R.E.M.

I hadn’t even heard of REM until I was a freshman in college. A friend of mine gave me Fables of the Reconstruction on cassette. I had never heard any music like this before. Stipe’s mumbling and Buck’s guitar, Mill’s backing vocals that were completely different lines than the main vocals. I was blown away. I immediately bought Murmur and Reckoning and thus a love affair with REM and myself was born. I listened to them almost exclusively for a year. It was so different, so insanely dreary and cheerful at the same time. Their sound hasn’t even come close to being duplicated, at least the IRS records. Which brings me to an interesting point. I found that their entire sound changed when Warner Bros. picked them up and they made Green. My wife likes the post IRS albums, but I hate them. They are not the REM sound that was there before. In my opinion, they devolved after the first five albums on the IRS label. I mean, listen to Murmur and then listen to Automatic For The People. Sounds like two different bands. Anyway, those first five records were amazing and really opened my mind to what was to end up being called ‘Alternative’ music. Kudos for those guys for spearheading a new genre of music.