20 Years of R.E.M. Fandom – Part 2
By the time 1997 hit October, I had already started calling it the Year from Hell. I had graduated from Fordham and already found myself foundering professionally. I had compiled a jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none resume that left me unsure of what field to pursue and without the confidence to sell myself in interviews. I was about to leave my second job since graduation, my apartment in New York was a disaster waiting to happen, and I often supplied the disaster. Friendships strained as my fellow grads and I adjusted to “the real world†and its new demands on us. Wherever my happy place was, it was pretty vacant.
And then I read that Bill Berry was quitting R.E.M. Clearly, the universe had quit playing fair.
I can’t say I was surprised. The poor guy had an aneurysm on stage. If he wanted to go take it easy for life, he was more than entitled. Still, it was one more signal. The glory days of high school and college were over. Time to start moving on. Except, of course, I didn’t. I went to the library, checked out a book collecting all of Rolling Stone’s articles about the band, and served myself a crash course of R.E.M. history as it happened. And I waited for the next album, to see what Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe minus Berry would produce.
Magazines and newfangled Web sites said that the band would use drum loops and session players to fill in for Berry. A DJ described the album as a cross between Automatic for the People and Radiohead’s OK Computer. Electronica was ushering out my baroque harpsichords and acoustic guitars. And when I first put Up into my CD player and the drone of “Airportman†began, I wondered what the hell I was getting myself into. Had Bill taken all the melodies with him? Was there even a guitar on this thing?
I kept listening to the album, although I started programming out “Airportman†and some other tracks. The ones that were left started to impress me and, more importantly, to connect to me. 1997 had been something of a Year from Hell for R.E.M. too, and they were trying to pull themselves out of it. Michael Stipe’s lyrics weren’t just conjuring intriguing images; they were telling stories, and those stories resonated. From the disoriented nocturnal “Daysleeper†to the disillusioned “Sad Professor,†these protagonists were searching for something, and Buck and Mills found sounds that echoed and amplified that loneliness and yearning.
With that feeling was determination, and I needed that determination as I began my classes in the Ph.D. program. As I’d wait for the bus to bring me home from another seminar, I’d sing along to “Hope†with Stipe on my Walkman:
You’re questioning the sciences
And questioning religion
You’re looking like an idiot
And you no longer care
And you want to bridge the schism
A built in mechanism to protect you . . .
I was hoping my classes would bring me closer to that mechanism, but at that point they seemed to push me further away; I wasn’t sure if I accepted the basic premises of my classmates and faculty advisors, and so I would once more need the courage of my convictions to “Walk Unafraid.†At least R.E.M., in this new form, was still with me to celebrate the contradictions and help me when I fell.
When the band came to Camden in 1999, I almost didn’t go. I wasn’t sure I needed to see them without Berry, or that the new songs would sound so good live. But a friend offered me a ticket, and I wasn’t going to turn it down. It was a good show, although I remember only fragments: a short a capella version of “Hope,†Stipe asking the Philadelphia-area audience if they were proud of The Sixth Sense, and a performance of “Cuyahoga†that surprised me, since I wasn’t sure if the band would ever reach back into the catalogue.
Since Automatic, the band had released an album every two years. But they felt that their dogged determination to stick to that schedule when they still hadn’t adjusted to Berry’s departure had put extra strain on the band, and they had an opportunity to write the score to a film about Andy Kaufman that would share a title with their own musical tribute to the comedian. The score snippets on the soundtrack album are forgettable, but I really do like the single they released for the film, “The Great Beyond.â€
As the calendar moved toward summer 2001, I was married and teaching classes as part of my graduate work. Instead of waiting for DJs to play singles, I kept a vigil on the band’s website, which offered snippets of the first single before finally letting us hear “Imitation of Life.†The single sounded like something that might have come from Lifes Rich Pageant or maybe Out of Time. Pattie and I were listening to more and more public radio, and when they played “The Lifting†I started to get really excited about the next album. Stipe’s protagonist didn’t seem ready to believe in visions of something greater, but I was quite prepared to do so, and this song seemed to soar.
As it turned out, “Imitation of Life” and “The Lifting” are somewhat unusual fare for the album Reveal. In most of its tracks, it keeps the quiet mood of Up, and on a few of them it hits similar heights of inspiration. I’m still fond of “I’ll Take the Rain†and summer walks to “Beat a Drum†were usually quite pleasant. Now, instead of a Walkman, I loaded the songs onto an MP3 player, which made it easier to pick my favorites and leave the rest behind. As technology shifted, I spent less time absorbing full albums, and this was no less true for R.E.M.’s new albums than for other artists’.
