It’s hot. It is close to midnight but it’s still as hot as an English summer day. I am not yet drunk but I am well on the way there. I have travelled nearly 2,500 miles to be there and we are in a street full of youthful people and lined with bars. One of the kamackis is trying to entice us in and this song comes on. I am lost in the perfection of the moment, contemplating the joy of it all. Just happy to be in that moment and not thinking or worrying about anything. A moment of nirvana.
Then the kamacki tugs me arm and asks if I like REM. I would have thought my swaying to the music would have given it away, but that was the moment broken.
(Dave and John in Bar Street, Kos Town)
Rewind six months and I was totally unaware of REM. When Losing My Religion was released I was prompted to listen to them, but started with their first album Murmur. Murmur is very different from Out Of Time, separated by ten years and a lot of experience. Stuart at Compact Music was ready each week with the next album from the band.
I love their first eight albums unreservedly, even the third “difficult” album Fables of the Reconstruction. How can you not like an album with tracks like Driver 8 or Maps and Legends? The vocals are hard to hear distinctly, but the interpretation of what Michael Stipe is saying is part of the fun.
Their first five albums were for IRS, an independent label (and their first recording – the EP Chronic Town is also stunning and an essential part of their catalogue). Even tracks like The One I Love are not what people think – it is a searing response to the end of a relationship. Another favourite track from the late 80s is Cuyahoga, about the First Nations (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1701 ).
They moved to Warner Brothers and commercial success arrived with the album Green. Highlights include Orange Crush, about the use of agent orange defoliant in Vietnam (that also had long term impact on the health of the Vietnamese). World Leader Pretend is about rich people treating the world like Monopoly (similar to a comic strip by Phil Elliott, I always wondered if they had read that or it was just a case of cultural coincidence).
After Out of Time 1992 saw the release of the follow up album Automatic For the People. Drive and Everybody Hurts are the most famous tracks, which I think are the weakest on that outing. Man On the Moon (about Andy Kaufman wrestling Jerry Lawler) and The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite (with elements of The Lion Sleeps Tonight) are the best singles. Ignoreland is a searing indictment of the Reagan era attitude to the poor. It ends with Find the River and Nightswimming, far better than the two more famous tracks.
(Man on the Moon video)
It would be hard for any band to keep up that success rate and REM changed to a much more rock direction with Monster. There was still one more great album – New Adventures in H-Fi to come, but after Bill Berry left they were not quite the same, but there were still beautiful tracks like Imitation of Life.
Losing My Religion is the easy choice – it is so famous. In some ways I would like to choose Texarkana from the same album as it is quite gorgeous and more people should hear it, but the memories associate with Losing My Religion make it one of my favourite songs ever.
In my head I can always go back to that moment in Bar Street. I’m still young and it is that sweet spot in time that was called the end of history, where the world looked like it was growing up.
Losing My Religion
Playlist:
- Gardening At Night
- Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
- Wolves, Lower
- Radio Free Europe
- Pilgrimage
- West of the Fields
- Shaking Through
- Talk About the Passion
- Harborcoat
- Seven Chinese Brothers
- Pretty Persuasion
- (Don’t Go Back to)Rockville
- Feeling Gravity’s Pull
- Maps and Legends
- Driver 8
- Kohoutek
- Cant Get There From Here
- Wendell Gee
- Fall On Me
- Cuyahoga
- Hyena
- What If We Give It Away?
- Swan Swan H
- Superman
- Finest Worksong
- Exhuming McCarthy
- It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
- The One I Love
- Oddfellows Local 151
- Stand
- Get Up
- World Leader Pretend
- Orange Crush
- Radio Song
- Losing My Religion
- Near Wild Heaven
- Shiny Happy People
- Texarkana
- Me In Honey
- The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight
- Sweetness Follows
- Ignoreland
- Man on the Moon
- Nightswimming
- Find the River
- First We Take Manhattan
- What’s the Frequency Kenneth?
- Crush With Eyeliner
- Bang and Blame
- How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us
- The Wake-Up Bomb
- Electrolite
- Sad Professor
- All the Way to Reno (You’re Gonna Be a Star)
- Bad Day
- Imitation of Life
Five Miles Out 