This is my entry point into REM. My local rock station didn’t play any of their songs until 1985- Driver 8. I love this album, it holds a special place in my heart.
This may be my favorite REM album; period. It almost flawless on every level. The themes and musicality is off the charts here; which is really astonishing for a bands 3rd album. I almost don’t even hear these songs as individual tracks; but as connected together in a cosmic dreamscape. You know how when you wake up from a fresh dream and you just can’t make sense of it? That’s what this record feels like to me; a dream, shifting from one scene to the next with no segue ways; and often no sense - like floating downstream on a river and passing by a collection of oddballs, trees, carnivals and campfires. What a gem!! As good as any Beatles album.
I love these deep dives, awesome. At any given time this is my favorite album, hard to pick a permanent #1, those 1st 6 albums through Green are an incredible run. I remember seeing them at Whittenburg University in Ohio on this tour, it was so dark on stage you could hardly see anything and Stipe sang with his back to crowd and over in the corner a lot of the time! Unbelievable how much he developed as a front man by the next tour for Lifes Rich Pageant
My first time listening to all their albums prior to Green. So far this my favorite one. Best thing about your deep dives it gets me to listen to new albums and follow along with the backstory. great job!
Love the old footage, brother. I also love hearing your thoughts on the album. You picked another great band to do a deep dive on! Everyone dig out your REM albums!!!
These old interviews are sometimes funny to watch. I love the old concert clips. And those train clips too actually. All I ever had of this was a used cassette that didn’t work lol so I don’t know the songs. Already expanding their sound. Excellent work Jeff!
Fables is another one of my rotating favorite albums of R.E.M. I love the whole mood of this album. I think I'm going to listen to it now as it fits the raining day I'm having. The band seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the album. I think partly because it was so difficult to make. I think they tired of playing Driver 8. I have never tire of it. I'm tired of Losing My Religion, but that is another deep dive. Thankfully on their last couple of tours they started playing songs off of it again and I got to hear songs like Feeling Gravitys Pull, Maps & Legends, Life and How To Live It and others in a live setting. The first time I saw them the live was the Monster tour and they weren't playing much before Document which was understandable as the new stuff was selling more and artists are always more excited to play the new stuff. Anyway I eventually got to hear some of the early stuff live to joy of my ears.
Sweet deep dives! I love driver 8 off this album especially. I don't know if I have a favorite of these first four albums I usually just listen to all four in a row when I start in...theyre so good!
This album has a dark vibe, and plays in sequence like a continuous, surreal dream. R.E.M. never did anything like it before or after, so it's unique in the canon. The lyrics offer bizarrely Southern characters like Wendell Gee and Old Man Kensey, and I can get lost in the swampy ambience of this entire LP. I've always loved "Driver 8", which seems to be a favorite of a lot of us and kind of crystallizes the early R.E.M. sound. I also love the Man Ray reference in the awesomely dark opener, "Feeling Gravity's Pull", which is such a strangely creative song. All of R.E.M.'s IRS efforts have the best opening tracks. My son is 17, and he isn't hugely impressed by R.E.M. at this point (for some strange reason). (He does like the Beatles a lot, though.) But even he thinks "Driver 8" and "Wendell Gee" are great songs, and asks to hear them in the car, so at least that's something.
As a Beatles fan I loved so much of that jangly guitar sound of early R.E.M. I think your son will come to appreciate them in time. Fables is such a beautiful quirky album that too often gets overlooked. I love Driver 8 and the whole feel of this record.
It took me a long time to get into Reckoning, Fables and Monster but all three albums have aged really well. Love listening to both Fables and live versions of the album tracks.
@@jeffwhitchervinyldestinati4486 I know what you mean. I love R.E.M. for their Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Glen Campbell and punk influence. The idea of them being influenced by glam rock appalled me initially but it's grown on me over the years.
I briefly met Michael Stipe at a party while I was attending art school in Savannah in 1983. Oddly enough, I didn't even know that he was in a band 'til afterward. (He didn't talk about music, he talked about mud paintings, which he was into collecting at the time.) He was both introverted and magnetic at the same time, if that makes any sense.
Wow! What an incredible experience that must have been. He seems like such an authentically nice and sweet guy. Even in his interviews his charisma comes across.
I, like you, had all the REM albums on cassette first. Thats all I listened to during high school. When i bought RECONSTRUCTION I thought the tape was defective. At times the engineering sounds awful. Especially Buck's guitar. Sounds like a Flexi Disc. I liken this horror to the sound of KISS' HOTTER THAN HELL. The songs are amazing tho and Stipe was getting more and more brave. I love the Replacements too. But there's no way they worked that well as a team like REM did.
Yesterday when I was playing Reckoning I looked my copy up on discogs and I have an album with 'B' on the label which is supposed to have a brown color to it when held up to the light. Looks black to me! When this album came out I couldn't wait to hear it because I was a huge fan of Fairport, Sandy Denny, Nick etc..and wanted to see how he and R.E.M. would work. Pretty impressive but it's not quite up to Reckoning but might be about equal to Murmur. I'll play it today!
Thanks! I love reconnecting with all this great music from my younger days. There is something special about these early IRS albums that was lost once they became “above ground.”
Good songs on this album but I think they should’ve put the tracks in a different order. Those first two songs make it hard to get into it… not a great flow. Can’t Get There From Here is strange choice for single. Should’ve been Life and How to Live It… IMHO
