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Vice Blog

FRIDAY TYRANT - MORE LAST WORDS ON R.E.M.

Amarcord buying Reckoning on tape when I was a green, alt-yearling in early bloom. I specifically recall being intrigued with the record label's little I.R.S. guy on the spine of the tape case. As I skated my way home for that first listen, I eyed him. The besunglassed and capped man looked like a man of subterfuge, looked like he was from the underground. He appeared to be a subverter or a promoter of subversion. I'd eventually get home, throw the tape in the deck, hit play, and then wish I could be reading the lyrics along with the tracks as they played. I always did this after buying a tape, making sure to never jump ahead as I listened and read along. I'd always wait through the instrumental parts of each song for the voice to catch up before skipping down to the next line of lyric. It was not a breeze, this waiting. But I suffered it because I liked to hear the words being sung as my eyes followed them across the little leaflet inserts that normally came along with most tapes. Reckoning didn't have the lyrics in it. Pretty sure the inside of the cover was bare white. This fact caused me to misconstrue the words of those songs for years. If I wasn't sure what Stipe was singing, I'd have my own imaginings to go to. Possibilities of what he might be saying, might be singing. It didn't matter what he was saying in Harborcoat though, did it? It was regardlessly good.

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An article (or lithticle) was recently published concerning itself with the order of R.E.M. albums that the writer numbered from worst to best. To be sure, everyone is allowed to have an opinion, but that doesn't always mean it's the proper one, or the correct one, or that it's even coherent at all. Forget about what he might have left out in his list. Leaving things in can be just as grave of a mistake. I've mentioned before the dangers of throwing around phrases like "the best" so let's make this "Just Another Person's Quasi-attempt at Ordering" all R.E.M albums, but different than the one that was just published last week. Fair? Why does just that guy get to do it?

1. Chronic Town: You have to put this first. You just must, and there is no way around it. I realize it's an EP or whatever, but we are obliged to make exceptions. Chronic Town is the seed, the egg, the spore. "Gardening at Night." "Wolves, Lower." Are you kidding, joking, are you fucking with me?

2. Reckoning: (Don't Go Back to) Rockville. "So. Central Rain". Coincidentally, Pavement, "Time After Time" was my least favorite song too (remember No Alternative?). But this album is fucking perfection. Michael Stipe with long hair and acting all shy from his acne? Just beautiful. Acne on rock stars can only be heartmelting (unless it's exploding all the time and oozing or something. Then, well, gross).

3. Murmur: This should probably be at number one, right? Fuck. I'm blowin' it.

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4. Fables of the Reconstruction: To me, this is the one where the music started to sound cleaner than their previous efforts. Still fucking beautiful, but like maybe there was a closer eye conducting the events in the studio? Did I just say conducting? Did that make you think of Driver 8?

5. Life's Rich Pageant: I am on the gulf coast of Florida right now and there is a copy of this in the rental car. I drive up and down the beach and play it as loud as it can go. I cannot stop listening to it, and I love Tampa Bay Classic Rock Stations so I have a hard time resisting a few call stations in exchange for repeating Pageant. Pageant seems like it's the band at their most anxious and driven. Begin the Begin? Jesus. So good. They could have really spun out into something loud and punk after writing that song, but they decided instead to hold it in. And that's OK. This song is why.

6. Document: Here is where things started to go a little weird on me. There are definitely some great tracks on here but something happened to the band between the previous album and this one. Can't put my finger on it exactly. But this was on the album so can you even try to talk shit on it at all? Hardly.

7. Green: "World Leader Pretend" and "You Are The Everything" are two of the band's most honest efforts and those two songs alone merit respect for this album. Do you like the song above? If not, what is your shitty, shitty problem?

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8. Out of Time: The album that made them all millionaires. Michael Stipe's first album of love songs, so he claims. "Country Feedback." "Half a World Away." God, this is a great album, no argument here at all. However, this does not mean that I still don't get murdery feelings when I hear or even think about the song "Shiny Happy People." Were they intentionally trying to inspire hate and distrust with that one? Perhaps. But then there's the video up top.

9. Automatic for the People: I hesitate to include this album. Not because there are no good songs on it (because there are), but remember how I said that "Shiny Happy People" made me feel murdery? Well, "Everybody Hurts" makes me feel slaughtery and massacre-y and all around nervous that I just might be finally driven to soon kill. I hate that song, I hate that song, I hate that goddamn song. But there is some very solid shit on here. In college, I used to sit between two blasting woofers in my dorm room and do nitrous cartridge after nitrous cartridge while listening to New Orleans Instrumental No. 1. because it is a great soundtrack for nitrous. It helps get the WAH-WAH-WAH thing going pretty full-on.

10. Then, tragically, the entire band died in a terrible and fiery car crash that God made happen because they forgot about the hearts of their fans. There is a legend that the drummer may have survived, but I cannot confirm this.

N. B. Look. At the end of the day, any band that can cover VU (and pull it off like a dirty shirt) cannot be fucked with fairly. I hope you know that. I think you do know that. I once suggested that this cover of "Pale Blue Eyes" was as good, if not better than, Lou's version. Then I was violently attacked. But I'll say it again.

GIANCARLO DITRAPANO