Way back when, the big story about REM was that the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, wanted “It’s the end of the world” for his advertising blitz for windows 95. REM, they said, told him to take a hike so he had to settle for the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” instead. Windows 95 was culturally pretty big.
Turning down a very large sum of money suggests you believe something in a way that simply lecturing others doesn’t.
I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.
That was plausibly a commercial decision as much as anything else. I mean, Tom Petty famously refused to license his music, too. You can read in this article a good description of why a band might not want to dilute themselves that way: once you hear a band playing in the background at a department store, you can't un-hear that.
Plausibly, sure. Almost any decision is given people sometimes make terrible commercial decisions. We should acknowledge that the Windows 95 international saturation marketing blitz to the sound of "Start Me Up" failed to end the Stones. Sometime after that they did a concert film directed by Martin Scorsese, a movie featuring hanging out with Bill & Hillary Clinton and they also still seem to sell out 80,000 seat arenas playing their octogenarian loud blues. It seems slightly more plausible to me that the Stones made a commercial decision but again, maybe it was purely artistic or ethical because people also sometimes make terrible decisions on the basis of those motivations.
In the end we can't prove we exist and we deal in probabilities given evidence.
> Bill Gates, wanted “It’s the end of the world” for his advertising blitz...he had to settle for the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” instead
Whether the humor was intentional or not, both songs would have been great choices.
> I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.
Who were probably like "better say yes before they listen to the rest of the song!"
> Not since the Muzak corporation has there been an institution that soundtracks drugstores, supermarkets, and shopping malls more readily than R.E.M.
Wondering if other people agree with this? Because it doesn’t really match my experience at all. I wouldn’t say I’ve heard REM in stores often enough for them to be noteworthy in that regard, much less infamous.
I've definitely heard REM in grocery stores and stuff, but not considerably more than other rock bands. I think popular older rock music of almost any genre is kind of the go-to background music these days. People are nostalgic for the old tunes they grew up with, so 30-40 year olds shopping for milk kind of like it, or at least find it inoffensive. That's my sense for it anyway.
Heck, I remember once stopping in my tracks in a grocery aisle because I heard War Pigs by Black Sabbath playing over the sound system. No one else in the store seemed to be paying attention, though.
It's an incredibly jerk line to start the article with and completely untrue. I'm not saying that I've never heard an REM song in a store, but the idea that REM is somehow the soundtrack of capitalism seems entirely made up.
Your Nirvanas and Pavements and Radioheads—behemoth alt-rock bands that seem to be endlessly rediscovered by newer generations as a source of credibility—have kept their cultural capital, while R.E.M. remains marooned in Alternative Muzak-land.
The irony of this being published in The Yale Review is too much for me. If REM had stopped after Reckoning the way Television did after Adventure, the only way anyone would be able to talk about them would be in hushed reverential tones. The article scoffs at the notion of "selling out", but then tells a story of an esteemed band doing exactly that, and the inevitable outcome, of "Losing My Religion" playing in the background at every supermarket.
(For calibration purposes: Murmur is a top 5 album for me, and my top 5 REM albums would include Automatic).
Similar here, long time R.E.M. listener/collector who had just listened to some last week, then surprisingly heard Stand played quietly at a bar on the weekend (even misidentified it as Nirvana at first, it was really barely hearable, the kind of happy bar where people are louder than music, not the reverse) and now "Then I open HN and I see this title".
I do start to wonder if there's some sub-threshold attention wave going on.
