'Key word is “seemed” in that sentence. But thank you for that.'
June 2, 2015 12:18 PM   Subscribe

 
His response to the first question is, "Can you be more specific?"

So Stipe. So good.
posted by entropone at 12:28 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Some of my favorite Michael Stipe moments are when he has a duet with a female singer-- Natalie Merchant, Syd Straw, Patti Smith.

If he gets back into music, he should go the Marvin Gaye - Tammi Terrell route.
posted by superelastic at 12:30 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness

Ha!

Great interview, thanks for the post. Watching the E-Bow The Letter video again it seems so quintessentially REM, both sound and (beautiful) visuals that it's hard to understand why that sunk the album.
posted by billiebee at 12:33 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Am I just a sentimental Christmas fool that one of my favorite moments on the Colbert Report was the trio version of "Good King Wenceslas" by Colbert, Mandy Patinkin, and Stype?
posted by Ber at 12:37 PM on June 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


Thanks for posting this. R.E.M. is probably my favourite band, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi is probably my favourite album from the group, so furry happy monsters all around.

"What are you wearing? Chanel No. 5."
posted by minsies at 12:42 PM on June 2, 2015 [8 favorites]


I think REM were primed for a bit of a backlash when New Adventures... was released, no matter what the music on it was like. There was the gigantic contract they signed with Warner Brothers, which annoyed a lot of fans, and people had had enough time to realize that Monster, which was accompanied by a huge tour and publicity campaign, wasn't actually all that good (it was one of the kings of the used CD bin in the late '90s).
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:43 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


If he gets back into music

What, and turn his back on a promising acting career?
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:44 PM on June 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


I miss my boys so much it makes my heart hurt.
R.E.M. and U2 were my lighthouse.
I was 20 years old when Boy came out, and 22 when the Chronic Town EP hit the shelves.
I could always count on them, and I could always find my way back to myself after listening to them.

With R.E.M. gone and U2 kind of flailing about, I would pay good money for a Stipe solo album just to hear his voice sing some new songs.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 12:48 PM on June 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


people had had enough time to realize that Monster, which was accompanied by a huge tour and publicity campaign, wasn't actually all that good (it was one of the kings of the used CD bin in the late '90s).

Monster was a very good album, but it was a lousy R.E.M. album.
posted by Etrigan at 12:51 PM on June 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


Put on "Star 69," turn up the volume, and think carefully about your analysis of Monster's quality.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi is indeed outstanding.

If you want to hear REM's nadir, listen to Around The Sun. Actually, just take my word for it. No need for all of us to suffer.

Close to my favorite band of all time.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:56 PM on June 2, 2015 [5 favorites]


"But I’m able to laugh at it, and I have the scar to prove to myself what a basic bitch I am." I can't get over the fact that Michael Stipe says basic bitch. LOL!!
posted by viramamunivar at 1:03 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Am I just a sentimental Christmas fool that one of my favorite moments on the Colbert Report was the trio version of "Good King Wenceslas" by Colbert, Mandy Patinkin, and St[i]pe?

*I* am a sentimental Christmas fool. And I did not know about this. THANK YOU.
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:07 PM on June 2, 2015


I have a full body blush even thinking about it.

Is that a biological possibility? Anyway it's a hilarious story.

I respect anybody who can say they have enough in 2015 even though he has a great deal. See: dozens of other rock stars of his generation and older taking big money for garbage. That I love almost all the old REM records is lagniappe.
posted by bukvich at 2:14 PM on June 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Great interview and the documentary is available on iTunes!
posted by photoslob at 2:31 PM on June 2, 2015


I was at that 2008 Bowl show. My main memory was a bro in front me me yelling "Man on the Moon!" during Pretty Persuasion, one of my favorite REM songs. (He yelled it through the entire shoe, but it was particularly bad then.)
posted by persona au gratin at 2:33 PM on June 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


In some ways I feel sorry for REM. They put out, in their first few albums, some of the greatest music of the last 40 years. But it's hard to follow that up. But they still managed to out out great (even if most was hit or miss) stuff after, especially on Automatic.

Bill Berry was an amazing drummer (in the way Ringo is). Mike Mills is a superb bassist. Listen to the basslines on Murmur. He sounds like Peter Hook.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:40 PM on June 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


One of the few regrets I have in my life is getting caught for letting a cute boy come over when my parents weren't home in 1989. Thanks to that stupid move, I missed seeing them during the Green tour.

Sadly, they didn't tour in my neck of the woods again until Monster and that was the first concert I ever went to where I felt like an old fogey. Some how in the space of a few years, REM and I had gotten on a different vibe and I left that show feeling disappointed and slightly betrayed.

As I've gotten older, I realized that it was me that was the problem and not the band. They were growing and changing and I forgot to come along for the ride. Looking back, that's one of the beautiful things about REM, they were really in it for the music and if they wanted to play a mandolin for two hours, then by god, they did it.

