I love R.E.M. but I will not follow them over a cliff.
In hindsight, what ultimately makes R.E.M. so great is that no matter when you started following, you got to feel like you were musically superior to your fellow chums who were still listening to Loverboy and Def Leppard. Oh, they'd be along soon, we knew, but by the time R.E.M. became the Top 40, it was like sharing your lunch with strangers.
You dream about the music you listen to becoming well-known, but when it starts happening with alarming regularity, a loner such as myself gets to feeling mighty claustrophobic. Even so, there are bands whose ascent was done so organically that you couldn't help but wish them all the mega-platinum success their hearts desired.
I mean, if Michael Stipe wants to sing "Shiny Happy People" on the county fair circuit in his fifties, who am I to stop him from ruining the band's legacy with that goofy shit? Doesn't mean that I have to support it.
If you had pulled up in a limousine from the future and played "Stand" for the Murmur guys and said this is what you will sound like in five years, they'd have all run screaming from the room.
Bill Berry was the first one to catch a foul whiff.
How do you amicably say "What you guys are doing now I want no part of"?
Instead of doing so quietly, R.E.M. wentr on a media blitz to publicize Berry's last days with the band, with plenty of interview footage where the two parties seem amicable but distant. Looking back at it now, Bill looks relieved, to be honest. He knew.
In hindsight, just as the band was never the same after they left I.R.S. Records, being an R.E.M. fan was never quite the same either.
Once upon a time, bumping into a fellow R.E.M. fan in line to ride The Demon Drop at Cedar Point was a scientific anomaly and the basis for a lifelong friendship.
Now even your kid sister likes R.E.M. And MC Hammer. And the Pixies.
Seeing R.E.M. leave I.R.S. and sign with Warner Brothers was akin to watching Luke Skywalker sign a deal with Death Star Records. The band had been fortunate to find its way to I.R.S. Record, a label capable of putting out some truly weird shit and having massive hits with it.
In much the same way U2 had become a priority over every other act on the roster at Island Records, R.E.M. had Priority #1 at I.R.S. and other artists were starting to feel ignored.
R.E.M.'s decision to sign a massive deal with a global media company meant that the hits had to keep coming just to warrant the investment. By cashing that check, you are committing to delivering the hits for the duration of the contract. But there's no for Warner Brothers or the band to know that tsunami awaits them. Sure, it won't be along for a couple of years, but it will render this contract a noose around the neck of both parties.
But, hey, no pressure.
"What?"
Nevermind.
Tags:
has it been that long?