[music] Wilco / R.E.M. fans - PLEASE HELP!

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 3:50 pm

I just got a freelance gig from an editor in London to write for a book featuring the 1,001 best albums ever recorded. Not sure what the title will be, but it's a semi-sequel to a book called 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I hope they come up with a title as good as that for this new one.

I have to write a short 250 word paragraph about each album, including such info as; where the album falls in the band's discography, album progression, standout tracks, what the historical climate was like, info about the recording of the album, maybe a detail about the album artwork, the album's reception, maybe an anecdote about my passion for the music, etc.

The list of albums was pretty well picked over by the time I got it but I was happy to find quite a few of my all-time desert island favorites still available. I jumped on those and have been assigned to tackle:

Wilco YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT
R.E.M. DOCUMENT
The Flaming Lips THE SOFT BULLETIN
Boards of Canada MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN
Nightmares on Wax SMOKER'S DELIGHT
Cocteau Twins HEAVEN OR LAS VEGAS

Sweet!

(Too bad the pay is shite.)

Now for the first step: go purchase R.E.M. DOCUMENT. lol

(I only have the cassette.)

Aside from sharing this fun news, I wanted to start chatting with you guys about these albums for ideas, inspiration, information, etc. (Yeah, Shuggie was on the list.) I just watched I Am Trying To Break Your Heart last weekend so I'm pretty up on YHF. Now I'm gonna go scour the net.

I'm gonna start with these two, so SHARE YOUR PASSION! (If you feel like it.)

Thanks!

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 3:54 pm

Oh goodness, I hope I can find some time. My A Mirror in the Bedroom blurb was a direct result of listening to YHF and a breakup. I doubt I could do Document justice, but it is one of my faves.

~Neal

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 4:50 pm

No help for you from me, but please let us know when the book eventually gets made. That's one I'd love to read.

Fretmute · Post by **Fretmute** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:55 pm

I suppose it's worth mentioning that track 5 ("Strange") is R.E.M.'s second cover; it was originally done by Wire. Their first was on the previous album ("Superman," originally by The Clique.)

My favorite R.E.M. song is track 2 on Document, "Welcome to the Occupation." But I doubt that makes the 250 word cut.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:27 pm

I don't know why I posted this request for help... I just worked on YHF for a couple hours and had enough ideas to write four or five 250-word essays. Guess I just wanted to share my excitement. Plus I figured chatting about the albums might be a good idea. Two (or more) heads are better than one and all that.

I listened to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot three times in a row while working and GOOD GOD is that an amazing piece of work. Just sensational.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:35 pm

Rob, if you're anything like me, you could do five 250-word essays on Jesus Etc. if you had to. It does sound like a sweet gig and you managed to grab some most excellent albums.

~Neal

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:25 pm

Just before GG bit the dust, I posted about DOCUMENT. I said it then, I'll say it now: Side one (which concludes with "End Of The World As We Know It", for those of you only doing CD's) is maybe the last truly great album side of the vinyl lp era, which probably ceased 24-30 months after this came out.

For one thing, you've got the band pulling out all the stops on the hooks: "Finest Worksong", "Occupation", and most especially "Exhuming McCarthy" are as close to straight up power pop as REM ever got. But that isn't necessarily unique, because LIFES RICH PAGEANT had hook overload too.

There's Stipe's clearer vocals--the mumbling that went straight through RECONSTRUCTION is a distant memory....but again, LIFES RICH PAGEANT had clearer vocals, too.

What DOCUMENT has that separates it from the rest of REM's catalog is that for the first time the band sounds not only like it has something to say, but also that they want you to know what it is. Yeah, the lyrics still tend towards gobbledygook, but funny and intriguingly imagistic phrases abound--"Walking on coals/Sharpening stones/To improve your business acumen" is a keeper, for instance--and suddenly everyone was in on the REM "secrets".

