REM Reveal(ed)
Like Marmite, football, Anne Robinson, public transport and the matter of certain sexual acts still being illegal in Utah, REM are a band that polarises opinion. Either you adore Michael Stipe’s crookedly distinctive vocals or you’d like to see him flogged in public and rolled in salt.
I’ve been in love with REM since I was a teenager. And it was love, let me tell you; the sort that boys of a particular age only experience when they discover what dad keeps in his sock drawer.
Life’s Rich Pageant and Green were the soundtrack to my Kerouac years, as I hammered at the keys of my typewriter, frustrated by my own literacy genius. Sadly, unlike Kerouac, I possessed no ability and my tales of working class angst were illiterate rubbish.
Michael, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry (as REM were still a four piece for most of the nineties) got me through the despondency and heartache, as I realised my immediate destiny lay not as a famous author but behind the bar of the Tap & Spile in Darlington.
So to celebrate the release of their fourteenth studio Accelerate and its debut single Supernatural Superserious, plus the recent arrival of my tickets to see the band in Naples, here are some REM goujons to whet your appetite:
- The small college town of Athens in Georgia is not only home to REM, but also The B-52s (who coincidentally also have a new album, Funplex, out this week), and hence their collaboration on the abominable single Shiny Happy People (it was rubbish, I’ll concede that point)
- England was slow to catch on to their popjangling; by the time REM broke in the UK with Losing My Religion in 1991, they’d already released six albums
- Losing My Religion is a fine example of how extensive radio exposure can brainwash the population; while many folk perceive it to be one of their biggest UK hits, the band have since had over a dozen singles more successful
- Out of Time, the album from which Losing My Religion is taken, has sold 12 million copies worldwide
- In 1996 REM signed the largest recording contract in the world at that point, to deliver five albums to Warner Records in return for a pocket-swelling $80 million
- According to a Feedjit poll on the band’s website, a quarter of the world’s REM fans live in the UK
- I am one rock and roll degree of separation away from bass guitarist Mike Mills - Fact!
As excellent and accomplished as their back catalogue is, REM are still worthy of note because they’re continually pushing boundaries with their music. The new album Accelerate is released in physical form next week, but users of iLike have been able to preview the whole album online. The iLike application is one of the more popular available on Facebook, meaning a new market of younger music connoisseurs can experience the greatest band in the world.
Apart from the Foo Fighters. And Jesus Jones. Obviously.
The new album is, by the way, a genuinely excellent record. However, I’m still enthusing about Around The Sun, which everyone else hated. But then they’re probably the same people responsible for this travesty. Philistines, the lot of you.
