Night Garden: Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe [R.E.M.]1981-1996 Song-by-song*

Drive
4,5/5

 

Just a little update about this: got the vinyl (of Bingo Hand Job) yesterday. Luckily it contained two different LPs and there are no apparent pressing errors.

I only had the time to listen to a few tracks. Yeah the sound quality is not sufficient for an official release, I definitely agree with that. On the other hand, if you ignore that I'm hearing a band that really tries to play their songs as beautifully as possible. The show itself "sounds" really good.

I also quickly A/Bed with the unofficial bootleg that is floating around. I must say, respect for the mastering engineer who no doubt had some sleepless nights over this. I can hear that he had quite some work fixing the EQ a bit and fixing volume differences.

 

Drive

This song is okay. I never made the connection to Rock On, probably because the music is so different, but I definitely do now because of the “Hey kids, rock and roll” lyric. I don’t hear any connection to the Pylon song at all. I like both of those songs more than I like Drive. Both Rock On and Stop It have a good beat, and a lot of life coursing through them.

My main problem with this song is that it meanders and doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a nice mood piece, but is mostly pleasant background music to me. I don’t think the strings help it.

3/5

 

Drive. It's a great song, but not necessarily a great single. Around this time, lots of established bands knew that they would get airplay and sales with their first single, even if it was a selection of burps, so they chose weird tracks for the opening single of their album : The Cure did it with "The 13th", Depeche Mode with "Barrel Of A Gun", U2 with "The Fly" - these were not obvious first choices of hit singles to give people a sense of familiar stadium-rock comfort. Drive fits right into that with an understated, elegant backing and not obvious chorus without the title being mentioned anyway in the lyric. On a side note, Drive is a perfect choice for a title - reflecting both forward movement, compulsion, ambition, and a sense of classic rock, driving across Americana with the wind in your hair [if you have any] and classic RAWK on the radio. Sure, it quotes from David Essex's "Rock On", as well as "Rock Around The Clock", and politics, but it also has a sparse minimal lyric that seems to allude to drugs/hedonism. The use of the word "Bushwhacked" seems to indicate that the nation is suffering from the previous president, and it's surely no coincidence that Stipe sings "Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie," seems also to reference - obliquely - Oliver North. JPJ's string arrangement is precise. And finally, the video and lyric also seem to refer to R.E.M. kind of mocking any attempt to be 'down with the kids', aware that they are growing older and balder and not being the fresh young things anymore. It almost sounds like Grandpa Simpson talking about "I used to know what it was, but they changed what it was, and now what it is is weird and scary". Anyway, I love this song. It's a taut and maudlin elegy for lost rock n roll youth with adulthood breathing down your neck. 5/5

 

Stray thoughts I forgot to include earlier:

- Stipe manages to make “tick tock” sound like such a threat. He already knew where “rocking around the clock” could lead someone
- the string arrangements on this record are the best thing John Paul Jones has ever done

 

My first reaction was "wow, that's bold". But on second thought I tend to agree with you

 

Want to add more as to why I love the song as much as I said

The acoustic from Buck is despite being the rhythm guitar heard for the whole track, is also the most inessential halfway in. You get this barely singing melody that doesn't suggest anything, but subtle things like the strings/drums during tick tock... back into the space before, with even more very well timed string placements and bass... and then that solo comes in with a sense of fear and at this point the song feels like a thunderstorm, then slows down, but that storm never went away. It just looms in this angst of getting old.

 

Your chocolate reference. Bittersweet (chocolate?) Me. Not my funniest moment, I realize.

 

I sat out the b-side discussions but I'm back again.

After the success of Out of Time, expectations were high for the next album. I remember some questions about the title when it came out - were they aiming for a commercial album? But in my opinion, despite a couple of huge hits, this is a deep, challenging album, filled with songs that reward focused listening. And it sounds really good on my system, at volumes both low and high. This is one of my favorite albums, and one of those rare ones with which I’m happy to end an evening of listening.

Drive starts the album off in fine form. The edgy acoustic guitar and Michael’s singing set the tone, but the middle section where it explodes make this classic. It’s quite dark lyrically, seeming to address insecurity and challenge, but the memorable melody keeps it moving along. It starts the album off in fine style.

