Quick List XXV - Favorite R.E.M. songs

[dee dee]

My favorite band in high school. Totally lost interest in them about 10-12 years ago, but once upon a time i loved them.

1. Rockville
2. Radio Free Europe
3. Nightswimming
4. Begin the Begin
5. So. Central Rain or Driver 8

[Tequila Cowboy]

1. Gardening at Night
2. Perfect Circle
3. 1,000,000
4. Driver 8
5. Cuyahoga


The hardest one yet for me, by far.

[drtpants]

Kahoutek
These Days
Letter Never Sent
Pretty Persuasion
We Walk


my life revolved around these guys circa 1985. i used to read every single interview i could get my hands on. if Peter Buck said it was cool, I bought it. before i heard R.E.M. i listened to Top 40 and metal. R.E.M. made music a life-or-death thing for me. a quarter century hence and little has changed.

[drtpants]

they should hang it up. they've completely lost their cultural relevance and they haven't made a great start-to-finish album since Lifes Rich Pagent. there's been good songs on every record since other than the last one, but so what?

perfect exits not induced by death are so rare in rock-n-roll. i was hoping R.E.M. would make one but sadly they have not.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Kahoutek
These Days
Letter Never Sent
Pretty Persuasion
We Walk


my life revolved around these guys circa 1985. i used to read every single interview i could get my hands on. if Peter Buck said it was cool, I bought it. before i heard R.E.M. i listened to Top 40 and metal. R.E.M. made music a life-or-death thing for me. a quarter century hence and little has changed.

Started a bit earlier than you (early 1983) but the story is basically the same. I had already been into some pretty good mainstream bands, loved music and played in bands, but REM, The Replacements and others changed my life. Unfortunately "losing My Religion" and other tracks from that era of REM caused me to lose mine and wander off to the Grateful Dead and jamband hell for a decade. Then came DBT...

[dee dee]

Kahoutek
These Days
Letter Never Sent
Pretty Persuasion
We Walk


my life revolved around these guys circa 1985. i used to read every single interview i could get my hands on. if Peter Buck said it was cool, I bought it. before i heard R.E.M. i listened to Top 40 and metal. R.E.M. made music a life-or-death thing for me. a quarter century hence and little has changed.

Started a bit earlier than you (early 1983) but the story is basically the same. I had already been into some pretty good mainstream bands, loved music and played in bands, but REM, The Replacements and others changed my life. Unfortunately "losing My Religion" and other tracks from that era of REM caused me to lose mine and wander off to the Grateful Dead and jamband hell for a decade. Then came DBT...

Dude, that is my story exactly

[Cubfan06]

1) So Central Rain
2) Circus Envy
3) Try Not to Breathe
4) Wake Up Bomb
5) It's the End of the World as We Know It

[Slipkid42]

Radio Free Europe
Rockville
Driver 8
Fall On Me
The One I Love

[Smitty]

Rockville
Driver 8
Nightswimming
End of the World
So Central Rain

[Gator McKlusky]

Rockville
Catapult
Maps And Legends
Odd Fellows Local 151
Pretty Persuasion

[Cubfan06]

they should hang it up. they've completely lost their cultural relevance and they haven't made a great start-to-finish album since Lifes Rich Pagent. there's been good songs on every record since other than the last one, but so what?

perfect exits not induced by death are so rare in rock-n-roll. i was hoping R.E.M. would make one but sadly they have not.

I think that Monster is a great start-to-finish album. I was a little young to pick up on the musical relevance of R.E.M in '85. And having gone back and picked up their catalog, Monster, is obviously a little different from their sound on other albums and it had commercial success which automatically may deture their earlier fans from it, but I think that its a great album. It was sequentially the third album that I had bought and it had a lot more edge than Automatic for the People and Out of Time. I think that it has some really cool guitar effects and some great songs, at least they appealed to me. I saw them on Monster three times in Chicago that year and every time was excellent and got to see Radiohead open for them on "The Bends" in the process. Nothing but fond memories.

[RevMatt]

Radio Free Europe
Wolves, Lower
Finest Worksong
Catapult
Gardening at Night

[Clams]

Fall on Me
South Central Rain
Man on the Moon-->Night Swimming-->Find the River

[drtpants]

I liked Monster more than most but I can't say it's great start-to-finish. I mean, 'Tongue'? Hideous.

[beantownbubba]

Straight down the middle for me:

Rockville
End of the World
Man on the Moon
Radio Free Europe
So Central Rain or The One I Love

Special mention for What's the Frequency, Kenneth, which may not sound like REM but which sounds way cool coming over the car radio cranked up to 11.

[Smitty]

Straight down the middle for me:

Rockville
End of the World
Man on the Moon
Radio Free Europe
So Central Rain or The One I Love

Special mention for What's the Frequency, Kenneth, which may not sound like REM but which sounds way cool coming over the car radio cranked up to 11.

Love Man on the Moon, forgot about it. Happy to see someone mentioned it.

[Iowan]

Nightswimming
What's the Frequency Kenneth?
Man on the Moon
Orange Crush
It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Fairly poppy/cliche list. I don't have an extensive REM collection. But I really, really like these 5 songs.