Loading all of those tracks onto my computer made it easier to play whatever song struck my fancy, and I needed that ability once 2002 rolled around. My daughter was born, and she spent a lot of time in my lap or being rocked to sleep while I played playlists or just put the whole library on shuffle. She started to have her own favorites, and whether through genetics or osmosis she had absorbed some of my fondness for the guys from Athens. On many nights, she would climb into my lap at the end of a long day and ask for “some shoulder and ‘Reno.’†As a result, “All the Way to Reno†is still the second-most-played track in my iTunes library.
I read about the band working on a greatest hits compilation and re-recording some old songs from its early performing days. I resigned myself to getting sucked into buying an album, most of whose tracks I already owned. A second disc of rarities and Peter Buck liner notes made the purchase palatable, and the tour in 2003 was plenty of justification for the whole exercise. The band played songs from throughout its history, and even took requests through its website.
This is around the time that I finally joined the official fan club. The newsletter itself had long been rendered outdated by the web site. But every year the band released a holiday single, and more importantly, fan club members got access to a presale. I originally scored front row seats to that 2003 concert, but when the band changed the venue I found myself way back in the second row. I chose not to rush up to the stage, but even so, I was close enough to see the plastic dinosaurs on Peter Buck’s amplifier. As long as I kept my eyes on the stage, the show was excellent. If I turned around to see empty seats in the relatively small arena, I got a reminder of how much had changed since the 90s. Still, for the people who did come, there was little reason for disappointment. The band pounded through “Life and How to Live It,†and just like they had done with “Me in Honey,†the live experience elevated the song. None of my favorites from Lifes Rich Pageant made the setlist that night – they had just been played a few nights before in Toronto – but I did get to hear “Nightswimming” live. Some in the audience tried to cheer or yell out the words. I kinda think they missed the point.
Even though 2003 was the year of the (first) greatest hits collection, the band was working on new material. When the United States launched its invasion of Iraq, the band posted the song “Final Straw†to its website as an expression of protest. There was a simplicity to the song that enhanced the power of its statement, and I was glad to see it performed in 2003. I was also ready to hear what other songs would join it on the next album. By 2004 plenty of radio services had also moved to the Internet, so my fist listen to the first single from Around the Sun was courtesy of the BBC. The DJ sounded a little disappointed and called it a “grower.†A friend of mine told me he had heard an advance copy through his job; when I said I envied him, he told me, “Don’t.â€
Uh-oh.
The entire album premiered over an Internet stream before its official release. In retrospect, I may have gone through something similar to the five stages of grief as I played that stream over and over again. All of the clever narratives and emotional strength that I had found in Stipe’s work on Up seemed to have vanished; on some songs he sounded like he was trying to find something, anything, to say. Now, I do not want to read too much about the creator from the creation. Maybe Stipe was just making artistic choices that didn’t click with me. He certainly wasn’t the only one. I struggled to find any energy in the music – the instruments weren’t clicking together, the melodies weren’t carrying me anywhere. Even “Final Straw†felt like it had been over-produced, although it was still one of my favorite songs from the album. I found some things to like on the album, but more than any other R.E.M. album, I found a lot of it forgettable and I became less fond of it as time passed.
The fall of 2004 was also an election season, and when R.E.M. decided to open for Bruce Springsteen on the Vote for Change tour, they shifted their touring plans. Pattie and I headed to a fairly small theater in Atlantic City to see the band a few days before the election. There was an odd energy in the crowd, with some people holding campaign signs. I thought the band gave a powerful performance of “Around the Sun,†a song that appeared with the closing credits of a pro-John Kerry documentary. Beyond that song and another strong performance of “Life and How to Live It,†I don’t remember much from that show. Unlike the 2003 show, this concert was heavy on the new songs . . . and as I grew more and more tired of those songs, I wondered if this was the point where what R.E.M. used to do became more important than what it was doing.
The next release from the band did not exactly quell my fears. The 2003 greatest hits album had only drawn from the band’s Warner Bros. catalogue. Their first five albums, originally recorded for I.R.S. Records, were owned by EMI. Even though I.R.S. had released Eponymous in 1988 – thus allowing me to learn the meaning of the word ‘eponymous’ – EMI decided to go for it again and release a new Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982-1987 album. Since I already had the original albums and the original best-of, I thought I could skip this – but then there was a double-album special edition with liner notes and a couple of songs and demos that had never been released, so I put on my “Sucker†hat and ordered it.
The point at which your favorite band has released more greatest hits compilations than albums of new material during a four-year time span is the point at which you realize you are not a young person anymore. One of them, anyway.
A few years passed and not much of anything happened. I wasn’t really listening to the radio. If one album in a year caught my attention, that was saying something. With an iPod with over a thousand songs on it and iTunes finally making it possible to grab the singles that I had liked from bands whose albums I didn’t care for, I wasn’t sure how much I was in the market for all new music; there was plenty of material to rediscover. When 2007 came along, I was curious but not anxious about what R.E.M. would do next. They announced that they were working with a new producer, and planned a series of five “live rehearsals†in Dublin – not concerts, but a set of performances that would let the band test out new material with the energy of an audience. And if they happened to play some old not-the-hits while they were at it, well, no one in the audience would complain.