And hey, if the band wasn't quite ready to step up and be America's U2, they were still willing to survey the landscape and find that things weren't all that great in the world. The best thing about any "message" here is that DOCUMENT is the last REM album where there seems to be an overt effort to be whimsical. With some of the ultra-serious and heavy loads the band has had foisted on it in the last decade, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that once upon a time, REM were pretty damn funny--check the DEAD LETTER OFFICE album for notes and references. Sadly, they seemed to have left that sense of whimsy with IRS when they headed out to the GREENer pastures of Warner Brothers and the Big Time job of being Serious Artists. That sense of wry amusement is there on DOCUMENT, though. The obvious point of reference here is "End Of The World", but the well-chosen cover of "Strange" (originally a Wire tune) and "McCarthy" are also pretty goofy and amusing.

Side 2 is more a mixed bag. While the monster hit "One I Love" kicks it off, this is still one of the oddest album sides you'll ever find on a record with this much mainstream acceptance. Heck, you've got a hit single with exactly one verse that is repeated over and over, while the chorus is an animal scream of anguish over Pete Buck's Neil Young guitar riff. Still, "Love" sounds positively *normal* when compared to "Fireplace", "Lightning Hopkins", "King of Birds" and "Oddfellows".

It isn't that side 2 doesn't have some nifty songs, it's just that it's so jarring when compared with side one. It's important to note that there are some great hooks and melodic invention to be found on side 2 (usually buried within oddball arrangements) and Stipe's voice carries the day with it's clear-eyed intensity...But the lyrics are as oblique and imagistic as anything he's ever penned. Maybe the "oddness" of Side 2 of DOCUMENT gets credit for making Side 1 sound so outstanding: it's as if the band is showing a first a photograph (first side), and then the oddity of the negative of that same picture (side 2.)

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:40 pm

The Meal wrote:I doubt I could do Document justice, but it is one of my faves.

Thanks for making me a sage, trigger. Great analysis.

~No 151, local or otherwise

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:40 pm

Thanks to you, Trig, DOCUMENT is next up in the ol' CD queue.

RadjanS · Post by **RadjanS** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:42 pm

I still think Life's Rich Pageant was better, but whatever :/

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 10:52 pm

RadjanS wrote:I still think Life's Rich Pageant was better, but whatever :/

I kind of remember thinking the same thing at the time, Rad.

But playing LIFES now, I'm always struck by how "dated" the production is. Matt Wallace has the compression on the drums cranked to 11, and it gives it that weird, '80's, nothin'-but-midrange percussion sound. That'd be another reason why DOCUMENT holds up: Scott Litt's ace production skills, the first REM album he'd produced for them.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:00 pm

What DOCUMENT has that separates it from the rest of REM's catalog is that for the first time the band sounds not only like it has something to say, but also that they want you to know what it is.

I knew I'd want to steal something Trig had to say.

Now, how to rephrase that so it sounds like my own brilliant analysis.

I didn't get on board the R.E.M. bandwagon until GREEN. Maybe that's why I have a harder time stepping back and seeing the big picture of their career. I can do it with bands I liked from the get-go so it can't just be that I'm a simpleton... can it?

I purchased a compact disc copy of DOCUMENT today. I'd like to get Wilco finished tonight so I can start R.E.M. tomorrow. My desire is to pump them out because the more I write, the more not-enough-money I can get.

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:14 pm

rrmorton wrote:
I didn't get on board the R.E.M. bandwagon until GREEN. Maybe that's why I have a harder time stepping back and seeing the big picture of their career. I can do it with bands I liked from the get-go so it can't just be that I'm a simpleton... can it?

