Part Happy, Part Sad, Part Tardy, Part Timely

Last week, I gave a little blurb about R.E.M. It got me to thinking, and writing, so I thought I'd share it here...

Much like this blog comes months after they announced their breakup, and a week after their latest hits collection was released, I was just a touch late to REM; but not horribly so, I was still earlier than some folks. As much of their early material came out while I was in jr. high and high school, I didn’t get to hear much of it mostly because what I was listening to at the time was what any blue-blooded American teen was listening to: Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc. But during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I heard “Superman” on the radio for the first time. Honestly, at first, I thought it was a song for kids. “I am, I am, I am Superman, and I know what’s happening.” They intrigued me, I thought they were “cute.” Okay, so nobody in the band “floats my boat,” but you know what I mean.

I was able to go back and listen to their earlier work –not a kids’s song in the bunch, of course- and sort of “catch up” with them just before they broke out into the mainstream with the albums Document and Green, then hitting the proverbial pot of Gold with Out Of Time. If I’m asked to name one song that defined my college years, it’s “Losing My Religion” on so many levels. One, it was a huge hit and made them award nominees at pretty much everything but the Oscars and the CMA’s. Two, it came out just towards the end of my freshman year of college, so it had time to ferment in the later years. Three, it’s either “Losing My Religion,” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, and the latter is a slightly depressing song which I’m still not sure what it’s about, and at least I know that “losing my religion” is some sort of phrase down south for being at the end of one’s rope. Sue, still depressing, but a happier sounding song nonetheless.

But during that time, it wasn’t just cool to like R.E.M., they became mandatory listening. After years of toiling around the college-rock scene of the southeast paying their dues with albums like Murmur, Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction, and finally getting their foot in the mainstream door with Life’s Rich Pageant, Document and Green, they had now been blown out of the stratosphere. And when they could’ve rested on their laurels and just began to coast with their success, Automatic For The People was released and solidified their place near the top of the rock and roll

Honestly, over the course of the last 15 years, my interest in the group had waned. They signed a mega-deal contract, and then it seemed like they began to rest on those laurels. Each record would bring maybe one or two vintage R.E.M. tracks, and a lot of songs that made you wonder if the best years were in the mirror telling you how objects may appear closer than they really are. Even with that said, it did make me sad a couple of months ago to hear they had decided to call it quits only months after releasing their latest album, Collapse Into Now, which was honestly better than many of theirs in the last decade. Maybe I wasn’t hoping for a bright future with R.E.M., but a chance to know that a part of my earlier life wasn’t dead just yet. Not every band can be the Rolling Stones planning a tour that could very well be someone’s last (but not Keith Richards, we all know he’s surviving the apocalypse), but maybe they had that one more great record in them, y’know?

Now we have Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011, the first ever comprehensive R.E.M. best of collection, features tracks from the early years on IRS Records, and then their move over to Warner Brothers in the late 1980s. The tracks seem to be remastered, which isn’t a huge shock as we’ve seen recent remasters of the albums Murmur and Life’s Rich Pageant, but the older tracks definitely sound fresh, and pretty much the same material from their later years that would be the “one or two” on the later albums are on disc 2. Perhaps there could be some complaints as to what was left off from the earlier and peak years (such as the previously mentioned “Superman” Out Of Time’s classic “Half A World Away,” and Automatic For The People’s “Drive”), but it’s two and a half hours of some of the best they had to offer, and every “best of” compilation always has the headscratching missing track or tracks, so they’re just following the formula, if you think about it. In addition to 37 catalog tracks, there’s three new tracks that were done after the release of Collapse Into Now, “A Month of Saturdays,” “We All Go Back To Where We Belong,” and “Hallelujah,” the third possibly being a band exhaling knowing they’re done towing the line. They’re serviceable R.E.M. tracks to be sure. But that’s not why you’d be picking up this album.

This a must have if you, like I was, are late to the R.E.M. party. Albeit your being quite late, but it’s always good to have you if you are. By the way, thanks to a vending machine in my building’s laundry room, I’ve been drinking an Orange Crush during the composition of this blog. No kidding.