Suspicion Yourself

A love of R.E.M.

In the spring of 1990 I was sat on my bed in my student house share, half-heartedly reading some course book or other and listening to my mate Matt’s compilation tape (never ‘mixtapes’ back then) play from the room next door. There were six of us in that house and our musical tastes were more or less aligned save for one of us liking Nick Drake and metal a bit too much. I had a marked reluctance to approve of Primal Scream’s new move towards, shudder, ‘dance.’ That earned me feedback more than once. The Stone Roses lost me at Fool’s Gold. Too long, too indulgent and too ‘baggy.’

‘This one goes out to the one I love.

This one goes out to the one I left behind.’

I banged on the wall. R.E.M., I hated R.E.M with their poxy pseudo-serious and Americana lilt. Not for me.

Those lyrics though. Soppy loves songs. Radio 2. Steve Wright’s entry point to ‘our’ music.

It’s strange how factional music is when you’re young and have ‘principles.’ Everything is wheelhouse only. Everything else is shit. This is where nuance came to die.

There was no way I was going to have both The House of Love and R.E.M in my life. I had more in common with HoL so they shoved the college band out.

(In 2014 I published my debut novel ‘And What Do You Do?’ and gave the main character those somewhat fascistic musical traits. Every opinion is shot through the prism of musical taste. He finds parties difficult as he knows that someone will get something wrong at some point. He just hates Eric Clapton.

I’m currently writing the follow up where he’s 25 years older. He won’t mention music once.)

‘This one goes out to the one I love.’

Of course I got it wrong. It’s not a gloopy love song at all. If I’d just bothered to listen to the next line (‘A simple prop to occupy my time/This one goes out to the one I love.’) I’d have realised that It was anything but a love song.  It was a dig at their saccharin nature. I would have been into that at the time, but prejudices will always out.

Let’s go back further. November 1984. I’m 16 this month and just coming out of my Weller period. Now it’s The Smiths and Smiths adjacent bands. It would be a full year before my mate Al gets me into the Velvet Underground and, as a consequence, my Bowie period.

Music then was vinyl and the radio, in particular Conn McConville’s ‘Street Life’ on Radio Merseyside along with Peel, Kid Jensen and Janice Long. Conn liked A-Ha and played them every week, but his other stuff was right up my alleyway. Half Man Half Biscuit’s – the world’s greatest band—would occasionally drop in. I felt part of something.

One day I was listening to Radio City. The cheaper, commercial radio show for a snob like me. It was probably Kev Keating as you’d see him in town and if you had a chat with him, he’d mention it on his show. He covers Spanish football now. I never saw that coming.

Anyway, he would often give out gig tickets through competitions. They were never to anything good (Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones – no chance) but on this show he was just giving away tickets to R.E.M at the Royal Court. No competition, no phone-in as such. Just ring up and claim them. They’re yours.

Not for me. American. I mean, alright, the Velvets were American (and Welsh) but that’s for other people.

I didn’t go.

1984, so that would be the Reckoning tour. Easily my favourite album of theirs. You tit!

I’ve just looked up the setlist. They played 26 songs. 26! They even did a Velvets cover – Femme Fatale. On top of that they played snippets of several songs including some by Television and Sister Sledge. Jesus, I’d love to have been at that gig. It would have been formative. R.E.M playing the whole of Reckoning and I lacked the curiosity to see what was going on. It was free and I couldn’t invest in a twenty-minute bus ride. What a moron.

Come ‘Green’ though, I was slowly changing my mind. We all knew ‘Stand’ and ‘Orange Crush’ but ‘I Remember California,’ ‘World Leader Pretend’ and the ludicrously catchy ‘Untitled’ persuaded me to let them in a bit. Just a bit though. They weren’t the Pixies, for God’s sake.

It’s too simple to say that ‘Losing My Religion’ changed everything but it probably did. I’m suspicious of big singles (‘Keen’ by That Petrol Emotion shits all over ‘Big Decision’ but never got an airing at ‘Revolutions’ on a Thursday night in Woolwich) as most people just leave it there and don’t investigate further.

I got involved and paid good money for ‘Out of Time.’ The inner sleeve had some nonsense about a library’s steps being so worn down that they were covered in metal to mitigate for trips. I’ve no idea what that was about but liked it. We became friends.

Such is my nature that I bought everything they’d ever done before that and then kept up with their new stuff up to ‘Up.’ I bought ‘Eponymous’

I saw them live in Milton Keynes supported by Belly and Blur. My drunken singing harmonising poorly with Michael Stipe on So Central Rain. He got the notes. Let’s just say that.

It went a bit wrong when ‘Monster’ came out – an album I bought on the first day of release. On cassette this time, so I could play it on my Walkman. 1990s remember.

I found it indulgent. There was the odd nugget on there (‘Strange Currencies’ makes it onto the soundtrack of ‘The Bear’) but ‘Let Me In’ and ‘Bang and Blame’ was all a bit stadium rock for me. Then they released the documentary about that album around then and it all seemed a bit diva.

It has this though.

I didn’t want to see them moaning about tour schedules or doing TV appearances. I wanted to see them play Harborcoat. R-E-A-C-T. Oh, they were still R.E.M and still had Mike Mills being Mike Mills but he was wearing velour suits now instead of looking like a man who knew why your computer didn’t work.

‘New Adventures in Hi Fi’ was a long splurge of an album. Far too long but it had ‘Leave,’ ‘Be Mine’ and ‘Electrolite’ – simpler songs. Take five songs off it and it’s a classic.

My friend Neil summed up this stage of R.E.M perfectly when he said that CDs had killed them. Vinyl confined them to maybe 14 songs. They had great openers (‘Feeling Gravity’s Pull,’ ‘Finest Worksong’) and enders (‘Find the River,’ ‘Oddfellows Local 151’) but they no longer had songs to end Side One and open Side Two. I miss that. Everything felt a bit overblown after ‘Automatic for the People’.

I realise now that I was more into their earlier albums which, I admit, is a pretentious thing to say. When they were still learning and quirky. When they released ‘Around the Sun’ I left them alone.

In 2018 I tweeted Mike Mills and asked him if it was true that they only played ‘Perfect Circle’ five times live. He said it was more than that but not much more. Good. That song still feels like a secret. A song that true fans will talk about with imperceptible nods while everyone else talks about ‘Man on the Moon.’

They’ve long since called it a day which feels right. I didn’t want any more. Leave it alone.

Oh, and I now like ‘The One I Love’

Have a playlist.

Turns out I like ‘Green’ more than I said. I’ve put the early demos on at the end so it’s all over place.

House in order.

Karl