REM - Green: Why you should never listen to sell out bias.

“Selling out” was a much bigger concern back when there was a possibility of bands making a reasonable living without putting songs in commercials. It feels like archaeology to talk about it at this point.

 

One thing that surprises me about this thread is the opinion some people have about Document. I think it is an outstanding album, full of brilliant songs, brilliantly produced. It is easily Top 3 REM for me. (Murmur and Lifes Rich Pageant being the other two; don't forget: no apostrophe, pedants! )

 

I used to think the same; but for me, "LIghtning Hopkins" and "Fireplace" are second tier. Not bad, just not as good.

Which actually is kind of par for the course for REM albums in the 80s, there is usually one or two "weaker"songs for me on side two. Green however, has no weak songs for me, though "The Other Child" is probbly the weakest, it's still pretty interesting.

 

Green was truly marred by Stand! Other than that, I can't think of a bad song. It's no Automatic true... Murmur was college rock, not arena rock. For a nice pairing from the same era, try Kiko and the Lavender Moon... eclecticism is nice

 

With the exception of LRP, all the IRS records have at least one song that I at least mildly dislike (or outright hate):
We Walk
Rockville
Can’t Get There From Here
Lightnin Hopkins & Fireplace

The other 3 songs on the second side of Document are wonderful, though

 

I feel like they were on the early side with that in 98. Up was a big influence on bands that later incorporated electronic sounds though (like Radiohead)

 

For me it's

• West of the Fields
• Camera
• Kahoutek
• What If We Give It A way & Just a Touch
• Lightnin' Hopkins & Fireplace

 

This may be a splitting hairs distinction, but Up is primarily analogue synths and, to my ears, is more retro than electronic or experimental.

It’s not as if they were using sequencers like New Order and Depeche Mode or glitchy cut up drum beats like Radiohead.

 

OK but if you removed Stipe's vocals, I wouldn't have recognised the band as REM. They just didn't have a distinctive (or very appealing) sound any more. By the time of Reveal and whatever its follow up was called, the REM sound had become totally generic.

 

I think it’s a natural progression, basically the next step after Life’s Rich Pageant and Document.
As far as ‘selling out’ I wouldn’t really call it as such.
They already started to embrace whatever was ‘hot’ at the time on previous albums, especially concerning production choices.
Green is much like what they did in the latter half of the 80’s, a bit experimental, as was Out Of Time afterwards, except it works a bit better here.
What bugs OOT a bit is the awkward attempts at Hiphop.

 

An Indie/college radio band that made it big.
That was their sin.

 

Reveal has a lovely melancholic vibe.
ATS is devoid of anything approaching spontaneity.
Not a good time for the band.
They admittedly weren’t into it at all and it shows.
Accelerate and Collapse Into Now were a great return to form.

 

I think I could’ve pegged Strange Currencies as REM without the vocal. I don’t think them morphing into a different sound is a bad thing. Some of their hallmarks are still there (mostly coming from Mills) anyway, and I’m glad they didn’t just make Reckoning over and over again. By the time Reveal came out, a lot of bands that grew up on REM had achieved success, so to me it’s less that REM became generic, more that the general sound of indie that they inspired became the norm

 

Stand, imo, is a fine single.
Nothing earth-shattering, just a great little pop song.
No problem with it.

 

I thought Get A Life was absolutely brilliant.

 

Stand is the song that got me in to REM. Bought the album. Full of great pop songs. Loved it

 

Comedy is in the mind and funny bone of the beholder, subjective for sure.
I went back and watched the Spewy and Me episode after my other post to see if I may have been too harsh.....I dont think I was.

Such a fine line between clever and stupid, as Messrs Tufnel and St. Hubbins once noted.....

If you enjoyed it, thats all that matters.

 

A friend's four young daughters demand the video for "Shiny Happy People" on their smart TV. If you saw them dancing and twirling around, you'd lose your cynicism for the song.

There's whole slew of ironically happy '80s songs. I should start a thread!

 

The first season of "Get A Life," with Chris living at home, is fantastic. Having Chris move out in Season Two was a bad call. I don't think anyone holds up "Spewey And Me" as a classic episode or representative of the series.

