• REM: Maps and Legends – A Simple Case of Geography

    August 26, 2013 - By 

    The story is a sad one, told many times, the story of their life and trying times. As much as the musical climate of the times, REM are a product of geography, rooted in the landscape and traditions of the American South. In the same way that The Clash will always be intrinsically linked to London, The Doors to Los Angeles, or Joy Division to Manchester, REM could only have crawled from the South. Athens, Georgia is a college town. People come and go, some stay, some don’t. So it was back in 1980 when the four men that made…

  • Pre-murmurings: REM and Chronic Town

    August 22, 2013 - By 

    Some records become bigger than the music contained on them. The infamous Exile on Main St. sessions are more mythologised and discussed than the music they produced. Chinese Democracy will always be better remembered for its protracted development than for its songs. REM’s debut release, Chronic Town, brings its own baggage to the table: the birth of college-rock as we know it. The record that breathed new life into the electric guitar as a creative instrument in an era awash with New Wave synths. A reputation for being enigmatic and inscrutable, with secrets hidden in every groove. The stories surrounding…

  • Classic album: REM – Murmur

    August 21, 2013 - By 

    Before major label deals and stadium-conquering, mandolin-led ballads were a mere glint in the eyes of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry, there were four men in the college town of Athens. Four men playing music destined to repeat in the Walkman headphones of alienated teens before ‘alienated teens’ became a marketing tool. Case in point: this very writer discovered Murmur at the age of 16 amongst a select few picks from R.E.M. enthusiastically presented before my eyes by a great friend and diehard aficionado. While Automatic For The People impressed my mother, Monster riffed well enough…

  • REM: The First Cut is The Deepest – True Love Never Dies

    August 20, 2013 - By 

    I have always had the theory that one doesn’t always just ‘discover’ bands. Often it can be a two-way street, that a band can come along and ‘get’ you at the right time and place and it is such a seismic event, that one will never recover or forget about it. The Smiths came to me shortly after my father died. A family friend took me to see them in concert and that was ‘IT’. I dedicated my teen years to them and in return, their musical output was, in a weird way, a comfort. Some of the subtleties of…

  • Gateways To Paradise – How REM Gave Me A Music Collection

    August 19, 2013 - By 

    I was 13, living in Antrim, and it felt like the entire world was very, very far away. But then I would pick up my Walkman, slot in a copy of Fables of the Reconstruction or Out of Time, and find myself in an exotic world, a place of mystery and magic, a place where the kudzu vine spread over everything, and nights were spent by the railway line, watching the trains. To that 13 year old boy, REM were more than a lifeline; they were a life. As the years went by, my love of REM would fluctuate, their 21st century missteps leading…