corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
^^NICE!
blueeyedgirl said:And one of the greatest moments in my life was meeting Peter Buck last month after he played in Australia with Robyn Hitchcock. Just a regular guy hanging out in a club, lugging his own equipment. You won't get any of U2 doing that
Being in a club with about 150 people is certainly more comfortable than sharing the experience with 120,000, as I will this week. Why did U2 have to get so goddamn big???indra said:How cool! Somehow I can picture Peter Buck hanging out at a club and lugging his own equipment more than I can all glitz and glamoury.
I've only taken road trips to see three bands. One of those bands was REM.
blueeyedgirl said:
Being in a club with about 150 people is certainly more comfortable than sharing the experience with 120,000, as I will this week. Why did U2 have to get so goddamn big???
The idea that Bono would know about the reputation of the incumbent Garbage Commissioner of every city he tours in doesn’t even seem that farfetched.
Zootlesque said:
uh.. I've never heard REM comparing themselves to U2. I mean I've heard both bands being talked about in the same breath in the early 90s but REM is probably compared more to the Byrds! Same jangly sound.
Snowlock said:Pretty good competition until 1987 then U2 smoked em from then on out.
REM stopped playing their type of music and went for the quick and dirty cash grab; and that's exactly what they got. They alienated their hardcore fans by 1993 and their new fans left in 1994. I would rather they have pulled a Replacements and just disintegrated circa 1990 so they wouldn't have tarnished their legacy.
Niceman said:There's nothing humble about them, REM is trying to write the big songs and take on U2.
corianderstem said:
Really, really disagree with that.
Really.
corianderstem said:
Really, really disagree with that.
Really.
corianderstem said:I think they wrote songs like they always wrote songs. They were good songs that fit well on their albums, and at the time, radio was still playing REM. Remember, both songs were after Losing My Religion was a HUGE radio smash.
Did they write them specifically to get radio play? Or even Losing My Religion? Doubtful - if you were gunning for radio play, would you write a song where the lead instrument is a mandolin?
I really don't think REM was gunning to write big, anthemic songs. I think they ended up with a few, but I don't think it was their goal.
You could also argue that they've always written pop songs, they just got a little poppier and Stipe easier to understand as they grew as a band. Fall On Me is as big and anthemic as Everybody Hurts, it just wasn't a "big pop hit."
blueeyedgirl said:Those might be pop songs, and not indicative of their catalogue as a whole, but REM realised pretty early on that that wasn't the direction that they wanted to go in. Otherwise, we would have had 20 Everybody Hurts since then. And when was the last time you saw REM at the Grammys?