1983 @ 40: MURMUR - REM

After a few muffled percussive beats a snare counts in four and suddenly the whole band is playing with the vocal. The words are mumbled and they might not even be words. It's a kind of growl. The music itself is something that was rising through the wash at the end of the harder phase of post punk with its tape manipulation and effects heavy guitar playing. It sounded like a contemporary band playing old '60s numbers the only way they knew how, in a grinding 4/4 thrust. The thing is, while this sounded '60s in spirit it was nothing like the roll call of bands going the easy route by copying everything they heard on the Nuggets and Pebbles records. It sounded candid, free of showbiz. You listened to this and didn't imagine the band in paisley Nehru jackets as most of the Sydney revivalists dressed. It was rock but didn't sound like showbiz. It wasn't punk revivalism either; if you could make out anything the singer was growling, it didn't sound like a slogan. "Radio Free Europe. Radio Free Europe." Ok ... and?

We didn't know it, then, but guitar bands were about to change because of this one and the strange thing about that was that, in who knows how long, the ones doing the changing were American. After decades of U.K. acts redefining what guitar bands were this mob who sounded like a slicked up version of the kids making a racket under the house down your street. Out of key system chord progressions, infectious riffs and clean electric 12 arpeggios and singing by the Cookie Monster who could only manage fragments in the verses before breaking out into slogans that weren't, int the choruses. After Murmur, all guitar bands that weren't trying to break into the cokesnorting major label realm sounded like REM, here grungy and rough, there sweet and jangling and most often both at once. 

Pilgrimage fades in with piano notes under Michael Stipe singing in full voice before the arpeggio laden verse rolls into a an expanding chorus, elongated chants take over from the bitsy vocals of the verse before exploding into a massive beat beat beat beat chorus. Laughing adds a feel that might remind anyone into American 60s bands of The Byrds in their country years. Acoustic guitar broken chords with punched piano chords for accents.

Talk About the Passion comes on with a big bold major key guitar riff, then a smooth voiced Stipe croons as well as he is able and cruises on to the title line chorus and the effect is a smooth power pop drive with a joyous Rickenbacker 12 prechorus. Moral Kiosk continues the pattern of percussive verses, stretched progressions to the chorus that turns everything giant by suggesting distance.

Perfect Circle slows things down with a complex piano figure as Stipe strikes a mournful tone. There is a heavily affecting chorus which suggests someone noticing a passage of human life rolling past and realising there is no changing it. If the previous rocking tracks had prepared you for more sharp candy this one stops everything. It's the same band but in a mood they haven't shown you yet, something outside of the garage, something that seems to have been filmed in 35 mm at magic hour. They would repeat this contact with the sublime in the next album with Camera which took it even further but here we're hearing it for the first time. This is the band that showed it could sound only like itself when the forces aligned. It ends on a fade and takes the old side one with it. 

Catapult continues the thump and jingle of the first side, sounding a little more like their mini LP debut. See also Sitting Still brings back the Byrdsy arpeggio on the 6 string Rickenbacker but brings the fuller guitar muscle for the chorus. 9-9 adds some arty harmonics to the verses (like Gang of Four playing Mr Tambourine Man) before a grinding slow/fast chorus. Shaking Through brings the country back and upping the melodic touchpoints. We Walk plays with an archaic chord progression but subverts it by cutting it short of completion. Sounds of thunder (tape-warped billard balls, in fact) punctuate proceedings. West of the Fields closes the album with what buy that stage sounds a touch tired and end of project. It makes the same indy rock sense but there's nothing compelling to it that would drive you to listen to it in isolation.

If I've pond skipped the songs on this album where on another I would have examined each one it's because this early phase of REM was all about style. While there is a constant pallet of variation going on from song to song it's not pushed to late '60s levels where a confectionary She's a Rainbow gives way to the proto metal of Citadel. It sounds like the band elevated from their practice room tapes into full production by a producer who knew well to empahsise their best without putting it into costume. 

I say that because so many of the '60s-ologists of the early '80s, the ones I mentioned in the paisley fancy dress, pursued the sound. REM didn't. They liked the song structures and guitar styles but there's no bubblegum organ blasts or borrowed nostalgia here. In this, more closely resemble The Church (who did wear paisley, btw) who added the weight of their own abstractions to music that went down like dessert but revealed more the more it was played. To a modern listener Murmur might strike them as the kind of thing AI would serve up if prompted to create a '60s album from all the Pebbles and Nuggets albums and every bubblegum single released between 1967 and 1969; there's an eerie tribute without reverence feel to it.

REM would go on to change with successive albums up to their jumping ship from indy IRS to WEA for 1988's Green. By that stage the albums began pursuing a formula with a big rock opening, some ponderous mid tempo rock, an affecting ballad and some unabashed bubblegum rock with the kind of wah wah solos completely absent from their LP debut. The big breakthrough which took them from alternative radio to stadiums also dropped them into the showbiz box they began way outside of. They were, in fact, more like all those early '80s moptop bands who began with the aggressive copying. By then, the singer who had refused to appear to sing the lyrics in the videos, insisting on performing a live vocal, had become Michael Stipe, spokesmodel of a generation. 

