I'm sorry. I meant 25 years ago. Maybe it was easier (and more acceptable) to like REM after those hardcore bands we loved were long gone. I wouldn't know...I rode out the early nineties on a steady diet of Stones, Skynyrd, and Allmans.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:

The Kid wrote:As an adolescent, my punk rocker friends didn't ridicule me for liking REM. They grudgingly respected it. And when you're 13, nobody is cooler than the kids who are into Minor Threat and Circle Jerks.

We ran in wildly different circles, my friend. Because everyone I knew 15-16 years ago liked Minor Threat and the Circle Jerks, and our feelings towards those liking REM cannot best be described as "grudging respect." Maybe if you'd been into Big Country, we'd have cut you a little slack.

Guitars that sound like bagpipes--there's something to grudgingly respect!

Maybe my friends were posers. Or maybe they just made fun of my tastes behind my back. Both are possibilities. But I remember getting shit for liking Living Colour and U2.
Neither of whom I could stand to listen to today. So they were right on about that stuff.

For those of you too young to remember, people have been dissing REM ever since they came out with "Fables of the Reconstruction" 20 years ago. I remember a sticker placed on the album by the music director at the station I worked for: "may be too commercial." Fables is probably the least commercial REM record in the catalog. I started listening to REM in 1986 and already lots of people were saying that they were selling out, etc. For these people Reckoning was the last "real" REM record. Fables was considered the transitional album between early and later REM, which properly begins with Life's Rich Pageant (produced by Don Gehman of John Mellencamp fame, which earned REM much ire). It's jangle vs. less jangle, essentially. I never got it.

For most there comes a later break that is even more subjective, anywhere from Green to Automatic for the People. There are people who think Automatic was the last great REM record. I thought it was a pos...the moment I heard the strings on "Drive" was exactly when I lost interest in REM for good. Out of Time was a middling effort that marked the beginning of the end. Green was solid, if unspectacular. But many think these records are golden, with the decline starting only with Monster (for me, that record sounded like it came from a different band). So it seems this early/late REM business is a highly variable thing, perhaps defined by when one started listening to them. Automatic was the first REM album for a lot of folks and is the benchmark by which all others are judged. For me, it's Murmur.

What is remarkable is that this band, at every point in their career, has been able to attract new fans that are as rabid as the ones who fall away. There is something about what they do that, whether you like them or not, is utterly genuine. There is also something about REM that seems to turn people off after a few years, and I don't really know what that is.

There is also another issue when it comes to melodic, contemplative bands like REM. I think there is a real prejudice among people raised on punk, hardcore, and music that is indebted to both. For these people, bands that are focused on songwriting and melody are almost always dissed as being not "confrontational" enough or too "mainstream." (Arcade Fire, for instance, got crapped here big time for being "boring," which boggles the mind.) I'll never understand what it is about a straightforward song-oriented approach that turns so many people off. For me, bands that lack good songs are boring, no matter how "confrontational" they may be. I'll take 10 REMs over a US Maple any day.

Oh yeah, not crap. Murmur still sounds fantastic.

Hello. I'm breaking out of lurker land for this one.

I can't remember being more disappointed by a band's direction change. I'm from the South, and in the early 80's it was really exciting to hear music coming from my region that wasn't redneck bullshit about the Stars and Bars, Jack Daniels, guns or whatever. The Buttholes and Scratch Acid were from Texas (which is it's own fucking country) so they didn't count. I was probably two years away from hearing them anyway. I can't remember.
REM made me think there was hope for this region. That we had a "sound," and that anybody could put out a record, even if they weren't from a big city. At 13 years old, I didn't know that bands had been doing that for years. I didn't know the story of the Kingsmen or other bands like them.
Pete Buck balanced the line between approachable guy and rock persona.
Plus he had a comic book.
Everything changed when he actually learned how to play guitar. 9-9, West of the Fields and Little America were parts written by a guy who knew dick-all about guitar, and that's what made him great. Compare that to the boring I, IV, V stuff that came later.

I was into the fact that "singing" could be whatever you wanted it to be. That made Stipe cool.

So when they made the move to the big-time, I felt like they turned their backs on that stuff. I now realise that it was probaby the goal all along.

I got over it as soon as I heard Mission of Burma (right after they broke up), Wire, and especially Gang of Four and XTC. Agit punk seemed to have everything I was looking for and it actually *was* the real deal. Then the South started cranking out bands like Slint and all was right with the world again.

Jim DeRogatis' interviews with REM make me cringe. Especially Mike Mills. It's all about the music, eh Mike?

So, REM? Once a great band, and I still like it when Reckoning or Murmur comes on unexpectedly. That could be nostalgia, but I like it.
Today? utter, utter crap. I find it unlistenable, irrelevant, far from creative, miles from groundbreaking. I lump them in with the Stones. Give it up already guys, you've worn out your welcome.

To recap...crap.

The first two R.E.M. releases are excellent (Chronic Town & Murmur), after that there were an increasing number of awful turds per album until they band finally started sucking - around Out of Time, which is pretty dire as albums go.

R.E.M. are the only band in history where each record is worse than the previous. The past two albums are fucking hideous by anyone's standards.

tipcat wrote:There are people who think Automatic was the last great REM record. I thought it was a pos...the moment I heard the strings on "Drive" was exactly when I lost interest in REM for good.

I remember thinking at the time that the string arrangements would have been much better if they'd gotten Mick Harvey to do them. As it stands, they're often unlistenably syrupy, clichéd, and distracting. (Compare to Nick Cave's The Good Son, which in my opinion is strings done right.)

Maurice wrote:I remember thinking at the time that the string arrangements would have been much better if they'd gotten Mick Harvey to do them. As it stands, they're often unlistenably syrupy, clichéd, and distracting. (Compare to Nick Cave's The Good Son, which in my opinion is strings done right.)

Why get Mick Harvey when you've got the guy from Led Zeppelin?

John Paul Jones' solo album, Zooma, is the shit, btw.

mattw wrote:Why get Mick Harvey when you've got the guy from Led Zeppelin?

True, that's who they got, but the string arrangements are still ass. I think Mick could have done a better job.

mattw wrote:John Paul Jones' solo album, Zoom, is the shit, btw.

Have to give it a listen sometime.

'Drive' would've worked better stripped-down, but strings turn me off almost instantly, with a few exceptions. The second Shellac puts strings in one of their songs...

NOT crap, but time is passing and Michael Stipe really needs to get over himself.