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We Have Had A Heavenly Time: R.E.M. 1980-2011

  • Writer: Graham Quinn
    Graham Quinn
  • Dec 6, 2014
  • 3 min read

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Time

31 Years, 5 Months, 16 Days ; 16 Studio albums (plus various compilations, collections, live albums) ; these are but the bare facts. Much has been written in the few days since R.E.M. announced they were to be no more about how this was a blessing as the band were now the musical equivalent of an elderly pet awaiting the inevitable.

But let's just put some more context into this - few bands or artists have put together a run of albums such as that which went from Murmur in 1983 to Automatic For The People in 1992 - even allowing for the revisionism of those who always saw Fables... as the runt of that litter but have since departed from that received wisdom (just check the reviews of the legacy reissue). Bowie, Beatles, Prince, Springsteen........ok, everyone will have their own examples. What is sure is that charges of their later work being 'embarrasing' or 'insulting' are way wide of the mark. Bill Berry leaving is the obvious fork in the road, and it wasn't an easy journey at times from there, but there are still some moments in the post 1997 R.E.M. canon that many bands before would have killed for and since will never achieve. Perhaps there was a feeling that even after delivering their two best albums since 1996's New Adventures In Hi-Fi with Accelerate and Collapse Into Now, the traumas the band went through to reach that were something they didn't want OR NEED to go through again. They have left on their own accord, as they arrived. They leave with their heads held high and with a legacy intact. We were very lucky to have them.

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Memory

And to think....that T shirt could very easily had said "GREEN Twisted Kites /Cans of Piss/Negro Wives" instead of R.E.M. , or the phonetic "REM" as people insisted on saying even though you can see the full stops very clearly on even a 23 year old photo.

There have been outpourings of everything from apathy to grief since the announcement. I was in a hotel in Oxford, sneaking a look at the front of the paper outside the next door room on my way to breakfast with its "REM RIP" banner, and I was at least momentarily stunned. For fans, it is of course a sad moment - but its also one of reflection and thanks. Scroobius Pip is right, whoever it is, they're always "just a band" - its not a bereavement - but they did, for me, have an involvement in 24 years of my life, and your favourite bands do often provide touchstones, markers, signposts, advice, succour, and all sorts of other things if they mean that much to you. Here's an example, in lieu of writing pages and pages and pages (when actually my Accelerate review captures my overall view of the bands work) - at the time of the above picture, You Are The Everything was a kind of catch-all paean to whichever of the many girls who didnt fancy me as much as I fancied them ; some years later I was listening to it while driving with my first child in the back of the car, just months old, and the lyric morphed into something totally different, transforming into views of the journey we were on - mine as a new parent, hers taking in the constantly new surroundings she was experiencing:

Sometimes I feel like I can't even sing I'm very scared for this world I'm very scared for me

Eviscerate your memory

Here's a scene You're in the back seat laying down

The windows wrap around To sound of the travel and the engine

All you hear is time stand still in travel and feel such peace and absolute

The stillness still that doesn't end but slowly drifts into sleep

The stars are the greatest thing you've ever seen And they're there for you

For you alone you are the everything

I think about this world a lot and I cry

And I've seen the films and the eyes but I'm in this kitchen

Everything is beautiful And she is so beautiful she is so young and old

I look at her and I see the beauty ff the light of music

The voices talking somewhere in the house

Late spring and you're drifting off to sleep with your teeth in your mouth

You are here with me You are here with me

You have been here and you are everything.

File Under Grateful.

 
 
 

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"Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going" -Tennessee Williams

 

It's just an overblown sketch pad, a rarified jotter, a notepad that's really got rather up itself. The opinions expresssed herein are my own, and I think that might be the nub of the problem.......

 

 

 

 

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