How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us: An REM Thread

[stip]

A lot of those were tough. Pageant, reveal, monster, and accelerate in particular

[stip]

I can't do it past Up. I never really revisited the post Up records enough to rank those songs.

There is a lot of great stuff on those albums, chud

[Lament]

Murmur: Talk About the Passion, Shaking Through
Reckoning: So. Central Rain, Time After Time (AnnElise)
Fables of the Reconstruction: Maps & Legends, Green Grow the Rushes
Lifes Rich Pageant: Begin the Begin, These Days
Document: The One I Love, Welcome to the Occupation
Green: Orange Crush, World Leader Pretend
Out of Time: Me In Honey, Country Feedback
Automatic for the People: Try Not to Breathe, Nightswimming
Monster: I Don't Sleep, I Dream, Strange Currencies
New Adventures in Hi-Fi: So Fast, So Numb, Electrolite
Up: Walk Unafraid, At My Most Beautiful
Reveal: The Lifting, All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)
Around the Sun: Electron Blue, The Ascent of Man
Accelerate: Living Well is the Best Revenge, I'm Gonna DJ
Collapse Into Now: Blue, Every Day is Yours to Win

[Norah]

I can't do it past Up. I never really revisited the post Up records enough to rank those songs.

There is a lot of great stuff on those albums, chud

I didn't hate them, but I did notice a marked drop in quality.

[stip]

Murmur: Talk About the Passion, Shaking Through
Reckoning: So. Central Rain, Time After Time (AnnElise)
Fables of the Reconstruction: Maps & Legends, Green Grow the Rushes
Lifes Rich Pageant: Begin the Begin, These Days
Document: The One I Love, Welcome to the Occupation
Green: Orange Crush, World Leader Pretend
Out of Time: Me In Honey, Country Feedback
Automatic for the People: Try Not to Breathe, Nightswimming
Monster: I Don't Sleep, I Dream, Strange Currencies
New Adventures in Hi-Fi: So Fast, So Numb, Electrolite
Up: Walk Unafraid, At My Most Beautiful
Reveal: The Lifting, All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)
Around the Sun: Electron Blue, The Ascent of Man
Accelerate: Living Well is the Best Revenge, I'm Gonna DJ
Collapse Into Now: Blue, Every Day is Yours to Win

I don't sleep... is maybe the only song in monster I don't like.

World leader pretend used to be my favorite song in the whole world

[stip]

I can't do it past Up. I never really revisited the post Up records enough to rank those songs.

There is a lot of great stuff on those albums, chud

I didn't hate them, but I did notice a marked drop in quality.

I think accelerate is every bit as good as the old albums, and reveal really starts to reveal itself (ugh) after a lot of listens. It's not a singles record

[Norah]

I can't do it past Up. I never really revisited the post Up records enough to rank those songs.

There is a lot of great stuff on those albums, chud

I didn't hate them, but I did notice a marked drop in quality.

I think accelerate is every bit as good as the old albums, and reveal really starts to reveal itself (ugh) after a lot of listens. It's not a singles record

You know my tastes well enough to know that I'm not afraid of a record with no singles.

[Lament]

I Don't Sleep, I Dream is a good song to make out to.

[stip]

Oh sure. I just meant that one takes more time than usual to sink in, and if you're plowing through the catalog (which you were) to would be easy to not give it the time it needs/deserves compared to what's around it, which is more immediately striking. It's not like you had years of exhausting the other albums under your belt yet

[stip]

I Don't Sleep, I Dream is a good song to make out to.

I think You is sexy as hell

[Lament]

For a band that isn't very sexy, Monster has some pretty sexy moments.

[stip]

It does.

[stip]

Let the sun beat through the clouds,
Let me kiss you on the mouth.
All my childhood toys with chew marks in your smile.
Let me hold your syrup close to mine.
Let me watch you, Hollywood and Vine.
And I want you like the movies, touch me now.
I love you crazy, just keep on.
I love you madly, just keep watch.
You wipe my lips,
You turn me on.
My attentions are turned to you.

