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MEMORIES:
kendra remembers...I do remember seeing their 80's vids and I liked a couple of their songs.One of my brothers had the ... More »
Posted on 06/05/08
PHOTOS:
Release History:
1983 - Murmur
1983 - Reckoning
1985 - Fables of the Reconstruction
1986 - Life's Rich Pageant
1987 - Document
1987 - Dead Letter Office
1988 - Green
1991 - Out of Time
1992 - Automatic for the People
1994 - Monster
1996 - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
1998 - Up
1999 - Star Profiles
Members:
Peter Buck...guitar
Mike Mills...bass
Bill Berry (1980-97)...drums
“Stand in the place where you live
Now face north
Think about direction
Wonder why you haven’t before”
R.E.M is a band that could be admired for many reasons, but one might be their slow, steady rise to stardom, completely unique in an industry demanding instant hits and full of one-hit wonders. You could also admire them for their politics. Or if that’s not your thing, how about aesthetics? Their hard-work ethic? That they were at the forefront of the new alternative rock scene, releasing album after album, year after year, through the early 80s to 1988? That their music is accessible to generations, parents and children born decades apart? Oh, for so many reasons we do love R.E.M.
Once upon a time, a couple of decades ago in Athens, Georgia, vocalist Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck met each other at a record shop and bonded over their mutual tastes in music. They eventually met bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry, who incidentally went to high school and then the University of Georgia, Athens together, and started playing together. In the spring of 1980, they came up with the name Twisted Kites to play at the birthday party of a friend, and started playing a string of gigs in the promising Athens music scene. Soon, they flipped through the dictionary and chanced upon the term R.E.M and took it for themselves. The band members dropped out of school to focus on music; this is where the story really begins.
After playing shows all over the south, they recorded their first single, only issued at 1,000 copies. It got a lot of college radio play and topped Village Voice’s year-end poll of ‘Best Independent Singles.’ The band continued developing their style, and Buck’s jangly guitar and Stipe’s cryptic lyrics got attention – being so unique in the post-punk era of the early 80s. The positive attention from “Radio Free Europe” got R.E.M. some much needed attention from larget independent labels. In 1982, they signed on with I.R.S. Records, and set out on their debut EP, Chronic Town. To promote the record’s release, the band flew to California and taped a music video for “Wolves, Lower.” Stipe felt foolish over the whole lip-synching, and vowed to never do that in a video again. Soon, they released 1983’s Murmur. Then Reckoning in the same year. Mainstream rock didn’t catch onto them yet, but college radio was soaking it up, allowing R.E.M.’s reputation to build from the underground up. Then Fables of the Reconstruction… which changed their direction completely. After gloomy and dismal recording sessions in London, England, the band almost broke up. They never did, but the album came out on the dark and dreary side, and it brought out the story telling aspects in Stipe’s writing.
Following four years of relentless touring, the band found itself playing in larger venues to an increasing number of fans. They had become the quintessential college rock band. Bridging themselves to a wider fan base, Life’s Rich Pageant found Stipe enunciating his lyrics, resulting in a less blurry and esoteric album than what existing fans were familiar with. Next up, 1987’s Document, which actually found itself with a #9 hit single “The One I Love” bringing them out and into arenas. The album had an ironic upbeat, mainstream tempo blended with cynicism, bringing it an appeal that proved to be a hit with music fans, all while showing R.E.M.’s emerging politics and ethos on songs like “Welcome to the Occupation” and “Exhuming McCarthy.” Even the lyrics to the popular “The One I Love” remained cryptic enough, causing listeners to pause over their meaning. The album’s second single “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” was a pre-apocalyptic rant that only caught college radio success (even though it caught on in the 1990s with its inclusion on the soundtrack to the film Independence Day). R.E.M. made listeners feel hip, not pretentious.
Soon, the band released Green, bringing them even more commercial success with its hit single, “Stand.” Some long-time fans complained that they’d become too commercial and that song quality had lessened. The attention did give R.E.M. a platform on which to stand for their political interests. The extensive touring proved to be too much, and after a couple of years apart, the band reconvened to record their seventh album, Out of Time, released in 1991 giving the band their first chart-topping album in both the U.S. and the U.K. The hit singles, “Shiny Happy People,” with the B-52’s Kate Pierson, “Radio Song.” Soon after, they released the darker, slower and quieter Automatic for the People, with the enigmatic chart-topper, “Losing My Religion,” as well as other hits “Man on the Moon,” “Drive,” and the anti-suicide song, “Everybody Hurts.”
After the release of 1994’s Monster, a strange rash of maladies struck the group. The back-to-basics rocker was a commercial hit, with songs like “Crush with Eyeliner,” “Let Me In” (a song that was a lament over the loss of Stipe’s friend, Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain), and “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” On the supporting tour, members of the band were picking up medical problems like other people pick up pennies on the street. Berry had a brain aneurysm, Stipe got a hernia and Mill’s doctor found a tumor in his intestines. All three had emergency surgeries, and the show continued on.
New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the band’s longest album to date came next. Critical reaction to the album was mixed, though it has become a favorite for many a R.E.M. fan. Soon after, as they began recording again in 1997 for the album Up, Bill Berry left the band. They released the Berry-less album to moderate sales (by comparison to previous albums). The 2001 release of Reveal continued with R.E.M.’s increasingly subdued vibe.
R.E.M. continues to perform around the world to fans, and have been working on new material. In the fall of 2006, R.E.M. (including Bill Berry) was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. They performed the show at the ceremony, and supposedly while rehearsing all four are considering recording something in the near future. With music and promises for the future, fans get more hope to get a little more R.E.M.