Try thinking about Pavement, Mort. Imagine if TERROR TWILIGHT had a huge MTV/Radio hit on it, and the band started playing 15,000 seat arenas as headliners. Now go back and think about how many people outside your circle of friends even knew who Pavement was before that. That's sort of REM in the 1980's. A few mainstream radio stations added "Can't Get There From Here", "Fall On Me" or "Superman"to their rotations briefly when RECONSTRUCTION and PAGEANT came out, but it really didn't make much of an impact. None of the odd videos they made ever cracked MTV's all-important (then) Top 20. Prior to DOCUMENT, the band was playing 1,000-1,500 seat arenas, and outside of college towns and east and west coast markets (think, grimy midwest) they were all but unknown.

True story: it's 1986, and I'm dying to get tix to see REM on the PAGEANT tour at the Keil Opera House in St. Louis. I go to my local record store the Saturday morning that tickets are due to go onsale, and there's a huge line around the building. Ugh. They don't really look like REM fans, but hell, in St. Louis in 1986, people with mullets were hip and fashion forward. So. I get in line, and a guy announces on a bullhorn that he "knows why we're all here today" and that they'll be passing out line tickets, and drawing numbers to determine the ticket-buying order of the folks lined up. Cool! Being at the end of the line apparently isn't a detriment. The bullhorn guy goes on: "But first, if anyone wants REM tickets, I guess come up front." I ws the only one, and scored tix for me, my girlfriend, and my college roommate to see the show, second-row center. Awesome. Everyone else was there to get tickets to see Triumph (not the insult comic dog, the third-rate Canadian pseudo metal band that wished they were Rush, or something.)

That was less than a year before DOCUMENT came out. Maybe some perspective.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 12:46 am

Priceless! Wish I could have seen you strutting smugly past all those mullets.

I'm discovering how tremendously anal and precise I can be as I'm trying to write this Wilco piece. I'll start 8 different sentences on the same exact point, endlessly trying to find the perfect angle of attack. At this rate, I'll never get anywhere.

One of my favorite moments on YHF that I keep coming back to, even though it's too specific to mention in 250 words, is the shrill and piercing whistle of feedback that punctuates the very end of track 1, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. It's like a dare or a fuck you, boldly announcing the new plan to mess with convention before settling into the easy groove of track 2, Kamera. Amazing.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 12:59 am

Question: I'm focussing on the opening minute of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at the moment. The orchestra warm up.

That scratching sound that comes in around the 40 second mark, does that sound like a record needle on vinyl to you guys? I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing.

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 1:30 am

rrmorton wrote:Question: I'm focussing on the opening minute of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at the moment. The orchestra warm up.

That scratching sound that comes in around the 40 second mark, does that sound like a record needle on vinyl to you guys? I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing.

I always assumed that sound was static. Kind of fit my mental image of YHF as having been beamed in from some weird alternate dimension. Like someone on a shortwave radio having discovered this weird frequency, and then this music starts to come out of the white noise and then...etc.

Post by **ImLawBoy** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 1:34 am

Who else here thinks trig is just seething with jealousy right now?

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 1:45 am

ImLawBoy wrote:Who else here thinks trig is just seething with jealousy right now?

ILB, of all people, you should know how well I can crank out reviews on a schedule. Not.

Over the years I've discovered that if I *have* to write something, it's incredibly difficult for me. Hence, management material.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:22 am

I'd invite Trig onboard in a heartbeat if I were in any position to do so. Of course, I'm not so eager to give up any potential share of these meager wages. If you attempted to halve the amount of money I'm getting paid, it would literally cease to exist.

I've been trying to write evocative prose about the ghostly, staticky, shortwave radio mood all night so I'm with you on that static. But listening nice and loud on headphones, I'm pretty convinced a record needle is the source of that particular staticky sound. Maybe it's a thumb rubbing a record needle.

See what I mean about insanely precise analosity?

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:26 am

My assignment is 260-280 words. I've just topped 400 and I'm only half done. AIGH!

I'm very worried I won't be able to use this gem of an observation: "The knuckleheads paid for it twice."

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 2:52 am

Anyone know of a good source for checking album sales figures? Say, for example, YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT...