Did I dream you were a tourist
In the Arizona sun?
I can see you there with luna moths
And watermelon gum.
I woke up in the sleeping bag,
With nowhere else to run.
You're standing in the bathroom
Telling me its all in fun.
I love you crazy, just keep on.
I love you madly, just keep watch.
You wipe my lips,
You turn me on.
My attentions are turned to you.

I can whisper in your ear.
I can write a calendar year
I can wing around your Saturn smile, shout at the moon
I walked the tension wire line.
And I learned to disrespect the signs.
And I want you like a Pisces rising, even though
I love you crazy, just keep on.
I love you madly, just keep watch.
You wipe my lips,
You turn me on.
My attentions are turned to you.

[Norah]

Oh sure. I just meant that one takes more time than usual to sink in, and if you're plowing through the catalog (which you were) to would be easy to not give it the time it needs/deserves compared to what's around it, which is more immediately striking. It's not like you had years of exhausting the other albums under your belt yet

For sure.

I will say though that I'm really pleased with the way I went about that listening experienced. I don't know if 'plowed through" is the right way to describe it. I started buying them on LP one at a time in order and made a point not to rush to buy the next one, and sometimes it would take more time to find one in the quality I wanted or be able to even afford them. So I did get what felt like a substantial amount of time to listen and digest each record before moving onto the next. But at the same time, I was listening to them all very intently while having no real baggage going from one to the next. I didn't have those years to cement my opinion of what REM should sound like or have that they can never top their early shit mentality that you get with time, and it may have given me a little more objectivity as I went through.

[Norah]

For a band that isn't very sexy, Monster has some pretty sexy moments.

Monster is sexy as all hell.

[stip]

For a band that isn't very sexy, Monster has some pretty sexy moments.

when you were making out to I Don't Sleep were you thinking of Bill Berry's eyebrows?

[Lament]

I'd settle for a cup of coffee, stip. But you know what I really need...

[stip]

Oh sure. I just meant that one takes more time than usual to sink in, and if you're plowing through the catalog (which you were) to would be easy to not give it the time it needs/deserves compared to what's around it, which is more immediately striking. It's not like you had years of exhausting the other albums under your belt yet

For sure.

I will say though that I'm really pleased with the way I went about that listening experienced. I don't know if 'plowed through" is the right way to describe it. I started buying them on LP one at a time in order and made a point not to rush to buy the next one, and sometimes it would take more time to find one in the quality I wanted or be able to even afford them. So I did get what felt like a substantial amount of time to listen and digest each record before moving onto the next. But at the same time, I was listening to them all very intently while having no real baggage going from one to the next. I didn't have those years to cement my opinion of what REM should sound like or have that they can never top their early shit mentality that you get with time, and it may have given me a little more objectivity as I went through.

Yeah, there's something to that. I don't know that I've ever had an opinion of what REM should sound like, even though there is an REM sound. I'm way more elastic in my expectations than I am for, say, pearl jam

[Lament]

when you were making out to I Don't Sleep were you thinking of Bill Berry's eyebrows?

Mike Mills' bedazzled bell-bottoms.

[AndySlash]

Murmur: perfect circle, talk about the passion
Reckoning: pretty persuasion, time after time (annelise)
Fables: driver 8, can't get there from here
Pageant: swan swan h, fall on me
Document: disturbance at the heron house, the one i love
Green: turn you inside out, world leader pretend
Out of time: country feedback, low
Automatic: sweetness follows, new orleans instrumental (man, this one was the hardest- i think it's a perfect record. and yes, i am serious about the instrumental, at least on a personal level.)
Monster: let me in, strange currencies
Hi fi: leave, how the west was won...
Up: walk unafraid, diminished
Reveal: she just wants to be, disappear
Around the sun: final straw, the outsiders
Accelerate: living well is the best revenge, until the day is done
Collapse: it happened today, discoverer

my early r.e.m. preferences are pretty well colored by the 'eponymous' album. beyond that i think my selections are fairly wide- warner-era r.e.m. was a band i grew up with and have many moments where their songs and albums were the soundtrack to life events both major and minor. i would always play 'low' on the jukebox at the pool hall, and new orleans instrumental was playing in the background of one of the happiest moments of my life, for example.

(jesus, i started this list when stip had no replies. good to see it spawn so many replies so quickly.)