'I Feel Fine' compiles best of R.E.M.'s early years
By Jeremiah Tucker
Globe columnist
The first CD I ever bought was R.E.M.'s "Monster." I listened to it on my brother's Sony Discman, the only CD player we had at the time. My favorite song from the album was "Crush with Eyeliner," but I didn't know who guest vocalist Thurston Moore was (or that he was cooler than Michael Stipe).
I liked the orange, recycled paper and the blurry monster on the cover. I loved that every song was slathered in guitar. I didn't know that R.E.M. had been a band longer than I had been alive, but I liked Stipe's shirt with the simple star logo that he was always photographed wearing, and I wondered why the rest of the band looked like nerds. I never learned all the words to any of the songs. I didn't watch the videos because my family didn't have cable. I decided that R.E.M. was my favorite band. "Monster" was the only CD I owned. I was 13.
A few years later, every used CD bin in the country had umpteen copies of "Monster." Apparently, at one point everyone owned it, loved it and then sold it. I still own the album, but not the one I bought 12 years ago. That one got too scratched to play, so I bought another copy used for $4, more from a completist's desire than a love for the album. "Monster" didn't age well for me. What sounded "alternative" when I was 13 sounded unrelentingly desperate at 18. While I still like it more than "Reveal" and "Around the Sun," it's one of my least favorite R.E.M. albums.
(If you're wondering, my favorite R.E.M. albums are probably "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," "Murmur" and "Fables of the Reconstruction," an answer that immediately brings to mind Jack Black in "High Fidelity" saying, "a sly declaration of new-classic status slipped into a list of old safe-ones ... very p----.")
Depending on the day and my mood, I might still be willing to admit that R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands. If I hadn't recently seen the 46-year-old Michael Stipe with either a thick stripe of blue paint across his eyes or a dollop of rainbow accentuation across his eyelids, then the chances increase quite a bit, and if you had asked me this week when all I listened to was R.E.M.'s "And I Feel Fine, The Best of the I.R.S. Years: 1982-1987," then the chances are I would have unequivocally said, "Yes sir, that R.E.M. is a damn fine band."
I sprung for the two-disc collector's edition of "I Feel Fine" that includes an extra CD of rarities, live tracks, demos and hand-selected favorites by Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry. I suggest you do the same because that extra disc is just as good as the one-disc set containing the highlights - a testament to the unbridled creativity of the young R.E.M. In five fecund years, the young band from Atlanta defined college radio and made some of the best music of the decade. R.E.M.'s first five albums are of such a singular quality, it's almost forgivable to say, "I'm really only into their early stuff." Because while I like the latter-day R.E.M., there is no doubt that band lost a little of its mystique in the leap to Warner Bros.
The I.R.S. years found R.E.M. hungry but unafraid. Nothing sounded like "Radio Free Europe" when it came out and while the band was full of young college dropouts, they imbued their songs with such timeless qualities as mystery, wisdom and a regionalism that was both Southern and universal. All of these ineffable qualities might be me reading too much into affectations such as Stipe's mumble and inscrutable lyrics. But it sounds real. It sound important, and when Stipe wordlessly moans near the end of "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)," I'd believe anything the band is selling. Because if it's a trick, it's seamless.
Re-listening to R.E.M. this week, I was stuck by how listening to these songs back-to-back there is an overarching flatness to early R.E.M.'s sound, like some abstract painting that at first look leaves you wondering what the big deal is about. Most of it is due to the production, but it suits the band's music perfectly. It sounds measured and intentional, and it turns the songs into an epoch rather than a mere stage in the life of a band. I found myself listening for those moments in each song that are jarring, setting them apart from their equally stellar brothers and sisters, be it Stipe intoning "Fire" or the locked-in interplay of Mills and Buck on "Can't Get There from Here."
In the booklet that comes with "I Feel Fine," there is commentary on each of the songs of the bonus disc. Stipe writes that for "Gardening at Night," he was lying on a mattress he had pulled into the yard when Buck went to lie next to him, guitar in hand, and all this change tumbled out of his pocket. Stipe remarked that it was probably all the money the band had at the time. I assume that's the main difference between R.E.M. then and R.E.M. now.
As a group, what else do they have to prove? The last two albums have sounded like R.E.M. trying to be the embodiment of "R.E.M," which is understandable. What band wouldn't want to be R.E.M.?
