my power pop addiction, no. 71 (143)

The double detachment of third person, past tense was just as difficult for him, his words frequently slipping into an especially ugly brand of the passive voice on those occasions when this more journalistic modality was deemed appropriate… To begin a thought piece in this manner, with a fragment that assumed familiarity with something said elsewhere, though not referring to it explicitly, struck him as a very REM-ish thing to do, and it reminded him of the pleasure he had derived as a teenager in trying to decipher Michael Stipe’s lyrics. There’s a splinter in your eye and it reads react… Back then, REM was for him like mac and cheese, peanut butter, and Chips Ahoy, comfort food for the ears, to mix metaphors, music that calmed him down when he felt uptight, picked him up when he felt down, and gave him strength to carry on in the face of repeated heartbreaks and disappointments. But as the tinny production value of the first few albums became increasingly difficult for him to abide, REM lost some of their luster. Still, there has never been the slightest doubt as to the greatness of the music itself, amounting to a kind of power folk pop, and peaking with the songs collected on Fables of the Reconstruction, the band’s third album, produced by Joe Boyd. Unfortunately, Boyd could not recreate the magic touch he had in the 60s and early 70s, when he made the likes of Nick Drake and Fairport Convention sound so warm and intimate. Fables sounded exactly the opposite, cold and distant, but this was not entirely Boyd’s fault as it would have been impossible for him to step outside the available technology and ascendant corporate ethos of the Reagan era. This was why seeing REM live became so essential to their most devoted fans. Freed from the stifling constraints of the studio, the band would grow wings and fly. He got to see them several times, the most memorable of which was their show at Radio City Music Hall in the spring of 1985, with the Minutemen as the opening act. Not a bad double bill! …REM were not at all extroverted on stage, but they didn’t have to be because they took performing seriously, and their amazingly tight shows - 100 times fresher sounding than anything heard on the albums - unleashed an energy that would fill any room with communal good vibes and joyful jingle jangle. There have been very few bands that could match REM’s quiet intensity on stage, and he has never forgotten the rapturous energy that flowed through his body when he saw and heard them play live...

Oy vey, this was really hard!