[beantownbubba]

Nightswimming
What's the Frequency Kenneth?
Man on the Moon
Orange Crush
It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Fairly poppy/cliche list. I don't have an extensive REM collection. But I really, really like these 5 songs.

Ruh roh. I' ducking, and u may want to head to the bunker, Iowan Don't forget the IPA.

[drtpants]

'Sweetness Follows' should make someone's list. purty.

[Iowan]

Nightswimming
What's the Frequency Kenneth?
Man on the Moon
Orange Crush
It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Fairly poppy/cliche list. I don't have an extensive REM collection. But I really, really like these 5 songs.

Ruh roh. I' ducking, and u may want to head to the bunker, Iowan Don't forget the IPA.

I probably shouldn't have posted in this thread. I don't care though, I wanted to express my love for Nightswimming.

It's not that I dislike/don't care for R.E.M. Far from it. I just haven't gotten around to them yet. My old man had a lot of their albums when I was a kid, so I should probably dig some of those up.

[drtpants]

Your Dad is into R.E.M. Thanks for making everyone here feel like they're a thousand years old. You're right. Why did you wander into this thread?

[tinnitus photography]

Green Grow The Rushes
Boxcars (A Carnival Of Sorts)
Camera
Perfect Circle
These Days

[tinnitus photography]

2. Perfect Circle

These Days

i made it a point to not look @ any of the posts in this thread before I made my choices, and i am so happy that I am not the only one that recognizes these songs! i could have chosen a lot more, but really only up until Green...REM never made me listen past that.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

I'm still a fan and buy every one of their new albums on the day of release. The subject of artist loyalty is one that's always intrigued me because the same thing is true for my love of Jimmy Buffett's music. My favorite era of his work is the 70s but I still purchase his records on the day they come out. R.E.M. could have quit when Bill Berry left but they didn't, upon his insistence. So, I'd rather have a Bill Berry-less R.E.M. than see them continue even though he was no longer happy being in the band. Since Brighter Than Creation's Dark I've reached a similar impasse with the DBTs. I favor their first two records most but I'll be at the record store on the day Go-Go Boots drops. And, like R.E.M., I'll still go see them play live whenever they come around.

Funny thing about Monster is that R.E.M. have always had a harder, edgier side but that usually only came out live or via their fanclub singles and b-sides. I remember when "Losing My Religion" was still fairly new, I played their cover of Spizzenergi's "Where's Captain Kirk?" off of one of their fanclub singles and one of my friends didn't even recognize it as being by the same band. After Out of Time, Peter Buck mentioned in a R.E.M. fanclub newsletter that the next record would be recorded live in the studio, straight to two-track. Well, when they got in the studio the sessions took on a much more somber direction and became Automatic For the People so the raw rock record Buck had wanted to make got put on the back burner. The rock record came with Monster but in an interview years later, Stipe said it still didn't meet the expectations of Buck's initial notion, that they finally got it right with New Adventures In Hi-Fi (which just so happens to be my favorite album from their Warner Brothers years).

[emandrisdad]

Find the River
At My Most Beautiful
Rockville
Carnival of Sorts
Sitting Still

[Zip City]

World Leader Pretend
Swan Swan H
Fall On Me
I Remember California
Oddfellows Local 151

[Iowan]

Your Dad is into R.E.M. Thanks for making everyone here feel like they're a thousand years old. You're right. Why did you wander into this thread?

As far as I've gathered, I'm one of the younger ones around here. I'm 25. I have plenty of time left to check out R.E.M.

One of my first thoughts upon realizing how abnormally young I was on 9B/3DD was "how do all these old people know how to use the internet?"

[beantownbubba]

Your Dad is into R.E.M. Thanks for making everyone here feel like they're a thousand years old. You're right. Why did you wander into this thread?

As far as I've gathered, I'm one of the younger ones around here. I'm 25. I have plenty of time left to check out R.E.M.

One of my first thoughts upon realizing how abnormally young I was on 9B/3DD was "how do all these old people know how to use the internet?"

Some of us actually go back to the days of dial up modems (and not even "miraculously fast" 56K ones), when AOL was a pay service that actually made money.

So does this mean that REM is dad rock?

[Tequila Cowboy]

One of my first thoughts upon realizing how abnormally young I was on 9B/3DD was "how do all these old people know how to use the internet?"

Watch it whippersnapper.

[Iowan]

Your Dad is into R.E.M. Thanks for making everyone here feel like they're a thousand years old. You're right. Why did you wander into this thread?

As far as I've gathered, I'm one of the younger ones around here. I'm 25. I have plenty of time left to check out R.E.M.

One of my first thoughts upon realizing how abnormally young I was on 9B/3DD was "how do all these old people know how to use the internet?"

Some of us actually go back to the days of dial up modems (and not even "miraculously fast" 56K ones), when AOL was a pay service that actually made money.

So does this mean that REM is dad rock?

Reminds me of downloading blink-182 and Phish songs on 32K dial ups when I was 14, via Napster. One song at a time, and you could preview however much of the song had downloaded.

I remembered how enamored I was with the idea that I had access to all of this music that I heard about, but never actually heard. I still remember the first night I found out about Napster, sitting there downloading songs until 3AM. Honestly, it's right there with the first time I got drunk or losing my, er, you know.