so long, R.E.M.

over it wrote:

one of my biggest pet peeves is the "music is so important/it's who i am" crowd. if you base your life on a song or a collection of songs or a band you're probably a loser. unless you're a professional musician, of course.

Music is art. Some people react very strongly to art. Others do not.

In my opinion, if you do not react strongly to art, you are probably a loser.

Music is very important to me, even as an adult, executive, father and husband. I wouldn't say, "It's who I am," but it is very important to me.

over it wrote:

one of my biggest pet peeves is the "music is so important/it's who i am" crowd. if you base your life on a song or a collection of songs or a band you're probably a loser. unless you're a professional musician, of course.

As opposed to those of us who base our life and who we are to running around in circles?

What have they been doing 10-15 years? MAKING NEW MUSIC!Albums:Up (1998)Reveal (2001)Around the Sun (2004)Accelerate (2008)Collapse into Now (2011)My point is that they won't be doing that anymore but will just do tours of their old stuff - they WILL do that at some point; Americans have proven that they will pay to see concerts given by the bands of their youth.Now, for future reference, don't call me out unless you've got a good point.

tooslow wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now...new tour playing their hits to people from my generation who grew up with them in college.

What do you think they've been doing for the past 10 - 15 years?

My favorite band of all time, but the fact is, they haven't really put out anything relevant since the mid-90s. Accelerate was tremendous, but their other stuff has been hit/miss...more miss.

Saw them in '99 in St. Paul, MN. Played at Midway Stadium and the show ended as a thunder storm began. Will never forget that!

They don't get enough credit for dragging music out of the 70's. I think people are uncomfortable about them because the lead singer is gay, sensitive, and opinionated. I know that when I was in high school, I thought only pussies listened to REM, but that wasn't true. Every song isn't "Everybody Hurts." But they were a great band. And their newest record that came out in the last year or so was pretty decent.

stuckwithmatch.com wrote:

The voice of their lead singer is really annoying. Their riffs are okay at best.

You clearly need to listen to Gardening at Night, Cuyahoga, and Moral Kiosk again...

I loved REM back in the day when you couldn't understand what Stipe was singing. The mumbling was really interesting, and the music was great.

To answer the OP, I can remember the first time I heard Radio Free Europe - Summer of 1983 in Ocean City Md, around 85th St on the beach. It was our intro to college alternative music, and it was completely different than anything we had heard before.

I also like the band's cover art, which was also unique.

I didn't like what they have put out lately, meaning whenever the latter albums - late '90s to 2000s. Losing My religion was the turning point for the band I cut my teeth on as an incoming college freshman. The overuse of the mandolin by Buck seemed like they were trying too hard to be hip.

Check out REM's Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Lifes Rich Pageant, and Document. It's good stuff.

BTW, U2 and The Smiths were also huge for us college kids at that time, and look at how they also became pop-ified and old. So this is no surprise.

They only have 2 live albums. A true test of musicianship is how good are you live. Typically the better the band is in musicianship the more live albums they have.

Some Names wrote:

You clearly need to listen to Gardening at Night, Cuyahoga, and Moral Kiosk again...

I'd add Feeling Gravity's Pull to that list.

And my point is that the new music they've been making in the last 10-15 years has been irrelevant and that they in fact have been touring and essentially "playing their hits to people from my generation who grew up with them in college". For future reference, don't call me out unless you know what you're talking about.

Some Names wrote:

stuckwithmatch.com wrote:

The voice of their lead singer is really annoying. Their riffs are okay at best.

You clearly need to listen to Gardening at Night, Cuyahoga, and Moral Kiosk again...

And this is the key point - those three are old, old songs. I was a huge fan, but by the time they came to my town in the early 2000s their music had become so tepid and stale that I didn't even bother to walk to the nearby arena to see them.

They have been badly outdone by bands like Radiohead, Modest Mouse, etc, and for me the topper was a recent (delusional) quote by Peter Buck about the latest album: "I've always tended to not say it's the greatest record we've ever done because that's what everyone does and it's usually bullshit," he said. "But this feels like every song all the way through is great."

Radiohead and Modest Mouse would not have existed without REM, and I say that as a fan of both bands. In my experience, most bands do put out their best work early in their careers, or at least they put out work that builds their fan base (which will only resent them later for changing styles, experimenting, or doing what they wanted to do all along). We'll see if Modest Mouse has the same relevance 30 years later, or if we'll look back at Never Ending Math Equation and wonder how stoned we must've been.