Few artists are willing to take those risks and lose fans, and I respect the hell out of them for doing it. And for walking away when they felt like it was time.

Like someone said over in the director thread Kevin Smith lost me because I grew up and he didn't. Sadly, REM lost me for a few years because they grew, and I hadn't.
posted by teleri025 at 3:02 PM on June 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


There are so many songs from REM from the mid-80s to probably the mid-90s that have become Totemic Memory Songs that evoke in a kind of full-body-recall days or even just Big Moments from my young, madcap life. It's odd because even though I always liked them a lot and bought every album from the first, at least until the end of the 90s, they were never what I would have called a favorite band.

But my love for the music continues to grow over the years.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:21 PM on June 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


From a 1992 Rolling Stone interview:

Have you considered doing a solo record?
I was never a big Rolling Stones fan, but I remember thinking when Mick Jagger put out his first solo record in 1985, "God, the guy's been in the band for 22 years, he's the most famous singer in the world, and it took him this long to get it together?" Now I know why. R.E.M. consumes almost every waking hour of my life.

I would love to do a solo record, and I guarantee that it would be very different from R.E.M.

What do you want to do on your first solo record?
The first thing I would do is an album of cover songs. I've actually got a list already: "Paralysed," by Gang of Four, "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution," by Tracy Chapman, "Gravity," by Pylon, "Hey Jack Kerouac," by 10,000 Maniacs. There was a song called "Drowning," by the English Beat, that I always thought would make a good single. And there are a bunch of songs I know I could really wail on, like "Magic Carpet Ride," by Steppenwolf.

I'd probably do a record of cover songs and then a record of my own stuff that would just be complete incoherency, because I'd want to get all the stuff I can't do in R.E.M. out of my system in one go. I'm sure it would be a horrible mess, although fun to make.

posted by davebush at 5:27 PM on June 2, 2015 [4 favorites]


One of those moments I mentioned, because it's in my mind right now: in 1992, I was living aboard a sailboat with a guy I'd met (who became one of my great lifetime friends, but has since disappeared, sadly) in Marina de La Paz, down near the tip of Baja California. Ostensibly we were getting the boat ready for the owner, who was going to come down from Vancouver a few months later once the cruising season started, and we were actually somewhat productive -- varnishing, polishing and hullscraping and working on the diesel and stuff -- at least in the mornings. The rest of the time we were hauling ass out to Isla Partida to go diving, helping out other cruisers, most of whom tended towards the elderly, and drinking. Mostly drinking.

Our bar, about half a block up the esplanade on the beach, was the Barba Negra, and that's where we spent most of our time, from post-siesta until closing, most days and nights. It was the default drinking and socializing spot for everybody who was tied up or anchored just off Marina de La Paz, and it was run by a guy named Jose who was and remains all these years later my favorite bar owner in all the bars I hung out in over my Drinking Decades.

Anyway, I remember one afternoon, just as the sun was starting to sink a bit in the sky over the city, we walked in to see who was there and have a few preliminary Pacificos (y nada mas! went the slogan). As you walked in there was a small TV mounted up near the ceiling, which generally played MTV or one of the other music channels, back when they played music videos. Just as we walked in that afternoon, REM's Drive started up on the TV.

I remember standing there looking up, and just having wave after wave of chills running down my back. I still don't know why that song -- it was the first time I heard it -- and that video hit me so hard that day, but it was damned near a religious experience, as the sweat started to dry on my face. I was kind of transfixed by it. I stood there and watched the whole damn thing, barely even taking my eyes off it when my buddy Craig walked back from the bar to hand me a beer.

To this day, 23 years later, every time I hear that song I am transported back to that happy, connected moment.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:45 PM on June 2, 2015 [16 favorites]


I remember going to Close-Up (Washington DC thing for high school students) in about 1982. The other schools in the group with us were from California and Pennsylvania, and they had never heard of R.E.M., which seemed unimaginable to us. I'd like to think that, over the years, they have had occasion to reflect "boy, those kids from Atlanta sure were right about that band".
posted by thelonius at 6:35 AM on June 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am pleased to see that Michael Stipe is still very much Michael Stipe. :7)

A couple of days ago one of my kids repeated something dismissive about the pop song on the car radio, and how it relied too much on Auto-Tune. I said, "Heck, I went to a concert once where the singer used a megaphone to sing the whole song into the microphone. Couldn't understand a word!"

Of course it was a late-80s R.E.M. concert (probably 2 November 1987 at the St. Paul Civic Center), and he had a shaved head and wore a trench coat.

Good times, good times.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:52 AM on June 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


So, which is the R.E.M. album that is "Pet Sounds-informed"?
posted by joelhunt at 8:46 AM on June 3, 2015


So, which is the R.E.M. album that is "Pet Sounds-informed"?

Up in particular, and to a lesser extent Reveal, I would say.
posted by aught at 1:37 PM on June 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


R.E.M. will always be my favorite band.
posted by epj at 3:39 PM on June 3, 2015


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