REM's Finest - Day 8

Album – Out Of Time (1991)

Highlight – Losing My Religion (obviously)

Reason – After an almost 3 year break between albums (1 year taken up with a world tour) REM returned with their biggest selling album, their first number 1, and one of the biggest songs of the decade.  The meditation on fame and anxiety in the spotlight set to Peter Buck’s mandolin made it THE song everyone would like, regardless of your personal taste.

Stipe Gayness Factor - 6.  Stipe said he wanted to challenge himself by writing an album of love songs; but closer to the French definition of the love song, in that it would talk about, but not speak the L word aloud.  It’s like Oscar Wilde never went away.

REM's Finest - Day 7

Album – Green (1988)

Highlight – Untitled

Reason – If your definition of “selling out”, if you have one, is making an album that lots of people like and want to buy, or when  a band on an independent label signs with a big corporate, then this would be the album that caused REM to take a long pull on a purple scaly phallus and imbibe its black, manky produce.
Actually selling about the same number of copies as Document, Green is a more pop-oriented album, with the likes of Get Up, Stand & Orange Crush, but Stipe had managed to hone his lyrics and vocal performance to make some poetic statements on the way the world was going.

I first heard Green on a tape-to-tape copy (the 80’s version of illegal downloading) so always assumed the untitled track at the end was a B-side or a bonus from another album.  This was pre-internet so my only recourse was to buy every single album and compilation CD trying to find out the name.  Only after buying their biography did I learn the truth.  Fail.

Stipe Gayness Factor – 5.  Let’s not labour this point, but on their 1989 world tour Michael was flamboyant and dramatic, to say the least.

REM's Finest - Day 6

Album – Document (1987)

Highlight – It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Reason – The final album from their independent label IRS, completing the 5 record deal they signed way back in 1982.  Breakthrough single The One I Love brought them chart success, and is bizarrely  played at weddings quite often in spite of the heartless attitude of the narrator (a simple prop, to occupy my time).  But the stand out track for me is the Subterranean Homesick Blues tribute to ecological Armageddon, finished off with a cheerful shrug, a closer for the stadium tours they were later to perform.

Stipe Gayness Factor – 5.  A distancing from romantic engagement, more environmental worries and a passion for human rights and justice.  Anything to take your mind off those dream about trains forcing themselves into tight tunnels.

REM's Finest - Day 5

Album – Life’s Rich Pageant (1986)

Highlight – Fall On Me

Reason – Maintaining both their workrate and their commitment to new directions of music, REM cleared up the vocals and with more accomplished musicianship tiptoed ever so closer to the mainstream.  Fall On Me, perfect for radio, sets their newly stated environmental concerns to their now trademark choral refrains.  Even better on their MTV Unplugged set.

Stipe Gayness Factor – 4.  Ah, politics.  Where would political activism be without the closet cases and the sexophobic, as I know all too well.  The common refuge for those struggling with strange and confusing feelings is a better and more equal society’s gain.  Stipe would hold onto this beard for a few albums to come.

REM's Finest - Day 4

Album – Fables Of The Reconstruction (1985)

Highlight – Wendell Gee

Reason – To give it the full name, Fables Of The Reconstruction Of The Fables Of The.. and so on, bloody art students.  Recorded in London in between much touring, the band had barely a week to write the album with a new producer far away from home.  It’s testament to their creative powers that they pushed themselves away from their jangly stereotypes and into some more choral and folk-esque arrangements.  ‘ Gee, the closing track, is everything that REM do best.  Ambiguous, elusive, frustratingly cryptic but achingly beautiful.

Stipe Gayness Factor – 2.  OK, we’re beginning to get somewhere.  Becoming a storyteller, our young man is.  He shaved his head, dyed the new hair with mustard, drew words on himself and took to some odd fashion choices.  Experimenting :)

Buffalo 34 New England 31

Jon Cena! Good Will Hunting! Erm, Julianne Moore’s character from 30 Rock! Tom Brady! Wes Welker! Bill Belichick! Can you hear me Belichick you cheating scumbag?! You just got beat by the Bills! The Bills just beat you 34-31! You blew a 21-0 lead! BILLS ARE 3-0!!!!

Later - why supposedly intelligent people go silly over sports.

REM's Finest - Day 3

Album - Reckoning (1984)

Highlight – So. Central Rain

Reason – The follow-up to their universally applauded debut, REM attempted to capture a sound closer to their wild and energetic live shows.  Never going to be the classic debut of Murmur, but REM neatly avoided the “difficult second album” cliché by broadening their sound and freshening their output with the angelic vocals of ‘Rain, repeating the refrain “I’m sorry” until the microphone broke.  True, microphone really did break.

Stipe Gayness Factor - 1.  While the vocals did become a little clearer, we’re still nowhere near knowing what’s going on in that guy’s head.  The Mike Mills’ song “Don’t Go Back To Rockville” written as a plea to his girlfriend to stay over summer probably didn’t help.

REM's Finest - Day 2

Album - Murmur (1983)

Highlight - Perfect Circle

Reason - One of the finest debut albums ever made, as Peter Buck's guitar arpeggios define a worryingly mature and composed sound of a band barely out of college.  Still muffled, impenetrable lyrics for the most part, but the hallmark REM melodies are there from the beginning

Stipe Gayness Factor - 1.  Stipe claims 'Circle is "about an old girlfriend".  Having an old girlfriend doesn't make you straight, any more than being born in a stable makes you a horse, as Jesus would no doubt agree.  Besides this. he talked to at least 3 people while making this album, so he was beginning to get out of the house.

To start as you mean to go on...

and not finish as I usually do, which is to walk away after a couple of goes and forget it.  It's why I waited until I was 35 and married before starting a blog.

So in an effort to motivate me, I've started a daily tribute to REM; one of my favourite bands of all time, who split up yesterday (22/9/11).  Each day I'm going to post my favourite track from each album of theirs, as well as the emerging gayness of Michael Stipe, from zero to ten.

Hopefully, by the time I've posted all 16 (including the EP Chronic Town but not including compilation albums) I'll be into something of my stride and can take things on from there as it becomes a part of my usual routine.  You'll learn a lot about my routine as time goes on.

And my dislike of formatting, bad grammar, typos & punctuation, Top Gear, Forrest Gump and much much more...

REM's Finest - Day 1

Album - Chronic Town (1982)

Highlight - Carnival Of Sorts (Box Cars)

Reason - Their first EP following the success of a one-off single, found the nascent powers REM would come to wield in their later work.  Carnival Of Sorts, mostly a mumble of snatched words with a stirring choris marked them out as a band with a future.

Stipe Gayness Factor - 0.  Barely aware of his own genitals, Michael's emerging gayness was decades off.