Chasing the long tail of new media
Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984
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File Under Remember
Out of all of the songs of Reckoning, “camerA” was initially the most difficult for me to grok at first. After all, not only was it a slow one, it was well over five minutes, and kinda sad-sounding to boot, a bit jarring when compared to the mostly up-tempo rockers that dominated Reckoning.
Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984
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File Under Heaven
Let’s talk about Bill Berry for a minute.
In a lot of ways, he was R.E.M.’s secret weapon, not just as a songwriter — though he wrote songs as great as “Perfect Circle,” “Driver 8” and “Man on The Moon” — but as a smart, powerful drummer. From the very beginning, his sick beats were utterly integral to R.E.M.’s music, and while in one of the books I read, dB’s drummer Will Rigby dissed him for having super simple kick drum parts, I would argue that was part of the appeal: he was always driving even the folkiest songs forward.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1702: R.E.M. – “letter Never seNt”
Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984
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File Under Follow
“Time After Time (annElise)” just might be my favorite R.E.M. song.
At the very least, it’s probably my most favorite song on Reckoning, which puts me at odds with one of my most favorite R.E.M. fans, Stephen Malkmus, who in Pavement’s awesome paean to early R.E.M., “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence” famously screeched “‘Time After Time’ was my LEAST favorite song!”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1701: R.E.M. – “Time After Time (annElise)”
Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984
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File Under Confusion
While “Pretty Persuasion” might not be the best R.E.M. song, it’s probably the most R.E.M. song, a absolute microcosm of what made them so great, and — more importantly — what made so many young people decide not just to listen to these kind of songs, but to go out and make their own versions of the these kind of songs.
Find some friends, grab a couple of guitars, designate a bassist, play at the drummers house. Jingle jangle jingle. Jangle jingle jangle. It didn’t even matter if you were as great as R.E.M., because R.E.M. didn’t really seem as great as R.E.M., either. The point was that anybody could do it; the original point of punk rock before it got all codified into the eternal arguments about what was and wasn’t punk.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1700: R.E.M. – “Pretty Persuasion”
Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984
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File Under R-E-A-C-T
How do you follow up an album like Murmur? How do you follow up one of the greatest debut albums of all time?
In R.E.M.’s case, they decided to take their next batch of songs, walk into Reflection Sound Studios and just bang ’em out, wham wham wham! And so Reckoning was straightforward where Murmur was elusive, effusive where Murmur was reflective and — to me, at least — was kind of ground zero for their sound, especially in concert, where they were always far more rockin’.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1699: R.E.M. – “HarborcOat”
Television Performance, 1983
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File Under Sorry
On October 3, 1983, my two most favorite things of the 1980s collided . . . before I knew they were going to be my two favorite things of the 1980s.
In face, I don’t think I’d watched Late Night With David Letterman when R.E.M. made their U.S. television debut on his show. While I had probably read that Letterman was subverting the entire form, I still associated the entire form with Johnny Carson, who, was, you know, for my parents, not me.
Album: Murmur
Year: 1983
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File Under Opportune
Did you know about the joke that R.E.M. had running through their credits for their entire recording career? It had to do with their music publishing, which is why it’s super trainspottingy and utterly nerdy for me to know this. With Murmur, they decided to call their music publishing company “Night Garden Music,” which was “Administered throughout the Universe by Unichappel Music.” For nearly 30 years, on all of their studio albums absent one, exactly which world their Night Garden Music was administered would change.
I don’t remember when I discovered this, or if I read it in one of the many R.E.M. books I devoured in the late 80s / early 90s, but one of my goals as I write about them is to let you know what the variation is for each of their albums, as well as the one album where they — let’s face it, it was probably Michael Stipe who instigated this running joke — didn’t vary from the previous album.
This is just one of many public services of Certain Songs. You’re welcome!!
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1697: R.E.M. – “Shaking Through”
Album: Murmur
Year: 1983
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File Under Conversation
“9-9” just might be my favorite R.E.M. song . . .
I’ve always felt that the dissonant, offjointed “9-9” was the secret key to just how great Murmur was. Sticking it in the middle of side two, after all of the beauty of the first side and the rumble that started the second was like a statement of purpose: “yeah, we can do the soaring jangly songs, and we can do the lushly melodic ballads, but we can also do this weird-ass tone poem of utter incoherence.”
Oh, and I found out recently that I’ve been mispronouncing the title this whole time.
Album: Murmur
Year: 1983
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File Under Par
Probably because it was one of their earliest songs, “Sitting Still” is perhaps the purest straight-forward rocker on Murmur, accomplishing two things at once: uptempo joy and wistful nostalgia, which is a pretty neat trick, actually.
“Sitting Still” was originally released as the b-side of the Hib-Tone “Radio Free Europe” single, and the take on Murmur is the same one they used for the single, absent a new Mike Mills bass part and some fixed vocals, which probably accounts for relative simplicity in terms of both the arrangement and the instrumentation.
Kicking off with a massive Bill Berry snare drum hit, followed by Peter Buck smashing ringing chords on his Rickenbacker and Mike Mills playing about 15 basslines at once, “Sitting Still” gets off to a rousing start which overcomes the fact that I still have no idea which Michael Stipe singing on the first verse.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1695: R.E.M. – “Sitting Still”
Album: Murmur
Year: 1983
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File Under Anything
First, a housekeeping note: The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that I skipped “Perfect Circle” as I turn my attention to side two of Murmur. That’s because there’s a live version that I’ll be writing about in a few weeks that I love even more than the studio version, with its dual piano parts, echoed drum beat and backwards guitars. So don’t worry, we’ll get there.
In the meantime, let’s talk about one of more infamous roads not taken: the Stephen Hague-produced version of Murmur. Apparently the story goes that I.R.S. was a bit dodgy about having Mitch Easter — who’d already produced Chronic Town — produce the full-length. So R.E.M. agreed to go into the studio and do a song with Hague.