That's a "Coincidence". "Serendipity" refers to learning new unexpected knowledge while searching for some other knowledge. pushes glasses back up nose, makes nerd snort
As an elder millennial, I like early REM. I can place them on the alt indie history timeline. Yet unlike sonic youth or pavement or my bloody valentine, REM made it well into top 40 territory. I don’t have a strong attachment to the band. Compared to Radiohead or Interpol who seem to be engrained in my core memories. I don’t know if college aged people today have major exposure to music from 98-2008.
i just remember MTv being seismic in 91. Smells Like Teen Spirit, that video of Even Flow live in Seattle, Magic has HIV and Kurt Loder is wearing a CON-DOM shirt before spinning Ain't Too Proud to Beg where Left Eye is wearing a condom in her right eye. 120 Minutes was the best, Matt Pinfield got me through some crappy papers about Ethan Frome and any one of those books that uses red on the body as a symbol of whatever
there was that day the video for Losing My Religion came out and it seemed like a harbinger of both the beginning and end of the dual pillars of 80s college / grunge. bless you Murmur, bless you Meat Puppets, bless you MTv. touch me i'm sick, everybody, i wanna dip my balls in it!
"My father gave me Monster a week after buying it, calling it “the most pretentious piece of shit I’ve ever heard.” This is funny because the whole point of Monster was a shot at unpretentiousness." [1]
I never got into REM, I preferred The Fall, The The, The Smiths, Pixies, Pavement.
"Monster" is the only R.E.M. album from the Bill Berry era that I never listen to. Not quite sure why, but I gave it the requisite three listens when it came out and shelved it. Nearly wrote R.E.M. off at that point, but "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" brought me back. Was disappointed when Berry left and they didn't break up then as they had always said they would. (They'd said many times that if anybody left, it wouldn't be R.E.M. any more and they wouldn't carry on... but then they did anyway.)
Got to see them live on the Green tour in 1989. Still one of my top-five concerts of all time, and I've been to more shows than I can count since.
It has an extremely grating guitar tone. Love REM. Love all kinds noisy guitar rock, that album just hurts my ears. [edit] Also saw them on the Green tour Oct ‘89 :-))
This is a really good synopsys, not too fawning, not too critical. REM was an early college band that was sincere and handled pop fame with tact and restraint (counterpoint: U2, of the same era). They sort of did exactly what a "normal" band should do: write music, find fans, expose people to a new style of music, become very popular, don't try to push it past the cultural shifts, and gracefully exit without any scandal are smarminess. Who does that anymore, or even gets the chance? I think the only bummer is that they influenced so many alt musicians that their style is in everything non-pop these days.
Of course, I'm pretty biased, though: I was a senior in highschool when the day after REM played my city half my graduating class was wearing the concert shirt.
Were they all that restrained? I'm thinking about Stipe's cringe-y activism, and the starfucker galaxy of Stipe, Courtney Love, and Billy Corgan; even the idea of "meeting [grunge] on its own turf" is a reframing of the band not as an authentic artistic endeavor but as a pop culture trend artifact.
How much influence did REM have? What's a well-regarded indie musician you'd say was prompted largely by REM itself, rather than Patti Smith and Big Star?
That subjectivity depends on what side of the political spectrum you fall.
>> starfucker galaxy
eyeroll
Love/Corgan are still trying to ride their 15-mintues TO THIS DAY. Love is like a venereal disease, she just keeps coming back. And Corgan groomed some teen-aged fan to be his bride and is currently performing 7 hour meditation synthloop pieces to select audiences.
Can’t comment on the Microsoft comment below since it’s dead, but… I wonder if there’s parallels to be drawn…
Gates and Allen went from Harvard to being founders in Albuquerque in ‘75 to Seattle ‘79 and becoming a corporate behemoth. Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe went from the University of Georgia in ‘80, bootstrapping their first record then signing with IRS records in ‘82, to being a corporate behemoth under Warner in ‘88. And if their first ~$10M Warner deal was a seed round, their next $80M deal was an exit.
Anyway there's going to be co-causation: did Gen-X college-grad hipsters fuel the rise of alt-rock, or did the boom in alt-rock bands conform to the tastes of Gen-X college-grad hipsters and their increasing wealth (via the boomm in tech companies), and how much of that was mere social signalling about trying to be cool, vs musical tastes and intentional curation?
Where did you get the idea that Microsoft caused REM? All I said was they followed similar trajectories.
You think the radio, tv, live concert and record industry made billions selling a product people were only pretending to like?
