R.E.M. Split

Mr. Bob Dobolina said:

When's the reunion tour?

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There will be a reunion. There's always a reunion.

R.E.M. was huge for me when they first started, in my early college years. I've been a fan throughout their career.

This is a well written article, for anyone interested: Talk about the passion: R.E.M. blazed trails

I'm going to paste the first few paragraphs here. They really were trailblazers, IMO. The bit about the 3 divisions of pop music (and how R.E.M. helped college radio become more visible) is right on.

(CNN) -- In 1980, in the pre-Internet, pre-download days when R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia, there was no alternative. There was no Americana. There was no grunge.

If you listened to pop music, there were essentially three divisions: Top 40 of the type you heard on the rapidly fading AM radio, the corporate rock of album-oriented FM and what was then called college radio -- a catch-all for the punk, new wave, electronic, low-fi and oddball music that almost never crossed over to the mainstream.

R.E.M. helped to change all that.

They weren't the only ones -- the New York art-punks of the late '70s, notably Talking Heads and Blondie, had hit the Top 40, and fellow Athens scenesters the B-52's had established a national following with their party-down rave-ups.

But it was R.E.M. that, in the words of Allmusic.com's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "transformed the American underground." If, in the '60s, teenagers gathered in their parents' garages in the hopes of being the next Beatles, in the '80s young adults knocked around dormitories in hopes of being the next R.E.M.: melodic, guitar-based and determined not to sell out to the corporate-music crowd.

R.E.M. was the great hope of fame-fantasizing, used-record-store clerks everywhere.

"They did this grass-roots thing that nobody had ever done," said Angie Carlson, a former member of the band Let's Active, which toured with R.E.M. in the mid-'80s. "They sort of bypassed big marketing, and were at the clubs networking with the cool fellow record-store people."

In R.E.M.'s wake came a breadth of artists who turned college radio into a home for guitar-based rock and power-pop: the Replacements, Jason and the Scorchers and the Del Fuegos, among many others. Years later, Nirvana emerged and the whole world broke open. Kurt Cobain, in fact, was a big R.E.M. fan.

Now R.E.M. has come to an end....

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Patti Smith's words are the best answer to some of above bitter criticism!

"It was the spring of'95, just after my husband passed away, when the phone rang and there was Michael Stipe - whom I had never known - asking if he could be of any help. I don't normally talk to strangers on the phone but he was so, so kind and so supportive at a very difficult time in my life. And I was familiar with his music.
I hadn't been listening to much rock'n'roll throughout the '80s, but then I heard The One I Love on the radio and it really drew me in, without even knowing who the song was by. My husband and I were working with Scott Litt. When Scott heard me humming this song in the studio he said, "You're singing REM, I produced that!"
When REM came to Michigan shortly after that phone call, I went to see them to play. They'd gotten together a version of my song Dancing Barefoot and they asked me to sing it with them on stage. At that time I hadn't performed on a big stage for a very long time, but I felt like I was among friends. Michael in particular I felt like I'd always known.
He's a very warm, intelligent, funny, caring human being. Like a brother. He was very kind to my children. We became instant friends. We'd known each other for about a day!
What I think is unique about REM is the fact that they keep the art in pop art. They've done some masterpiece pop songs, but they're on such a high level. Michael is a very sophisticated lyric writer, but they're able to spin this in a way that touches the masses, which I know is a very, very difficult thing to do. The first time I went to an REM concert I went right into the crowd and it was beautiful thing to see people so ecstatic, so joyful and all singing along to a song like Man On The Moon.
Michael is a great lyric writer. I don't say that so easily, or because I'm his friend. He can write a song which distils many ideas, like Saturn Return on his new record, or E-Bow The letter, which I sang on. He can just spew in that Dylanesque way and deliver it shotgun, like on It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Or he can go the other way and write something with really stark, simplicity like Loosing My Religion or Everybody Hurts. It's not easy to write those songs. I remember Bob Dylan saying that Smokey Robinson was the greatest poet in America because he could distil these ideas.
Michael's got a very special kind of voice. It exudes comfort. But he's also got real sensuality to his singing, and a very fun, bad kid aspect.Ultimately REM tap into something that's quite spiritual, at a time when the spiritual content of our lives is shriveling, the way we measure ourselves as human beings is reduced to material goods, social position and physical appearance. There's mystery to REM's music, which all the best rock'n'roll music has. Something that moves you in ways you can't understand. That penetrates your psyche and your feelings.
Ultimately Michael remains a mystery as well. I can't pretend to know everything about him. When we're together, it's very simple and natural. We might just sit and watch TV or eat spagetti or look for new dungarees. I cherish that friendship just as I cherish REM's music."

Patti Smith was talking to Toby Manning

I've always liked R.E.M. One of those band I would have liked to have seen perform live.

gratefulfunk said:

Patti Smith's words are the best answer to some of above bitter criticism!

