REM Draft Discussion Thread

[johnnya24]

I did. It's been there since this morning.

Ah right ... only seeing it now ... maybe a space between the playlist and the links?

[joncarlos]

Pick will be up in a few.

[Lucky]

"Drive" was a sweet pick. It wouldn't have lasted.

[Stephen]

There is a strong chance I'd have taken it at my 3.9. Certainly at 4.2.

[Stephen]

We aren't even through the 3rd round yet and 6 of the 12 tracks on Automatic for the People have been taken. Pretty awesome.

[Pogues]

Pick will be up in a few.

Apparently the Jon/johnny guys in front of me on the way down are just going to keep ticking me off.

The Sidewinder was my next pick.

[Lucky]

The One I Love was a nifty pick, and I would have grabbed it when my two-out-of-four picks came around. Fun song to play. Clever verse (a simple prop...) and an odd chorus. Good beat, good tune to overdrive the bass a little.

Oh, and johnny will stab you in the heart nearly every round.

[Pogues]

The One I Love was a nifty pick, and I would have grabbed it when my two-out-of-four picks came around. Fun song to play. Clever verse (a simple prop...) and an odd chorus. Good beat, good tune to overdrive the bass a little.

Oh, and johnny will stab you in the heart nearly every round.

Fortunately Johnny didn't stab me this round. I like Drive, sorta, but don't have it in my top 15.

[Erik]

If you were in high school in the late '80s, The One I Love was INESCAPABLE. So I burned out on it a long time ago.

[johnnya24]

The One I Love was the 5th of 5 songs songs I was contemplating for my second pick. I reconciled myself to the fact I wasn't getting it. Just couldn't find a way to fit it in.

I needed a song from Automatic or my list wouldn't have been compete ... Drive and Sidewinder were the last of the premiums, and with my sleeper pick from Automatic shaffu'd by Lucky already, it was Drive or nothing.

I'm actually really happy to have got Drive ... it was the first single from Automatic, and I remember seeing the video for the first time and being blown away. In the UK it was the first step in a then relatively unknown band becoming a mega band. Losing My Religion had been a hit, but before Out of Time they were very much an Underground band in the UK. I knew them from a neighbor who copied me lots of cassette compilations of US indie / alternative music (REM, Pixies, Husker Du ... and some other stuff I've never been able to identify) ... would have been around 1989 or 1990.

The only other song I can remember hearing, and thinking, "there goes my little band" was Seven Nation Army. I was in Athens (the original Athens) being drove around by my ex's brother ... driving is quite an experience in Athens. The second I heard it I was like "wow! ... they are going to be massive now!"

Bands don't normally keeping peaking ... it's not something you expect these day ... it just doesn't happen that often. They were this great little 80's band I liked and no-one else knew. Then they became successful at the point we first got MTV and US bands started to emerge again. Then they released Drive / Automatic and took it to the next level. Then they kept it up for two more records, even though they took a step side-wards at the same time

... and 10 years after they released New Adventures In Hifi, they were still good enough to produce 2 records of the quality of Accelerate and Collapse Into Now (IMO two of the best records of the last 10 years).

IMO REM are unquestionably the greatest American band when you take everything into account.

[Erik]

So. Central Rain was the first REM song I ever heard, because it was their first video to get regular rotation on MTV.

Mainstream radio in Philly didn't start playing them regularly until "The One I Love." Before that, you'd occasionally hear "Can't Get There from Here" and "Fall on Me," but that was it.

[Stephen]

I was seriously considering taking So. Central Rain as my 1st rounder so I'm quite pleased to get it late 3rd.

[Erik]

I was surprised it lasted this long.

[johnnya24]

So Central Rain is a great pick ... another track built on a wonderful Mike Mills bass line. Most of the talk about early REM seems to focus on their Byrds-esque jangley guitar sound, but musically, those dancing jaunty bass lines were the backbone of the band for nearly 10 years.

[Erik]

Yep. There were a ton of US "jangle-rock" bands in the early and mid 80s, but one of the things that set REM apart was the bass lines.