via//chicago

np: "Welcome to the Occupation (Live in Dublin)" - R.E.M.

I have to admit I have a weird, weird relation ship with these guys. I've never been the biggest fan, but they've put out plenty of albums that I absolutely adore and I've always kept an eye on what they have been up to. Unfortunately, for about the last decade (yes, pretty much since the departure of Bill Berry), that hasn't been much good at all. Anyway, a brief history of my long and complicated love affair with R.E.M.

Up until about about 1992, they were just another ubiquitous radio singles band that I never really embraced. Living out in the middle of central Illinois with no college or alternative radio meant I was only subjected to the most mainstream of their hits, which meant pretty much "Stand", "Shiny Happy People", "Losing My Religion", and "It's the End of the World...". I hated the former two with a passion and had the other two ruined for me by overplaying. It wasn't enough to make me ever want to seek out more. I knew they had a pretty well respected past, but I figured they were just of another time and I'd missed the boat. I was fine with that.

Enter the winter of 1992-93, where I had recently started delivering for a tiny local pizza joint. We had two delivery vehicles, both in varying stages somewhere between "piece of crap" and "beat to shit". The Ford Escort had a crappy radio that only picked up two stations - one country and the other a local top 40 station. The other vehicle, an Astro van, was in even worse shape - the muffler was literally sitting in the backseat and the radio worked very sporadically. We usually preferred to drive the Astro van for two reasons. One, without the muffler it sounded loud as hell and two, being an automatic meant that the gear shift never popped loose as it did in the Escort. Anyway, that winter I spent a lot of time driving the van making sporadic rural deliveries. The owner's son had stuck a cassette version of Automatic for the People in the center console and it just kinda sat there. One night, sick of the radio, I popped it in. After that night it didn't leave the deck when I was in the van. Initially I only really liked "Man on the Moon" and "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight", but in time pretty much the whole album grew on me.

Fast forward to the fall of 1994. I had just started my freshman year of college and in addition to all the other newfound freedoms, I was loving having a campus alt-rock station and constant access to MTV. One of the big songs being pimped on both at the time was "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?", the lead single from the upcoming Monster. I adored that song. I loved the obscure reference it came from, the backwards solo, the guitar sound, it was great. So I went to the big midnight release party at Record Service (R.I.P.) and bought the album, which quickly became of of my favorites. Now. I realize this album is pretty much universally reviled by the serious R.E.M. fans and has become bargain bin fodder the world over. I don't get it, it's a taut bunch of guitar-driven rock tunes. It was the perfect album for me at the time. Though I have cooled on it slightly over the years, it remains my second favorite album.

My first favorite? The band's follow-up to Monster, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, a sprawling record that showcase a wide variety of sounds. It remains my most played album of theirs. After I fell in love with this album, I scoured the used shops and started picking up cheap copies of their older albums - Green, Out of Time, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and eventually Murmur. I found something to like on all of them, particularly Murmur, but none of them grabbed me in the way Monster and New Adventures did. But that was okay. I did end up really loving Murmur, but none of the other early ones completely clicked for me.

Then came Up, the 1998 album that was the first without longtime drummer Bill Berry. It was, alright. I feel like the loss of Berry forced them to redefine their sound in a hurry and they did a lot of experimenting. Somtimes it worked ("Daysleeper", "At My Most Beautiful", "Lotus"), but more often it did not. And that's pretty much where my brief affair with R.E.M. tailed off. I bought Reveal and tried to convince myself that I loved it, but it quickly sank into the back shelves of my collection. Around the Sun was just awful and I don't think I ever spun it more than twice after I first bought it. The advance press on Accelerate and it being a "return to form" hooked me and it was a surprisingly fun listen, but wasn't enough to rekindle my affair.

Why bring all this up? I'm currently listening to their recently released Live at The Olympia, a two-disc document of their five night stand in Dublin that served as "working rehearsals" for Accelerate, and falling for the band all over again. Since these shows were testing ground for the new material in progress, they are pretty heavy on Accelerate tunes. But what makes these so special is what made up the rest of the setlist - tons and tons of early material and obscurities. I mean, hell, there is four songs on here from Chronic Town! And even better? None of the ubiquitous big hits. There's no "Everybody Hurts", no "Shiny Happy People", no "Losing My Religion" - it's like an obscurists dream! More importantly, the band sounds fantastic, like they are just loving being up on the stage. It's a great document and one that should really be given a chance, particularly if you'd cooled on the band given their lackluster 2000's output. Seriously, give this a chance and you may find yourself falling for Michael Stipe all over again.