 

I gotta re-watch some episodes again, but always thought the conversations between him and his dad were hilarious.
And the show with the Cats-style musical is a classic.

Can’t recall much of the Spewey season, though.
Maybe I was too young to realize back then at 15, but maybe that’s where it jumped the shark..?

 

The band seems to try and hold up a coolness-factor by disowning it, but after years of agreeing with that I just have to say it really isn’t that bad at all.
Besides that, they arguably didn’t say ‘no’ to the cheques it gave ‘em.

 

Hehe, found it...

 

For me, REM, specifically their post -IRS output, was a victim of time and place. I was, quite literally, the perfect demo for the band, left-of-the-dial kid, in college, in the Deep South, when Murmur was released. And to many of us, that album was something more than an album, it was almost mystic.

If you’ve never spent any time in the South, it’s probably easy to dismiss it as a bunch of Jesus-addled, racist, backward, monster truck-driving hillbillies obsessed with NASCAR and the Confederacy. And certainly, there is that element. But it’s also other things: impossibly lush and green, serene, old, crumbling, mysterious, and at times impossibly beautiful. Southerners also have an unusual patience for eccentricity, and the southern college towns, with their modest rents and forgiving weather, drew them in droves. You could afford to be weird, and people didn’t mind too much if you were – bless your heart.

The “college” music at the time didn’t really reflect this, though. Certainly, the B-52s were an eye-opener to the rest of the world, and Tom Petty kind of filtered some of this vibe through Los Angeles, but we were largely getting our music from art-damaged New Yorkers, feral L.A. punks, and British anarchists.

So if you were like me and happened to be sitting on the porch of some crumbling tin roof shotgun house under a giant live oak a few blocks from campus, drinking keg beer with your friends and whoever else showed up, and someone turned off The Clash, or The Ramones, or Black Flag, or Def Leppard, and put on Murmur for the first time, it was a revelation.

All the odd production touches, the mysterious echoey background, the mumbled, cryptic lyrics and the strange, pensive beauty of the whole thing was a sonic representation of our universe – it sounded like our world felt. It was us, basically. Hell, they even looked like us. They weren’t uber-hip urbane junkies from the Bowery, scabbed up punks, shirtless skinheads, or L.A. rockabilly zombies, they were just a bunch of dudes who looked like every other guy we knew.

So that’s a LONG way to go to say that the first few REM albums had a profound influence on us, and felt hyper-specific to our particular world; I think “sacred” might be hyperbole, but they were certainly revered.

And accessible. One of my fondest college memories was sitting in grassy field with my roommates in front of stage a few hours before a dBs/REM show, smoking a joint, when REM came on stage to set up their gear. Stipe came to the front of the stage, asked if he could have a few hits, we said sure, and we chatted for a bit. And the reaction wasn’t “Oh my god, we just met a rock star!” Because he wasn’t. He was a peer, we agreed he seemed like a cool guy, and went on with our day.

But other people enjoyed them, too. Lots of other people. So they were around less frequently. And they got better as musicians. And at production. And at songcraft. And were coming into contact with other musicians at the top of their games. And by the end of their IRS run, they were producing objectively excellent, professional, polished, eclectic music fit for an international audience and worthy of stardom.

They just weren’t producing our music anymore. So while I enjoyed their output as year went by, it just wasn’t special to me anymore. They moved on, I moved, and eventually that was that.

So from me, it was lightning in a bottle, and when it was released, it was over. Even now, listening to those first few albums is less hearing music than opening a photo album, it’s incredibly vivid. The others? They’re good. But they’re just albums.

And I think it’s probably the same for many of the “IRS snobs.” It’s not so much indie cred as music that’s so strongly tied to a time and place and was so personal that it took on a magic that wasn’t – and couldn’t be -- duplicated in the later releases.

 

Great recollection

I have no perspective of the south in my personal life and wasn't alive during that period, either. But if any single album I have that I can say, this sounds like music from the deep south but also is so unlike anything else it's Fables. That entire record reminds me of everything you wrote - I can just imagine it in the lyrics of Driver 8 or Old Man Kensey, and the atmosphere

 

Of for sure, for sure. Great post!