Address correspondence to Jeremiah Tucker, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802.
Globe columnist
The first CD I ever bought was R.E.M.'s "Monster." I listened to it on my brother's Sony Discman, the only CD player we had at the time. My favorite song from the album was "Crush with Eyeliner," but I didn't know who guest vocalist Thurston Moore was (or that he was cooler than Michael Stipe).
I liked the orange, recycled paper and the blurry monster on the cover. I loved that every song was slathered in guitar. I didn't know that R.E.M. had been a band longer than I had been alive, but I liked Stipe's shirt with the simple star logo that he was always photographed wearing, and I wondered why the rest of the band looked like nerds. I never learned all the words to any of the songs. I didn't watch the videos because my family didn't have cable. I decided that R.E.M. was my favorite band. "Monster" was the only CD I owned. I was 13.
A few years later, every used CD bin in the country had umpteen copies of "Monster." Apparently, at one point everyone owned it, loved it and then sold it. I still own the album, but not the one I bought 12 years ago. That one got too scratched to play, so I bought another copy used for $4, more from a completist's desire than a love for the album. "Monster" didn't age well for me. What sounded "alternative" when I was 13 sounded unrelentingly desperate at 18. While I still like it more than "Reveal" and "Around the Sun," it's one of my least favorite R.E.M. albums.
(If you're wondering, my favorite R.E.M. albums are probably "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," "Murmur" and "Fables of the Reconstruction," an answer that immediately brings to mind Jack Black in "High Fidelity" saying, "a sly declaration of new-classic status slipped into a list of old safe-ones ... very p----.")
Depending on the day and my mood, I might still be willing to admit that R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands. If I hadn't recently seen the 46-year-old Michael Stipe with either a thick stripe of blue paint across his eyes or a dollop of rainbow accentuation across his eyelids, then the chances increase quite a bit, and if you had asked me this week when all I listened to was R.E.M.'s "And I Feel Fine, The Best of the I.R.S. Years: 1982-1987," then the chances are I would have unequivocally said, "Yes sir, that R.E.M. is a damn fine band."
I sprung for the two-disc collector's edition of "I Feel Fine" that includes an extra CD of rarities, live tracks, demos and hand-selected favorites by Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry. I suggest you do the same because that extra disc is just as good as the one-disc set containing the highlights - a testament to the unbridled creativity of the young R.E.M. In five fecund years, the young band from Atlanta defined college radio and made some of the best music of the decade. R.E.M.'s first five albums are of such a singular quality, it's almost forgivable to say, "I'm really only into their early stuff." Because while I like the latter-day R.E.M., there is no doubt that band lost a little of its mystique in the leap to Warner Bros.
The I.R.S. years found R.E.M. hungry but unafraid. Nothing sounded like "Radio Free Europe" when it came out and while the band was full of young college dropouts, they imbued their songs with such timeless qualities as mystery, wisdom and a regionalism that was both Southern and universal. All of these ineffable qualities might be me reading too much into affectations such as Stipe's mumble and inscrutable lyrics. But it sounds real. It sound important, and when Stipe wordlessly moans near the end of "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)," I'd believe anything the band is selling. Because if it's a trick, it's seamless.
Re-listening to R.E.M. this week, I was stuck by how listening to these songs back-to-back there is an overarching flatness to early R.E.M.'s sound, like some abstract painting that at first look leaves you wondering what the big deal is about. Most of it is due to the production, but it suits the band's music perfectly. It sounds measured and intentional, and it turns the songs into an epoch rather than a mere stage in the life of a band. I found myself listening for those moments in each song that are jarring, setting them apart from their equally stellar brothers and sisters, be it Stipe intoning "Fire" or the locked-in interplay of Mills and Buck on "Can't Get There from Here."
In the booklet that comes with "I Feel Fine," there is commentary on each of the songs of the bonus disc. Stipe writes that for "Gardening at Night," he was lying on a mattress he had pulled into the yard when Buck went to lie next to him, guitar in hand, and all this change tumbled out of his pocket. Stipe remarked that it was probably all the money the band had at the time. I assume that's the main difference between R.E.M. then and R.E.M. now.
As a group, what else do they have to prove? The last two albums have sounded like R.E.M. trying to be the embodiment of "R.E.M," which is understandable. What band wouldn't want to be R.E.M.?
Address correspondence to Jeremiah Tucker, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802.
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