hahaha.

My top five favorite bands that I never listen to anymore:

5. Replacements
4. Nirvana
3. Sonic Youth
2. Sleater-Kinney
1. R.E.M.

Can someone YSI me Reckoning?

EDIT: Disregard.

I've got them all on Colinswood...

<hint, hint>

i love that pavement song about REM.
it was on the No Alternative comp.

if you are a fan of either and don't know it, try and track it down.

unseen power of the picket fence:

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is REM,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
R - E - M
Flashback to 1983,
Chronic Town was their first EP
Later on came Reckoning
Finster's art, and titles to match:
South Central Rain, Don't Go Back To Rockville,
Harbourcoat, Pretty Persuasion,
You were born to be a camera,
Time After Time was my least favourite song,
Time After Time was my least favourite song.
The singer, he had long hair
And the drummer he knew restrait.
And the bass man he had all the right moves
And the guitar player was no saint.
So lets go way back to the ancient times
When there were no 50 states,

And on a hill there stands Sherman
Sherman and his mates.
And they're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia
G-G-G-G-Georgia
They're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia,
marching through Georgia
G-G-G-G-Georgia
and there stands REM

"Near Wild Heaven"!!!!!!!!!!

Love R.E.M., and they've gotten a monthly rinse out since I was a kid.

I'd actually say they went bad after 'Monster'. Sure it's no where near 'Automatic For The People' but there weren't many stinkers on there and more than a few highlights.

This bit is especially great. Just the way Malkmus 'sings' it.

The way I see it, REM is actively wrecking their own legacy by releasing really terrible records - especially the last one. Kinda like Lucas has damaged the original star wars movies by adding awful movies under the same banner.

I think it's Stipe's fault.

Please, Michael... could you PLEASE go back in the closet and start mumbling again?

Murmer, Chronic Town and Reckoning are all incredibly strong. Fables, Pageant and Document are just a notch below. I lost interest with Green and never bought another of their albums after that, until a coule of years ago when I picked up Automatic for the People, listened to it 3 or 4 times and that was it. But I can listen to those first three releases just about any time. Stipe is annoying as hell, but he is a BIG Wire fan, (they're cover of Strange is interesting), so he at least has that going for him.

My thoughts exactly, although I lump Fables in with the first two and half. It's head and shoulders abouve Pageant. It was with Pageant that they started hitting large venues and eventually arenas. The days of seeing them with only 200 other people, all of whom knew the catalogue inside and out were over.

...Asa...

Wasn't lucky enough to see them in a 200 seat venue, by the time I got a chance to see them it was '86ish, probably about the time of Pageants release, and the venue was about 1500. It was OK though, I was really there to see the opening act - The Feelies, who had just released the Peter Buck produced The Good Earth. Very nice double-bill.

I'm actually surprised to see some others who like Reveal. I guess for the "new era REM" this is their peak, but Hi-Fi probably gets listened to more now. I've even grown to really enjoy Monster - it's a fun listen. But I gotta agree on Around the Sun - really, really bad, and I gave it a LOT of chances to allow myself to warm up to it. I simply got more and more sick of it as time went on, which is unusual because I can usually find something to love about every album by bands that I like this much.

i can mostly endorse this too. Except I think the slide started in earnest with Document. I never liked that album nearly as much as the first five. They have some decent material (along with a lot of dreadfully awful stuff) post Pagaent but it pales in comparison to Chronic Town/Murmur/Reckoning and I'd already started to feel meh about them so I never really connected with much of it. I hated some of their stuff so much that it was hard for me to even listen to the first three for a long time. I've gone back to them in the last 5 years though and thoroughly enjoy them again.

Speaking of seeing them early...one of my best friends saw them open for English beat at a small club before Murmur was even out.

Which is but one example of why I disagree with billy g here. Document is one of my favorites, it not the favorite.

seriously. want the 12 copies of Monster my local record store has used? only 3 dollars, too. i got my copy from a thrift store for a dollar.

Monster's kind of a silly album, but 3 bucks will barely buy a cigarette these days, so that's not that much to spend for silly.