]
Love this crew. I was going to open up a dispensary called Chronic Town but ran into legal trouble.
posted by porn in the woods at 6:24 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by porn in the woods at 6:24 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Hard agree about Me In Honey. One of their best songs.
posted by Foaf at 11:56 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by Foaf at 11:56 PM on November 25, 2024 [2 favorites]
Enjoying this thread. I'm an all-seasons R.E.M. fan who started listening to Automatic for the People in middle school and who feels New Adventures is their best work.
Listening anew to Up on this rainy morning feels like seeing old friends. I think this is the album when Michael Stipe decided he could be more direct about the feelings in the songs, even if the narrators are characters.
My live show experience of them: Midway Stadium in St. Paul in 1999, the encore cut short by lightning, though not before "Country Feedback" thank heavens.
posted by Handstand Devil at 5:31 AM on November 26, 2024 [3 favorites]
Listening anew to Up on this rainy morning feels like seeing old friends. I think this is the album when Michael Stipe decided he could be more direct about the feelings in the songs, even if the narrators are characters.
My live show experience of them: Midway Stadium in St. Paul in 1999, the encore cut short by lightning, though not before "Country Feedback" thank heavens.
posted by Handstand Devil at 5:31 AM on November 26, 2024 [3 favorites]
Also, if you like R.E.M. (and I do. I really do) I highly recommend listening to Quivers' cover of the entire Out of Time album. It's... better than the original. And the original is one of my top ten all-time favorite albums, despite Shiny Happy People and the rapping on Radio Song.
(And I also love KRS-One but that was not his best work on Radio Song. That was not a good idea at all.)
posted by heyitsgogi at 1:16 PM on November 26, 2024 [2 favorites]
(And I also love KRS-One but that was not his best work on Radio Song. That was not a good idea at all.)
posted by heyitsgogi at 1:16 PM on November 26, 2024 [2 favorites]
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