 

Drive

4/5

As mentioned earlier, I was well off the REM bandwagon by the time this record came out. I spent the 90s completely immersed in the underground... No radio, no mainstream movies, no mainstream records... So I missed a lot of the popular culture of the time.

So many people I knew over the years though, old REM fans, told me to check out this record, so I finally did, albeit about two decades after the fact. By that time I had stopped looking at post-Pageant REM through a kneejerk lens of disappointment and dismissal, and had managed to be able to aesthetically separate the two eras in my mind.

Drive is moving. The disaffection in Stipe's voice is real and where in the recent past it had sounded clunky to me at times, here it sounds lived in and paid for. Right off the bat I loved the Rock On references, with that same jaundiced view of the pop world, conflating the "hey kids, let's have fun" banality of the lyrics with the world weary ironic malaise of the vocal approach.

John Paul Jones' strings are absolutely fantastic. The dude is a consummate pro. Incredible. They give a spacious weirdness to the song that's a bit otherworldly.

The only knock I have is that Buck's distorted electric guitar break may be the most normal thing I've ever heard on an REM record to date. The sound of it is straight out of radio rock, and it almost ruins the song for me. Truly an awful sound, to my ears.

 

Drive: I don't know who this David Essex guy is you all keep referring to, because I think we all know that Michael Damian OWNS "Rock On"!

Can't wait to dive into the lengthy comments so far, as I love Drive and AFTP overall. For now, given time constraints, I'll just register a big-time 5/5.

 

Drive
Another of their songs that I recognize as a great song more than I like it. I certainly don't dislike it, but just a bit bored with it. Like the electric guitar break and agree with everyone that the strings are pretty amazing.
I'd give it a 3, but due to the fact that they chose such an odd song as their first single is respectable, so bumping it to a 4/5.

 

If I may roll the clock back a bit, 1991 also saw Michael's appearance on another The Golden Palominos album, Drunk with Passion.

I love this song. Michael sounds great on it and how can you ever go wrong when Richard Thompson is your guitarist?


Overall this a pretty solid record. Come for Alive and Living Now, but stay for Bob Mould's roaring Dying from the Inside Out. Also with Richard Thompson and Bob is VERY much in his dark Black Sheets of Rain mode. It's angry and loud and awesome.

 

Drive

I was definitely "out" on REM in 1991. What perked my ears up and brought me back into the fold was their cover of "First We Take Manhattan" on the Leonard Cohem tribute album I'm Your Fan. I was living in Austin at the time, and I think it was KLBJ that played this a lot. I liked it better than almost everything on the Out Of Time album, and it just felt "right" - like they had gotten back into the groove again.

So, sometime later, when the "Drive" single was released I was ready to hear R.E.M. with a fresh pair of ears. The video for it was great, full of a stage diving mob in slo-mo, coming out at the height of grunge music, competing against the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, etc, this combination of video & song was genius. Showing stage divers passed along in a crowd, while wearily singing "hey, kids, rock and roll, nobody told you where to go". It was as if REM had written "the anti-grunge song", while somehow making their own version of a grunge song at the same time. I got the references to David Essex's 1974 hit "Rock On", and felt like REM was making their own commentary on the changing music of the early 1990's:

Many big groups from the 80's faded as soon as grunge hit the airwaves. Groups that took a look at themselves and adapted their approach were able to make some career-defining albums (REM and U2) in this time period, while others struggled and never did have another big hit album (INXS, for example, despite making great music). At this point, hearing Drive from REM made me think of them as elder statesmen, surveying the trends and showing the younger groups "this is how it's done".

The guitar solo at 2:00 in is one of my favorites. Peter Buck acknowledged it as a tribute to Brian May of Queen. Compare it to the solo in Queen's "We Will Rock You" as a point of reference.

Drive was not a huge hit, but coming as it did, before the release of the album, it was a warning shot that declared "This is not the REM of “Stand” and “Shiny Happy People” - we've moved on now". It cleansed the palate and invited listeners into Automatic For The People - their first great album in several years, and one that stands on its own distinct platform apart from "early REM".

 

I pretty much had no expectations at all for Automatic. I felt like Out of Time was their weakest album to date and while it had some good and even some great songs on it, overall I thought it a step down from its predecessors.