I managed to avoid most of the spoilers coming out of those rehearsals. Since the band was encouraging people to use social network like YouTube and Flickr to share their memories (and recordings) of the live rehearsals, this was no mean feat. But it was clear that a lot of people felt optimistic about these new songs. All I had to do was wait for the album to come out . . . nine months later. Even though the band had resolved to spend only a few weeks in the studio, they scheduled months between those sessions for a variety of reasons. To tide us over, that fall they released a live CD recorded in Dublin – from the 2004 tour. Yes, the first official live album featured songs from their least-liked album as the centerpiece. Sometimes iconoclasm gets you “Losing My Religion†as a single. Sometimes it gets you R.E.M. Live.
My disinterest in the live album didn’t shake my anticipation of the studio record, especially when I found myself listening to the first single, “Supernatural Superserious,” over and over on my iPod. Now, instead of waiting for DJs or captures of web streams, I could just pay my dollar to Amazon and get the track on my MP3 player. As I waited for Accelerate, that single showed up on a lot of my playlists. As the band hit the promotional circuit, they seemed to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the album, and I enjoyed that sense of renewal. The album’s songs certainly reflected that enthusiasm, and they made for great additions to the band’s set lists. “Living Well Is the Best Revenge†and “Accelerate†were particularly helpful when I needed to rev up my engines before teaching a class, and Alex enjoyed singing along to “I’m Gonna DJ†from the back seat of the car.
When the band came to play in Philadelphia in June 2008, they managed to knock just about every item from my wish list. They played “Hollow Man,†which I recorded with my cell phone for Alex. They did an acoustic version of “Let Me In†that was every bit as amazing as the electric version they had played in 1995. And they played three songs from Lifes Rich Pageant, including “Fall on Me†and “Begin the Begin.†Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam even joined in on “Begin the Begin.†I left that show thinking that if I never saw the band again, I’d have no regrets. Good timing, huh? So far there has not been any kind of official release from this tour, unless you count the band’s appearance on Austin City Limits. That’s a shame, although at least the band did release a double-album of songs from the live rehearsals.
By the time R.E.M. began recording its next album, I was finally finished with graduate school. In fact, 2010 was the first year that I was not registered as a student anywhere since 1977. Of course, now I’m teaching, so it’s not like I’ve gone far. But the professional instability that had marked my life since the Year from Hell was (mostly) over. I’m not trying to start anything new; I’m just trying to get better at the things that I am doing. I think that this feeling colored how I viewed the songs from Collapse Into Now as the band introduced many of them on its YouTube channel, complete with lyric videos. The songs weren’t a surprising new direction; they felt comfortably like R.E.M.
And yet, in the lyrics, there was a sense that nothing stays the same. There was the recognition of an unnamed turning point in “It Happened Today†and the re-evaluation of values and dreams in “Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I,†two beautiful songs. There was the invitation to chase the future and all of it changes in “Uberlin,†a song that has just about everything I love about the band. And there was another eulogy for the 20th Century in “Blue†– the same theme as “Electrolite,†the song that closed out the last album of R.E.M.’s first five-album contract with Warner Bros. as well as the band’s career as a quartet.
History was repeating – the band’s second contract with Warner expired, and as Mike Mills said in an interview, that meant that the band could do anything – or nothing. So I can’t say that I was surprised at lunch on September 21, 2011 when I saw on my Twitter feed that R.E.M. had decided to call it a day. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting about how much the band has meant to me. I’ve read and watched lots of interviews. I’ve listened to all of the R.E.M. songs on my iPod several times and watched my live DVDs. I even bought yet another hits compilation, which may wind up being the last CD I ever buy. (What can I say? I like liner notes, and Bill Berry’s are particularly good on this album.)
There are three new songs on the greatest-hits, but I don’t know how much I’ll listen to them. The single, “We All Go Back to Where We Belong,†is a perfectly fine song; when Rolling Stone previewed it the writer said that the song sounded like something that would play over the closing credits of a movie, and that certainly fits. The only way that it could better capture the sense of appreciating a good thing as it comes to an end and moving on hopefully into the future better would be if it were titled “Here Is a Song About Appreciating a Good Thing As It Comes to an End as We Move Hopefully into the Future, Which By the Way Is What We Are Doing Right Now.â€
But that’s not how I’m going to remember R.E.M. As Mike Mills has said, the music is still here. I’m going to remember the end of Collapse Into Now, as the last notes of “Blue†dissolve into a reprise of the beginning of the first track, “Discoverer.†That moment is now an eternal present for R.E.M., an invitation to the future. There are many moments of my life yet to discover, and I will carry the band’s music and everything they have meant to me with me into those moments.
This story of R.E.M. began in 1988. It is far from over.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.