Life’s Rich Pageant

Certain bands epitomize my musical journey, such that it is, over the years. The Pixies are one. Foremost among them, however, is R.E.M. I do believe R.E.M is the first decent band I got totally into.

Let me put this in context. When I first heard an R.E.M song and acknowledged it as such, i.e. as belonging to “R.E.M”, it was probably in the early 1990s. I lived in Thimbrigasaya and my modus operandi revolved around listening to Sri Lankan radio, typically Yes FM or TNL, and recording choice tracks. This was, of course, limited by the fact that Sri Lanka was, and is, a musical backwater. Indeed, I recall that this strategy started for the first time in 1987 or so, when I was entirely reliant on the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. The first tape contained such gems as Domino Dancing by the Pet Shop Boys, and Notorious by Duran Duran. Sigh. I digress.

I believe one of these tapes contained Near Wild Heaven and Losing My Religion. By 1994, I had moved to Borella, and What’s the Frequency Kenneth? and Bang and Blame both featured on one of these ‘gems’. ‘Gem’ because I’m pretty certain they were interspersed in a morass of highly suspect second-rate trash.That was the extent of my involvement with R.E.M when I was in Sri Lanka. Fleeting but they had registered mentally as a ‘good’ band. Not that it should have bothered them, considering the musicopeasant that I was.

Then, in 1999, I bought Up from a HMV store. For a first R.E.M album to own, I can’t say it was the best, because even today, I find it a very uneven album with moments of excellence largely ruined by the fact that it had a drum machine almost the entire way through, and it was too morose and one-paced. Still, it has its gems – Walk Unafraid is a great track, and for a simple ballad, At My Most Beautiful is also a stand-out.

The market. From here.

Conversely though, a couple years later, I hit the market in the town I was studying in, and came across “The Best of REM‘ from the band’s years with IRS Records. Snapped it up. Nothing could have been more different from either Up or the rest of R.E.M I had listened to. I think the only song on it I had heard before was The One I Love and maybe It’s the End of the World but I cannot be sure about that. The early music is great but to a less refined ear, it takes a while to truly appreciate. My appreciation was off set a little bit by the fact that I managed to find both Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi on cassette at the same market. To this day, I do not own either album on CD despite my belief that the latter is arguably their finest album.

I picked up the remainder of the early albums at both the local HMV megastore and Tower Records (above, from here) in New York. All on sale. I think it was in New York that I truly got in to early R.E.M. and one doesn’t really appreciate R.E.M until you fully grasp early R.E.M. The albums may not have the radio-friendly mega-hits (Losing My Religion, Everybody Hurts, Orange Crush etc) but the first four albums – Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction and Life’s Rich Pageant are all masterpieces in their own right. None are very long, and demonstrate a band’s progression from oblique canvasses set to jangly guitars to the more straightforward rock band that emerged at Document, which is the symbolic end point of ‘early R.E.M’ insofar as the band left the independent IRS album to Warner Bros. I dare anyone to find a more impressive start to a career than those five successive albums. It’s also a great soundtrack to the sights and sounds of New York. Sadly, Tower Records is no more, but the musics live on. A great analysis of all the songs of this era, and of course the later era, is made at Pop Songs 08, a blog dedicated to R.E.M. songs, with the appropriate and highly laudable (!) sub-text “I’ll write about every R.E.M. song, eventually”.

R.E.M. in the new millennium has been a massive disappointment. It’s not that the albums were bad – though Around the Sun is – it’s just that I wanted R.E.M. to stop trying to produce albums, relax, have a bit of fun, and rock out. The late stuff sounded overproduced and less natural. Nonetheless, it was during this period, in the summer of 2003, (just before their last album was released) that I managed to catch the band at the T in the Park Festival in Scotland. They were promoting their Greatest Hits album so it was a playlist that spoke to the best of R.E.M. over twenty years. And live, they do rock out, they do have a bit of fun, and it was a fantastic night – in every sense of the word; we drove back from north of Edinburgh to northern England after the concert, setting off just after midnight and getting home at about 4 o’clock in the morning.

Around the Sun was the first R.E.M. album that I did not buy upon release. And still do not own. I probably will buy it one day, just for chronicling purposes, but let’s just say, there’s no great urge. Therefore, the concept of R.E.M relaxing a bit and utilizing guitars and drums as they alleged in the build-up to Accelerate was greeted, on my part, by some suspicion. The skepticism was partially lifted with my first listen to the single Supernatural Superserious, but I remained hopeful, not confident. Happily, my suspicions were unfounded, and I am happily, if cautiously, greeting a resurgent and relevant R.E.M. Only a first step, mind, because Accelerate evokes much of what’s great about R.E.M. without surpassing it. I’ll have a go at ‘reviewing’ the album later, but let’s just say, we still await that surpassing of past glories.

That said, it’s a large and very welcome first step. And a new beginning of sorts. And as one of my favourite books, once said, in its very first line:

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

And I suppose that applies to new beginnings too – the oblique lyrics of the old Stipe are sadly gone and replaced by rather more straightforward lines, but it’s good to welcome back jangly guitars, backing vocals and above all, drums. Indeed, the first song – Living Well is the Best Revenge – transports you not back to the last album but to the Life’s Rich Pageant era. I’m not going to argue with that.

The second single is Hollow Man, which is as quintessentially R.E.M as Supernatural Superserious:

From here.