I was thinking about this coming into work this morning, and and I am pretty sure I first heard "Drive" as a "World Premier Video" on MTV. There are a lot of songs that I heard for the first time that way (I was still a pretty huge MTV watcher at the time), where I totally and completely (still) associate the visual with the song. This is one of those songs.

I don't want to say that it was "shocking" - that may be too strong of a word - but I remember thinking to myself, "if THAT is the first "single," what is the rest of this record going to sound like?" Because it just did not seem to be "single material." It really threw me for a loop. And I echo what a lot of you have already said - I too love the "ominous" or "menacing way that Stipe sings the lyrics and the strings are marvelous on this song (as they are throughout this record).

I also love the version of this song that appears on the Greenpeace concert (which was another early bootleg purchase for me way back in the day).

5/5 to start off this record.

 

Yes, this is an accurate description of how I felt about REM at this point too.

Ditto. It really drew me in. Something that had been missing was now “back”. REM seemed relevant to me again, all because of one song.

 

Drive
Great opener. Production-wise it sounds better than anything from the previous two albums - it's like they finally figured it all out and here are the results. My only (very minor) quibble is that it goes on a bit too long. There's a point in the song where the music fades and I think it's at the end but then the chorus (or is it a verse? It's hard to tell which is which) repeats before fading out for good.
4.8/5

 

The Stipe track here is great. It got a lot of play from me and my brother.

 

Automatic For the People (Preview) – For all the previous R.E.M. album releases, I was under the wing and protection of my parents. When “Automatic For the People” came out, I was trying to figure out life on my own. It’s one of the albums I remember most during that period so it holds special importance to me. R.E.M. also seemed to be cutting more of their safety nets away. They strayed even further from being a traditional rock band. AFtP has a lushness and warmth to it that we haven’t seen before from R.E.M. To me, AFtP is R.E.M. going to the next level and maturing as artists. It’s not my favorite album, but I wouldn’t argue that it’s not their best. It’s also another “True Album” like Fables or Document, instead of collection of songs like “Out of Time”. AFtP is certainly timeless – At least for me. I haven’t heard the album in several years but I notice I appreciate it in an entirely different way now, then I did 30 years ago.


Drive – This threw me a bit, as all the past R.E.M. openers were fairly upbeat. “Drive” sets the tone that this album is going to be different. The acoustic guitar riff is eerie and the echo effects on the vocals add to that feeling. I love the explosion when the electric guitar riff is introduced. The dramatics continue with the brilliant orchestration. (I didn’t know John Paul Jones was behind them until yesterday) Sometimes, I wish they didn’t run through the chorus an extra time at the end, but a minor complaint. Great, even though unorthodox, way to kick things off. Love the upbeat live arrangement of this song as well. 5 Rating.

 

Automatic For The People (preview)

This is difficult. I love R.E.M. They were a big part of my college and young adult life. While I drifted away from them after they left I.R.S., I was still a fan. From Green forward, diminishing returns set in, but I still found things to appreciate in their music. I even found plenty to like in the two post-Berry albums I bought, Up and Reveal.

But I can’t stand Automatic For The People. I despise it. It’s not just “sort of don’t like it” or “they made better” or “it isn’t their best but way preferable to what others were putting out” type of dislike. It’s not an album full of good songs dragged down by a few dogs. It’s a veritable kennel. It’s awful. I actively and unequivocally hate it. With a passion. Nearly every song. It aggravates me to the core. I’m incredulous that R.E.M. released an album this astonishingly bad. It’s the only album I can think of by a favorite artist of mine (or any great artist, for that matter) in their prime that inspires this level of antipathy. It may be the single most alienating album I’ve ever heard. I thought Green was a clunker but I dismissed it as an inevitable misstep. AFTP completely altered the way I viewed the band going forward.

When I played it for the first time when it came out I was appalled. Listening again for this thread, I still am. The songs are dreary, nonsensical affairs that smash through my last ounce of patience. The melodies are unmemorable and, occasionally, nonexistent. Stipe’s vocals here are terrible and accentuate his worst tendencies. There’s little imagination or sense of craft on display. It’s not entertaining, enlightening or comforting. It’s stultifying and insulting. And frequently boring.