Back in 1983, REM were still unknown to most of the world, working with producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon who guided them to radio friendly sheen while keeping their intentions in hard definition. The big piano figure of Perfect Circle was played on a whiny hand held Casio by drummer Bill Berry on stage and the band expected that to be the way of it in the studio. The producers prevailed. We got a cavernous and beautiful track but we never heard something that might have persisted through a ridiculous pathos to a triumphantly small and humble conviction. As melting as I find the song as it is, I can't help but feel that it was the first step in the stroll toward conventionality for a band whose fragile relationship with that value would break with irrevocable certainty. So it goes ...

1982 @ 40: CHRONIC TOWN - REM

Clean jangly chord riff and energetic drumming joined by a vocal that doesn't seem to complete its lines with any comprehension. But none of that is as much the point as how it all gels and works. The voice is the same kind of riffing instrument as the guitar and as percussive as the kit at the back. Wolves, Lower is the title but the closest we get to it in the lyrics is the phrase wolves at the door. It's all bright '60s and Byrdsy but it has no interest in messages clearer than tangy ear candy for the young folk. At the same time, it feels alternative, not top 40 pop.

Gardening at Night is the same kind of thing. A descending guitar riff is descanted by a vocal that seems to have its top sheared off. The title does appear in the verses and choruses but to what purpose? meanwhile we have a bed of changing textures within the brief of the pleasant wash. Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars) adds minor key tonality to the line up and a more skittish rhythm. The interplay between lead and backing vocals creates more of the appeal. Flip sides and 1,000,000 brings more of a casual white funk vibe and a rougher edged vocal. "I could live a million years." Stumble returns us to the busy bright clean chord arpeggios we began with. 

What does it mean? In an era when the most obscure industrial acts were taking pains to render their intents clear, however abstract their affectation, this band that sounded like a home demo version of The Monkees trying to be The Byrds didn't seem to have a syllable of a message. The cover art of the 12 inch mini-LP was a blue tinted closeup of a gargoyle with a band pic on the rear. They look young and fresh but unremarkable.

But the thing about this disc is your projection as a listener. If you want, you can put it on and leave it on and just groove to the candy choruses and sugary riffs without a further thought. Or, you could look at the obscurantist song titles and imagine what they meant. Phrases like "gentlemen don't get caught" could mean that getting caught is for chumps or the elite never pay for anything they do. There are things like this in every track. It almost seems to be a band created to be enjoyable with the worst P.A.s imaginable.

An interview in RAM from the time (or a little later after the LP murmur) had them from the U.S. south (Georgia) and a university town (Athens). They were on I.R.S. a label started by the drummer of The Police and his brother which already featured The Go-Gos, so they came with indy credentials.

I didn't have a copy of this record until years later, nor even had a tape of it from someone else's stacks. I noted the gargoyle on the cover and, while I liked it, wondered if they weren't just a small label version of a hair metal band. But I did hear some of this played on 4ZZZ and recall getting caught in the high flavour jangle which then gave way to whatever that announcer was putting on. It was back announced. I knew what r.e.m. sleep was and the notion of the abbreviation as a band name gave it a psychedelic tone which I was compelled by.

Little did I or anyone know, though, was that this band would not only crash through at an indy level with their debut longplay, Murmur, the following year but that it would be one of the ways you could be a guitar band with honour in that anti-rock environment, but that, as they ditched that and moved more and more back into solid concrete convention and played stadiums only with big clearly annunciated songs that would make Midnight Oil blush.

All bands who pursue their own paths must develop and change and the idea that this must be along the same lines as their beginnings is a massive fallacy. You might lose thousands of early fans when you tour the big rooms but you gain millions and that's what happened with REM. Did they get worse with fame? Not really, more that they just ditched all the things that gave them the spark of originality that pricked up all our ears. I saw them after that point when they toured the Green album in 88 and 89. It was at Festival Hall and they were supported by The Go-Betweens. That band had tried to make a similar leap and produced some essential and appealing music but never broke through to much more than this kind of spot or smaller scale tours that they would continue with. The headliners vocally congratulated them on their set before launching into their own with Pop Song 89 a song intended as irony but really only offered a token.

Once upon a time, though, they made records as sweet as cola but as intriguing as a shot of golden spirit that you might have with it on a hot day. That's what this record sounds like.

The End of Their Interest Value As I Knew It: REM's Document

Mark E. Brooke was from Dunedin, New Zealand and knew a few of luminaries of the Flying Nun scene as familiar faces at gigs. He was an understating wit of great power and had the advantage of looking out at the universe through light emerald tinted glasses which put him at sufficient distance from anyone he spoke to which in turn allowed him a lot of leeway with his observations of his fellows. While I had refined my old post punk rig to affect a series of tuxedos-by-day he kept hold of his punk roots with a light leather jacket, Docs and drainpipes. His hair was kept Howard Devoto cropped to keep its recession from his forehead from being too obvious. We mentored each other's writing and reading. He was a much better writer. I threw out an opening sentence once which we were both to use for a short story. I read his and didn't finish mine. On Fridays after work we would get drunk and talk.