Ah Ha wrote:

Wow. Why all the hate directed at REM? I thought you reserved that for elite athletes.

I guess miserable people hate pretty much everything. . .

I believe, and it seems obvious, that this is because the members of R.E.M. have been quite outspoken over the years and are very liberal, whereas the majority of LetsRun types are to the right of center. I'm not a huge R.E.M. fan -- like some of their stuff but nothing they've done has moved me all that much. I'm more impressed with them as people. And I'm sorry conservatives have so much hate for anyone who thinks differently from the way they do.

GlobalView wrote:

And this is the key point - those three are old, old songs.

No, the key point is almost the opposite. The people saying a blanket "R.E.M. sucks balls" only know their most recent stuff and were probably not even alive when they were writing great, groundbreaking stuff. The key point is that for those too young or who missed it the first time around it's worth going back to those old, old songs because they show why they mattered.

Top 40 hits

R.E.M. 9

Styx 12

Journey 16

Foreigner 14

People rip apart the last 3 bands as being this and that yet they still have more top 40 hits than R.E.M. In addition REM is in the rock hall of fame while the last Journey Styx and Foreigner aren't. The criticism is well justified.

stuckwithmatch.com wrote:

Top 40 hits

R.E.M. 9

Styx 12

Journey 16

Foreigner 14

People rip apart the last 3 bands as being this and that yet they still have more top 40 hits than R.E.M. In addition REM is in the rock hall of fame while the last Journey Styx and Foreigner aren't. The criticism is well justified.

Are you really basing the quality of a band on the number of top-40 hits?

The fact that those bands are not in the HOF should tell you how meaningless top-40 hits can be. Have you listened to top-40 music in recent years?

As for the person saying Radio Free Europe was one of the most important songs of the '80's, I'm not sure I'd agree, despite loving that song and all of Chronic Town. It was a great song and certainly inspired many alternative bands of the 1980's, but remember just how bad 1980's music was. I WISH it had been more influential.

It is amazing how many people think R.E.M. was all songs like Everybody Hurts or Losing My Religion. They had some great rock songs on Life's Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Document and Fables of the Reconstruction and plenty of other good songs right up through Monster. I'm a fan of New Adventures in Hi Fi and Accelerate too, but I can see how others might not agree.

My wife and I saw then 3 times; 1st was in Hyde Park, London after the 05 bombings, second time was in Dublin, July 07, it was a "rehersal concert" for their Acclerate album which came out in April 08, and the last time was in Atlanta in June of 08 when they were on their Acclerate tour. Really had a good time at their concerts. Don't like all their songs but most are pretty good. I'll bet they do a reunion tour in the future.

I liked them until I found out the lead singer is gay.

I am a real man, can't be listening to a reprobate.

One of the qualifiers for the RnR HOF is how many hits you have. Generally the more popular your music is the more hits you will have. The top 40 is a great indicator and one that the selection committee for the HOF look at. I'm not going to go through the entire list but I am guessing that REM is close to the bottom for number of Top 40 hits out all bands/members in the HOF. One of the reasons they got it was because they were so outspoken out their liberal views. That seems to be how many mediocre bands get in these days.

stuckwithmatch.com wrote:

One of the qualifiers for the RnR HOF is how many hits you have. Generally the more popular your music is the more hits you will have. The top 40 is a great indicator and one that the selection committee for the HOF look at. I'm not going to go through the entire list but I am guessing that REM is close to the bottom for number of Top 40 hits out all bands/members in the HOF. One of the reasons they got it was because they were so outspoken out their liberal views. That seems to be how many mediocre bands get in these days.

No. Good grief, their politics have nothing to do with it. They got into the R&R hall of fame because from 1983 to 1992 they released 8 critically acclaimed albums (Murmur through Automatic For the People, not counting Dead Letter Office or Eponymous) and launched what, at the time, was called "college rock." In 1986 people who didn't like top-40, hair rock, metal, punk, or r&b probably listened to REM.

They didn't have a top 10 hit until their 5th album, but most (younger) people knew who they were before Document was released and "The One I Love" started playing on MTV. I think they got a bit stale in the mid-90s, and never quite recovered their creative spark.