"It was the spring of'95, just after my husband passed away, when the phone rang and there was Michael Stipe - whom I had never known - asking if he could be of any help. I don't normally talk to strangers on the phone but he was so, so kind and so supportive at a very difficult time in my life. And I was familiar with his music.
I hadn't been listening to much rock'n'roll throughout the '80s, but then I heard The One I Love on the radio and it really drew me in, without even knowing who the song was by. My husband and I were working with Scott Litt. When Scott heard me humming this song in the studio he said, "You're singing REM, I produced that!"
When REM came to Michigan shortly after that phone call, I went to see them to play. They'd gotten together a version of my song Dancing Barefoot and they asked me to sing it with them on stage. At that time I hadn't performed on a big stage for a very long time, but I felt like I was among friends. Michael in particular I felt like I'd always known.
He's a very warm, intelligent, funny, caring human being. Like a brother. He was very kind to my children. We became instant friends. We'd known each other for about a day!
What I think is unique about REM is the fact that they keep the art in pop art. They've done some masterpiece pop songs, but they're on such a high level. Michael is a very sophisticated lyric writer, but they're able to spin this in a way that touches the masses, which I know is a very, very difficult thing to do. The first time I went to an REM concert I went right into the crowd and it was beautiful thing to see people so ecstatic, so joyful and all singing along to a song like Man On The Moon.
Michael is a great lyric writer. I don't say that so easily, or because I'm his friend. He can write a song which distils many ideas, like Saturn Return on his new record, or E-Bow The letter, which I sang on. He can just spew in that Dylanesque way and deliver it shotgun, like on It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Or he can go the other way and write something with really stark, simplicity like Loosing My Religion or Everybody Hurts. It's not easy to write those songs. I remember Bob Dylan saying that Smokey Robinson was the greatest poet in America because he could distil these ideas.
Michael's got a very special kind of voice. It exudes comfort. But he's also got real sensuality to his singing, and a very fun, bad kid aspect.Ultimately REM tap into something that's quite spiritual, at a time when the spiritual content of our lives is shriveling, the way we measure ourselves as human beings is reduced to material goods, social position and physical appearance. There's mystery to REM's music, which all the best rock'n'roll music has. Something that moves you in ways you can't understand. That penetrates your psyche and your feelings.
Ultimately Michael remains a mystery as well. I can't pretend to know everything about him. When we're together, it's very simple and natural. We might just sit and watch TV or eat spagetti or look for new dungarees. I cherish that friendship just as I cherish REM's music."

Patti Smith was talking to Toby Manning

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Hey, that was a great tribute to use in this case GratefulFunk! Well said by Patti and she's a great legit and respectable source. You know this is all an example of how the demographic determines the reaction. Plenty of bands go quieter late in their career but that doesn't destroy their legacy. What a band does is make their mark by developing their own style, finds an audience, hot their peak because that cult audience gets them backing and exposure, band hits their prime of creativity and accessibility (the perfect mix), band can only go down from there, band sees this and either stays comfortably in one area to keep original fan base or plays creatively with their sound to keep true fans. I think R.E.M. hit their peak creatively and accessibly with Automatic For The People. It was their darkest album in many ways especially with the great lead in single, "Drive" but it was also their most unabashedly beautiful and accessible album.

For example, 'Nightswimming" is a melodic masterpiece and Stipe knows how to ride the dreamy atmosphere of the song:

Nightswimming


Speaking of songs, no song is more accessible in R.E.M.s career than "Everybody Hurts" and this is THE song and type of song meatheads will go back into their career to spit ammo at the legacy. There's an idea in music amongst that any legit band has to give the listener a testosterone laden kick to the balls in all their songs. I think it takes balls to make universal sentiments like these with such conviction like R.E.M. has. I mean maybe Shiny Happy People went to far but like I said, conviction!

I'll admit after Monster, I dropped off the R.E.M. train and can't claim to be that true fan that followed them. It's all subjective though! From an outside viewpoint the band seemed to be creative workhorses until the end with plenty of output. Critics seemed to see a lot of ups and downs which shows a true band full of artists. Never staying stagnant and more often than not the praise was high. Along with this they kept a solid fanbase for their albums which is more than what a lot of die hards of other bands could hope for. It's all subjective. One person calling R.E.M. irrelevant may still be routing for an 80's throwback band that is still riding that wave touring. That same fan would think someone had nerve to call that band irrelevant.

Anyway, what I'm saying is just because the band wasn't under your radar anymore doesn't mean their legacy is non-existent. R.E.M. came and left a mark and still has as many attributes as many of the BIG groups we still call legends after their prime!

Wow, actually didn't know this until today. RIP, they were a quality band. I still have to listen to their recent album.

On another note, they were around for 31 years...the same as Pink Floyd!