Smith Street Fitzroy/Collingwood in 1987 had a shop called Leedin Records. There was also a video shop on the same strip called Leedin video. On our way back from McCoppins one evening we went by Smith to pick up some more alcohol and stopped in at the record shop. He chose an Elvis Costello compilation, being a devotee (as I had been) and I came upon the new REM album Document. I was aghast as I had no idea it was out or even if they were still going.

Back at mine we put the REM record on and it slammed straight into the stadium sized rocker Finest Worksong with a gigantic drum sound and army of guitars. Through it, though, saving it from pure sellout, came Michael Stipe's odd cartoony growl which set the whole song at home again. Welcome to the Occupation was a lot more trad for the band and in a minor key. Exhuming McCarthy was like Finest Worksong but chunkier. Disturbance at the Herron House sealed the pattern and by the time we were halfway through the big one from the album, It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) which mixed a Subterranean Homesick Blues roll call with a goofy I-IV-V chorus I thought: well at least it's catchy.

Side two was a a little darker mooded and contained the still great King of Birds but really was more of the same. They'd even managed to get the old Wire song Strange wrong by dressing it up as the new rock like the rest of the album.

What I was hearing was a pattern which continued at least through the following album, Green, which I also bought. Big rock song to start with, something more abstract after, big goofy rock song after that, a big ballad with a mandolin, a minor key cliche fest for a single and so on. It had been the same on the previous one, Life's Rich Pageant and looked to set in.

This did not make me an unfan. As I said I bought the next one and went to see them play Festival Hall with the Go Betweens and dug the show. What it did, when the big fast food catchiness of it wore off, was take me back to the first albums that had made a fan of me in the first place.

What I liked about Murmur and Reckoning was a mix of joyous sixties style guitar chime, a real hook in every song and best of all lyrics that pretty much admitted they were only there to put the human voice in the mix (which is how I listen to the vocals in almost every song I ever hear). It was almost like hearing a stoat or grizzly bear fronting the Byrds.

Increasingly, REM were assuming a vague kind of liberalism which served to reform the lovely growling nonsense into the kind of sloganeering big choruses that I've heard too often. By the time Document came out they were set on course and wouldn't budge until irreversible fame tracked them down. They became interview subjects probably because that's just a lot easier to do. And while Document wasn't necessarily the point that began it is the first time I noticed it. For all my fandom of the band and enthusiasm of this album I had increasingly no option but to admit that whatever I wanted it to be it was just a big middle-of-the-road rock album. There had been a resurgence in old school rock dressed as lamb in the mid to late eighties. Most of it was American but there was plenty of UK crud like Jesus and Mary Chain to match the Georgia Satellites or Jason and the Scorchers. The half decade of alternatives that had preceded this was swept away  as even old guard critics who had fought the big one back in the winter of '77 were typing their approval. It was happening here, too, it's just that there where the choices seemed easier bad retrograde ones were being made.

But if I recall the album the memory of Mark Brooke gets in the way and the kind of ethics-confronting exhanges and thought-trains we'd get into, drunk or not, and the idea that creativity needed nothing but a starting point and a medium still tap me on the shoulder. Whatever happened to it when it was finished, whether it was published, played on the radio, declaimed in a smoky pub or read at Cambridge that first procreative ignition had to take you somewhere that you weren't and if it didn't you were probably trying too hard, thinking too much and plunging your feet into the sand. If we edited each other, hissed in petulance or swore or tripped into mutual insults those notions of the work and its worth remained intact, waiting like tsking teachers for the tirade to ease into silence when the real work would have to be done.

We drifted. He moved back to NZ and took up tertiary teaching. His wife became a doctor. They had kids and were probably happy in that annoyingly non-cloying way that some couples are. I got on with some failed novels and nothing jobs until my guilt woke me before thirty to get myself qualified in something and start some honest work. Meantime there were other people to meet friends to draw even closer, things to do. They were done.

REM left their indy IRS label after Document and went to a major. The follow up, Green, was even bigger and a tour of the world's stadiums put them on the shelf next to U2 where they've stayed to graze and fatten. Younger bands emerged but sounded no better and accepted the sugary crown of fame and influence in even faster trajectories.

Years later I heard Shiny Happy People on a radio. It was instantly recognisable and immediately annoying. I understood every word, even from across the room. I stumbled on the video. They were miming the words which they'd sworn felt too fake before. They'd started comfortably in convention and unless they suddenly converted to industrial neo disco there was only one direction they were likely to go. But it wasn't that they'd sold out it was that I didn't care. It was watching as they changed their wardrobe and divested themselves of the last few things that set them apart until all they had was the surface. This wasn't creativity it was brand recognition. For my money, see also Nirvana, a recognisable talent buried under multitracking and so much compression that the volume knob ceases to be a choice or statement. Massive fame and idolatry followed. But tell me which frontman didn't do himself in.