I recognize mine is a relatively lone viewpoint in the wilderness. I know many of these tracks are beloved and treasured by R.E.M. fans. I respect that and am sincerely happy the record resonates so strongly with people. I’ve had friends tell me I need to listen harder, that these songs are complex and keep trying. Whatever. The chances of a proverbial “a-ha” moment are long gone I think. I wish I liked it more and could share that pleasure with others. Being the loner standing against the wall at the party is no fun. Generally, I don’t begrudge R.E.M. any ounce of acclaim, they deserve it. But this record? No.

Drive

It’s an ominous sign for an R.E.M. album when the first song isn’t a killer cut since they usually come charging out of the gate. The downward trend began with “Radio Song” and continues with “Drive”. It’s not clear to me what they’re aiming for here. It sounds like it’s trying to be anthemic but ends up anemic.

The start/stop flow of the song never allows momentum to be generated and it’s truly annoying. Just when you think the song might be going somewhere, it pulls back. The repeated “baby” every two seconds becomes wearisome. I counted 16 “babys” (oof), but at least in the middle it’s broken up with seven seconds of “Ollies”. Sharp instincts there.

The good news is that the band gamely tries to hold things together. Musically the song works somewhat when it’s not constantly pumping the brakes, and the playing does elevate “Drive” considerably. The acoustic moments are particularly effective. The song’s arrangement just keeps getting in its own way.

The bad news is that it’s mostly downhill from here. 2/5

 

Well-written. (Even if irredeemably wrong. ;-) )

 

Drive
My tastes in music were changing when this came out. But I was definitely a religious watcher of 120 Minutes. I loved that for an opening album track and lead off single, this was like a western noir. Dark, patient, confident, and killer arrangement by Jonesy to not pick the obvious and put something that complements the track. Not a song I’m always in the mood for but I do like it and where they were going with it.
4.5

 

Drive 5/5

An astonishing start to an album. As noted above the production is fantastic from Scott Litt and there's a absolute quiet menace to the song that threatens to build throughout and even when the electric guitar kicks in (my favourite part of the track) Michael's vocals stay at the same volume when it would have been so easy to belt it out.

I think in someways that this could be the riskiest first single of their career. Your previous album sold well over ten million copies and your new one is having to compete with such albums like Nevermind,Ten and Achtung Baby which are still selling loads. Releasing such a brooding
track is a good way to tell the casual fans who came on board for Out of Time that there's not going to be too much like Shiny Happy People on this one.

So yeah a classic song to start and as we will see they will top it many times on this album alone.

 

Drive: This is where things got weird for me. I really didn't like this song, and it was the first thing I heard from the album. Hard to nail down. "Losing My Religion" jumped out at me. "Drive" was just sort of there. It wasn't as bad as "Low"! But it didn't grab me either. I'll reserve judgment on the rest of the album as we go along, as I find time has tempered my view on a lot of things that didn't hit me the right way in real time. I surely bought the album, and I gave it away in the early 00s when you could easily save MP3 copies of the tracks you liked and lose the physical product if so desired. (Of course, I'd gain access again stumbling upon the Warner Bros box sets, and I was glad I did, as a few things came back to me better.)

In my recent Warner Bros reappraisal, "Drive" still didn't do much for me. A few songs that I blew straight by did. But it set some sort of odd tone for me with the album. So while much of the world was embracing them as rock stars, I found myself starting to fold my arms. Admittedly, very little had changed about them. Stipe was clearly feeling more comfortable in his skin at this level. He'd always be awkward, to this day, but he seemed to be learning how to inhabit the role of front man onstage, and clearly enjoyed meeting other people at that level. The rest of the guys? Maybe wearing better clothes, but virtually no different from the early days. When you read stuff about "not speaking to each other" after a tour or recording sessions, you have to wonder what was going on as they presented such a casual, relaxed front. But they were shifting into overdrive here, so something was clearly going right with them!

 

I give you credit for feeling strongly enough to despise the record. I was just, "I don't relate to these songs at all, they don't speak to or for me". We'll see how it goes over on a second listening.

edit to add: all of a sudden the phrase "withdrawal in apathy is not the same as disgust" came to mind