R.E.M. just broke up... and we are sitting in Athens, Ga thinking about it.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 2:39PM Shawn:
Yes, I know I am about 14 days behind on tour videos, but I wanted to take a second and write a short obit for the band R.E.M., as I am sitting in Athens Georgia in a good friend's home who works with the Drive By Truckers, and we just recorded at a studio over the weekend, Chase Park Transduction that has worked with R.E.M. (we were in awe of the Mellotron that they have there that belongs to REM and also was formerly BigStar's...) so this seems sort of poignant to me personally, that I am sitting here in the town the group started in, a group that influenced me when I first started thinking about rock and roll. But with so many of the previous legendary rock acts calling it quits, it gives me pause.
R.E.M was the band that everyone a few years older than me I knew were respectful towards. The owner of the first recording studio I recorded at had seen them at countless concerts when they began, and tried to explain to me with great length and emphasis how important they were for a generation of music lovers. R.E.M. 's early fans believed in them like they were their old school buddies that had stuck to their guns, stayed true to their roots and represented them in a way no other band had.
Now I can't really relate to this fully, as I was not there in college when Green came out... but I remember Automatic for the People on the shelves in the album stores, and staring at the cover, and wishing I had the $15 for the compact disc and the recording blowing people's minds. I remember when Losing My Religion was on repeat on MTV and we watched it religiously, and I remember the fury and anger of the fanbase when they subsequently released Monster, a record that nevertheless influenced me when I was first learning guitar.
But those days fly fast by, the 1990's are way gone, and we as fans of bands forget that the bands themselves change if they are real artists. Real artists don't lay flat as a photo, they don't freese themselves in time, they evolve, and move and morph into new shapes and ideas, faster than the rest of the world does. This makes those of us who are fans of the band for a breath of their life feel betrayed when people, bands, artists change.
And well, R.E.M. ceased to be the band that many picture in their minds and adolescent memory ages ago. Sure, Peter Buck would make an appearance in Guitar World Magazine and explain how to play a jangly Rickenbacker guitar, or Michael Stipe would take some time to pose in fashion mags, but the band was gone, heart and soul some time ago, arguably the moment drummer Bill Berry left in 1997 and they turned to session musicians or computer beats.
"A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it. - Michael Stipe
With R.E.M. gone what will fill the place? Or will it matter that people looking for that energy they used to have moved on long ago? What if every band that was more than a decade old, all of a sudden refused to make music, or tour behind the old hits? Then what would people do?
Perhaps they would start looking for bands that were like REM when they first started:
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