It Was 40 Years Ago Today (-ish)

Well, maybe not to the day, but it was more or less precisely 40 years ago when I arrived at college. And for me, that freshman year will always be inextricably intertwined with my discovery of R.E.M. (and the countless college radio bands who joined them in completely altering the direction of my musical life). I was turned on to their initial releases all at once, their 1982 debut EP Chronic Town and 1983's Murmur and the still-relatively-newish Reckoning, and still tend to listen to them as a unified whole, though Murmur itself will always hold a somewhat talismanic quality (even if song-for-song I might give Reckoning a slight edge in quality).

Somewhat coincidentally, I've been listening to a lot of early R.E.M. lately. An online friend* turned me on to the What Is Music? podcast, three British blokes systematically listening to every R.E.M. album in chronological order and giving their song-by-song assessment. The show had previously covered the discographies of UK acts like Radiohead and Manic Street Preachers, and it's interesting to hear these guys, 2 of whom had apparently never really heard any R.E.M. before, discovering the records with fresh and somewhat historically detached ears. (It's also kinda weird, and fascinating, to hear people finding some of the early music rather meh, given the wide-eyed reverence I and my college radio peers largely hold for these records.)

[*The online friend is Mark Reynolds, an artist who creates incredible music-themed prints & t-shirts, some of which I'm proud to own and you're gonna love.]

Like a lot of decent music podcasts, I find myself frequently abandoning the show--that's why they take me forever to finish--and instead just playing the actual records. And, as always, I'm delighted to confirm for myself that I still find Murmur to be absolutely magical, its hold on me undiminished despite four intervening decades of music (and life generally). That's probably why Murmur was the first thing I talked about when I started on this writing endeavor four and a half years ago, largely as a daily exercise to get the musical/writing juices flowing each morning back when I was writing my book.

Anyway, I'm in R.E.M. mode again. And here are a couple pages from said book...




 

Comments

  1. Me too, man, changed my life. I had the great luck to run into Michael Stipe a couple of months ago and got to tell him directly.

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