One of those discs was "The Best of REM: In Time 1988 — 2003." In the ‘80s, most of us sported A Flock of Seagulls or Tears for Fears or Randy Santiago hairstyles; watched German Moreno lecture the "boys and ghels" of That’s Entertainment about the dangers of drugs; or dreamed of becoming a pop star like Keno (do you remember Leaving Yesterday Behind?), a showbiz icon like Aga Muhlach (before he made an alternative career of consuming corned beef or every product in the history of civilization), or that half-girl/half-George singer. Only a few know or heard about REM. Well, before The One I Love changed all that.
I remember choosing between REM’s "Document" and The Bolshoi’s "Friends or Fiends" in a rundown record bar in Pampanga ages ago. The Bolshoi had hits like A Way and Sunday Morning, but I opted with "Document" mainly because of The One I Love, which I would later on discover was not about love at all. ("This one goes out to the one I love/A simple prop to occupy my time…")
The great thing about that record (a BASF tape, actually) was that there were many really, really great songs that very few people know about: Oddfellows Local 151, Finest Worksong, Welcome to the Occupation, Strange, It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, Exhuming McCarthy, etc.
For me, it was like possessing esoteric knowledge, more like a Kaballah or a secret society thing: While others were jerking off to Stock, Aiken and Waterman (whose credits include hits by Bananarama and Rick Astley), I was in a huddle with a handful of REM-devotees talking about the meaning of the line "Disturbance at the Heron House/A stampede at the monument."
There was something murky, inscrutable and seductive about Michael Stipe’s lyrics and Peter Buck’s infinite guitar. Many of us got hooked since, rediscovering past masters ("Murmur," "Fables of The Reconstruction," "Reckoning," "Life’s Rich Pageant") and anticipating future releases. "Green." "Out of Time." "Automatic for the People." "Monster." REM lost a fan in me after "Monster," the band’s lackadaisical return to distorted, jangly guitars after dabbling into acoustics and mandolins. I parted ways with Stipe and REM and pursued other purveyors of murky, inscrutable and seductive lyrics. For me, even if there were flashes of brilliance, REM became a poor imitation of REM – and that was the tragedy.
"The Best of REM" album signals a reappraisal. The band has gotten older, and so have I. So have we. So has the rest of the world. The irony is, after changes upon changes we are more or less the same. "Nothing much has changed," says Buck in the album’s liner notes.
(A Crazy Town fanatic recently appropriated these words in an article that had nothing to do at all with REM, or music, or writing with the use of logic and good prose for that matter; anyway, dudes like those typing something about music are like Dingdong Dantes dancing to architecture… They make Billy Ray Cyrus’ lyric sheets sound like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novella.)
I got two earlier greatest-hits albums from REM, "Eponymous" and "The Best of REM," which were compiled by the band’s former label IRS. Those CDs focus on REM’s years as young, poetic college radio heroes. This new disc, from Warner Music, concentrates on REM as mature, poetic arena rockers. But it carries great tracks nonetheless.
There are REM’s tributes to Andy Kaufman (the wordplay-fest Man on the Moon and the loose rocker The Great Beyond). Buck says Man on the Moon is "the quintessential REM song." Stipe drove around for four days in a rented car before coming up with lyrics that touch on Andy, Elvis, Moses, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Fred Blassie, Mott the Hoople, etc. Plus, there are a lot of baffling lines like "Here’s a little agit for the never-believer/Here’s a little ghost for the offering." (I’m not even sure if I got those lyrics right. Anyway, it is always worthwhile to sift through Stipe’s mumbles and murmurs – you just never know what earth-shattering epiphany is bound to pop out. So what happens is, we feel REM’s songs first before we understand what the words really mean.)
There is also my favorite REM ditty, Losing My Religion. When it first came out, the hypocrites took offense at Stipe’s use of the word religion. That’s pure poppycock, according to the singer, who said relationships could be considered a religion as well. Thus, the song refers to a breakup, and not some heretic loss of faith that the close-minded ones would like to think. Yet, you have to admit there is still a hint of existential anguish meandering though the track. Yeah, like a hurt, lost and blinded bull.
To disprove the notion that the band had already experienced aural entropy of sorts, REM came up with E-Bow the Letter, a beatnik/spoken word duet with punk goddess Patti Smith. While Smith was liltingly melodic, Stipe never sounded so jaded in his entire career.
In this track, he meanders: I said your name. I wore it like a badge of teenage film stars, hash bars, cherry mash and tin foil tiaras… Aluminum, it tastes like fear. Adrenaline, it pulls us near… I wear my own crown, and sadness, and sorrow, and who’d thought tomorrow could be so strange…" Only Charles Bukowski could come up with something as bitter, as sweet.
Other well-known cuts include The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, Orange Crush (which Buck says he still doesn’t understand even after playing the song 300 times), Stand (which the guitarist says is the stupidest song they’ve ever written) and those pair of delicate ballads from "Automatic for the People," Everybody Hurts and Nightswimming. They stand side by side with lesser-known gems like Electrolite, Daysleeper, At My Most Beautiful (a tribute to the Beach Boys), All The Right Friends and Animal (the newest track on the collection).
Aye, here’s the rub: Calling this album a greatest-hits package is inaccurate. When I saw the list of songs I searched for that irritating Shiny Happy People, REM’s duet with the squeaky girl from the B-52s. It’s not included in the platter. Which is both a good and bad thing.
"The Best of REM" is a mix of pop songs and sloppy numbers, which are interesting nonetheless. (I heard that the special two-disc set, with its B-sides and outtakes, is even better.) That just goes to show that REM still doesn’t walk the yellow brick road of pop convention. After all, greatest-hits packages belong to Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and other similar mainstream sluts.
Nothing much has changed: Michael Stipe and REM are still kicking the shit out of tradition after all these years. I wonder what happened to The Bolshoi.
Rating: 5