WPD · Post by **WPD** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 3:12 am

In my three searches to try to help you, I found the term soundscan

Now I'm going to bed.

So do your own job.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:05 pm

Took me a while to verify it, but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot did indeed become a gold record two years after its release.

I'm just starting on Document and getting reacquainted with it. The first half is indeed superb. And I'd forgotten how much I love track 10, King of Birds.

point to point point observations
children carry reservations
standing on the shoulders of giants
leaves me cold

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Tue Feb 08, 2005 6:34 pm

I have a friend who used to live in the Marina City Towers. 35th floor or there abouts. He almost got evicted for tossing bottles into the river from his balcony one night. Fortunately I broke my thumb earlier that day and was free and clear as I was sitting on the couch icing it down and sipping whisky. You can see his balcony on that YHF cover.

I liked Document a lot. Still have the cassette. I had some theory in high school about them hiding numbers all over their covers/inserts and it worked sequentially up through Green. Forgot the theory but we were all sure something big was going to happen 2 albums after Green. I quit listening to them at Green so I never found out.

Is that 500 words yet?

hido · Post by **hido** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:14 am

I am 37 and I am too old for this thread about REM. I will come off sounding like one of the dweebs that booed Dylan at Newport. Oh OK, I'll say it: Reckoning was their last great record.

DUCK!

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:30 am

hido wrote:I am 37 and I am too old for this thread about REM. I will come off sounding like one of the dweebs that booed Dylan at Newport. Oh OK, I'll say it: Reckoning was their last great record.

DUCK!

Yeah, I probably should've implied that as terrific a disc as DOCUMENT is, it can't carry MURMUR or RECKONING's jock...

Hey Hido, apparently the dB's got together in Hoboken last month, and it went well (meaning: Chris and Peter didn't strangle one another). Apparently they were so happy with it that they're shopping for financing to get everyone together in studio to record a full reunion disc....although why they can't just do it at Stamey's place in NC is unclear.

Anyway, apparently a reunion disc is go, as is a Stamey/Holsapple disc, as is a new Stamey solo disc later this year.

hido · Post by **hido** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 12:56 am

Israel/Palestine, Stamey/Holsapple. What's next?

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:39 am

hido · Post by **hido** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:40 am

Now THAT'S funny

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:30 pm

Hey, Jason Josephes! Go fuck yourself!

Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest after reading his review of THE SOFT BULLETIN at Pitchfork.

He's officially on my shitlist for making me read that review. The first half to be exact. Just endless, masturbatory blather about all the boohoo shit going on in his romantic and professional life. He assures you to bear with him because he's going somewhere with it, when in fact the only place he's going is straight into the lamest little segue in the history of music criticism.

And so but then by the time he starts talking about the actual, you know, ALBUM, you're too distracted trying to locate the non-existent connective tissue between his miserable idiot life and the best album of 1999 (if not the 90's) to pay any attention.

At least he gives it the right score: 10. And okay, that line about reading a banner ad while being broken up with was kinda funny. I'll give him that, but only that. What a dildo.

EDIT: I've been incorrectly using the term "half". I just checked the word count on his review and this c*cksucker:

Used how many words to talk about himself? 738
And how many to talk about THE SOFT BULLETIN? 517

tswright · Post by **tswright** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:47 pm

The sad thing is, Pitchfork has actually gotten worse in the intervening period. Try reading a Sam Ubl review. Godawful.

yossar · Post by **yossar** » Wed Feb 09, 2005 11:59 pm

rrmorton wrote:Hey, Jason Josephes! Go fuck yourself!

Sorry. Just had to get that off my chest after reading his review of THE SOFT BULLETIN at Pitchfork.

Haha, I read that one before. Or at least skimmed through it until I got to the part where he actually talked about the music. I thought maybe trendy music people were into that kind of thing. Like actually talking about music is pretentious or something.