There’s a lot to be explored in the social currents of the 80s-90s and the business of the music industry but you’re not going to get there from that angle.
Readit News
Turning down a very large sum of money suggests you believe something in a way that simply lecturing others doesn’t.
I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.
In the end we can't prove we exist and we deal in probabilities given evidence.
Whether the humor was intentional or not, both songs would have been great choices.
> I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.
Who were probably like "better say yes before they listen to the rest of the song!"
When you didn't have to deal wirh it, yes. /s
Wondering if other people agree with this? Because it doesn’t really match my experience at all. I wouldn’t say I’ve heard REM in stores often enough for them to be noteworthy in that regard, much less infamous.
Heck, I remember once stopping in my tracks in a grocery aisle because I heard War Pigs by Black Sabbath playing over the sound system. No one else in the store seemed to be paying attention, though.
The irony of this being published in The Yale Review is too much for me. If REM had stopped after Reckoning the way Television did after Adventure, the only way anyone would be able to talk about them would be in hushed reverential tones. The article scoffs at the notion of "selling out", but then tells a story of an esteemed band doing exactly that, and the inevitable outcome, of "Losing My Religion" playing in the background at every supermarket.
(For calibration purposes: Murmur is a top 5 album for me, and my top 5 REM albums would include Automatic).
Then I open HN and I see this title. Serendipity
I do start to wonder if there's some sub-threshold attention wave going on.
serendipity /ˌsɛrənˈdɪpɪti/ noun
- the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
Seems like parent’s use is Ok.
there was that day the video for Losing My Religion came out and it seemed like a harbinger of both the beginning and end of the dual pillars of 80s college / grunge. bless you Murmur, bless you Meat Puppets, bless you MTv. touch me i'm sick, everybody, i wanna dip my balls in it!
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I never got into REM, I preferred The Fall, The The, The Smiths, Pixies, Pavement.
[1] https://www.treblezine.com/out-of-time-r-e-m-s-generation-ga...
Got to see them live on the Green tour in 1989. Still one of my top-five concerts of all time, and I've been to more shows than I can count since.
Of course, I'm pretty biased, though: I was a senior in highschool when the day after REM played my city half my graduating class was wearing the concert shirt.
How much influence did REM have? What's a well-regarded indie musician you'd say was prompted largely by REM itself, rather than Patti Smith and Big Star?
Nirvana - Cobain famously said "If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they’ve written".
The National - Toured with, worked with, still bring Michael Stipe onstage every once in a while.
Radiohead - Thom Yorke: "I’ve ripped them off left, right and centre for years and years and years and years."
That subjectivity depends on what side of the political spectrum you fall.
>> starfucker galaxy
eyeroll
Love/Corgan are still trying to ride their 15-mintues TO THIS DAY. Love is like a venereal disease, she just keeps coming back. And Corgan groomed some teen-aged fan to be his bride and is currently performing 7 hour meditation synthloop pieces to select audiences.
Where's Stipe? Off being a normal human.
>> meeting [grunge] on its own turf"
Uh, when did REM say this?
Gates and Allen went from Harvard to being founders in Albuquerque in ‘75 to Seattle ‘79 and becoming a corporate behemoth. Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe went from the University of Georgia in ‘80, bootstrapping their first record then signing with IRS records in ‘82, to being a corporate behemoth under Warner in ‘88. And if their first ~$10M Warner deal was a seed round, their next $80M deal was an exit.
Anyway there's going to be co-causation: did Gen-X college-grad hipsters fuel the rise of alt-rock, or did the boom in alt-rock bands conform to the tastes of Gen-X college-grad hipsters and their increasing wealth (via the boomm in tech companies), and how much of that was mere social signalling about trying to be cool, vs musical tastes and intentional curation?
You think the radio, tv, live concert and record industry made billions selling a product people were only pretending to like?
There’s a lot to be explored in the social currents of the 80s-90s and the business of the music industry but you’re not going to get there from that angle.
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