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:16 am

I think pitchforkmedia.com is pretty much the worst fucking thing ever in the annals of serious music criticism. A bunch of latter-day Lester Bangs/Greil Marcus wannabes whose reach far outstretches their collective grasp.

Hey, I suck at criticism too--but I'm smart enough to know it and not write for Pitchfork.

Give me the understated intelligence of the reviews at trouserpress.com, or even the slightly inflated jobs at allmusic any day over pitchfork. Another good, up-and-coming site: popmatters.com. Not always "on", and they've only started to expand away from a narrow focus on a certain genre, but they seem to by-and-large "get it."

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:26 am

I'll second the popmatters plug. It's been part of my daily rounds for a couple of years now.

BTW, Rob, where did all the hate towards a 5 year review come from? And why now?

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:31 am

triggercut wrote:Hey, I suck at criticism too--

Absurd falsehood but +1 Humility.

captain patterbutt wrote:BTW, Rob, where did all the hate towards a 5 year review come from? And why now?

Doing research for my own SOFT BULLETIN review/critique type deal. (Read full thread if still confused.)

I'm having a hell of a time finding the right lead-off sentence (and therefore structure) to the piece and I've spent all day trying. But I tell you this much: it hasn't even occurred to me that someone looking for info on the Lips masterpiece might want to hear me whine about changing a shitty diaper this morning or getting to La Rosita only to discover I'd forgotten to charge the battery on my laptop.

LITTLE SHIT!

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:33 am

BTW--on Bangs.

Lester was kind of the PULP FICTION of rock critics. He was terrific, and made his shambolic style seem effortless, and thus inspired legions upon legions of half-baked, horrible imitators. He inspired legion after legion of imitators, all of whom can sound the notes ("I got SO fucked up last night!") but none of the insight or intelligence.

What they miss is that for all his carefully crafted image, Lester was a meticulous craftsman. He was a writing maniac, and would revise his stuff a gajillion times before he even consent to letting an editor see it as a "first draft". He liked to come off as some sort of gifted enfant terrible who was able to crank out brilliant material with ease, but (and ALMOST FAMOUS is pretty good about hinting at it) he wrote and revised constantly, and maybe his greatest gift as a writer was his ability to distill his good stuff from the shit, most of the time.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:38 am

Good point. I'm not familiar with his writing, but I'm familiar with his influence. And Almost Famous of course.

Don't you have a letter from him?

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:40 am

I get it now, Rob. What a FUCKING ASSCLOWN!!

(Sorry, just wanted to join in on the swearing. It sounded fun.)

triggercut · Post by **triggercut** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:59 am

rrmorton wrote:Good point. I'm not familiar with his writing, but I'm familiar with his influence. And Almost Famous of course.

Don't you have a letter from him?

I wish. Lester died right about the time I discovered who he was in the first place.

The only "heroes" of mine in the rock critic biz that I've exchanged letters/emails/lucked into a dinner with are the horrifically overlooked and brilliant Ira Robbins (Ira is the Don Cheadle/Mark Loretta/Tom Brady of rock critics--not spectacular, just really smart, really solid, and everything he does is worthwhile) and the late Nicholas Schaffner. I somehow lucked into being seated next to Robbins at some sort of dinner/industry dinner thing in 1992, and once I found out who he was, proceeded to talk his ear off about the Trouser Press.

With Schaffner, he was sweet enough to answer a couple or five letters I wrote him in high school about Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, and John Lennon. His book THE BRITISH INVASION, FROM THE FIRST WAVE TO THE NEXT WAVE was as influential on my music tastes as anything I ever came across.He died of AIDS in 1991, and the Richard Barone album CLOUDS OVER EDEN is about him. He was brilliant and funny and, most originally, the nicest guy in the industry I've ever stumbled across. He would've taken to the internet age like a duck to water.

rrmorton · Post by **rrmorton** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:08 am

Well then who the heck am I thinking of? I could have sworn you wrote at GG about a letter from somebody...