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Mar. 11th, 2002 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wickedfleaI was listening to Document and Orange last night and getting all nostalgic for the days when R.E.M. was the coolest band on the planet. Like mid-to-late '80s, before Out of Time (which was a good album but made them huge).
[update: make that Green. cripes...]
The thing is that I wasn't into R.E.M. back then. In those days, if you were my age, you worshipped either R.E.M. or Metallica, but not both. I had friends -- mostly girls -- who were into R.E.M., and the whole scene was kind of alluring to me, though of course I couldn't admit that to my friends. We used to speak of "alternative people" (in the days before "alternative" became an MTV buzzbinword) with much disdain. (We also used the term "progressive," which I swear people used to use for college-rock bands like R.E.M., though no one seems to remember it meaning anything but stuff like Yes, ELP, and Genesis. Hell, maybe it was just us.) Secretly, however, I thought "Orange Crush" was a pretty cool song.
By the early '90s, I was less hung up on labels, and I started acknowledging that R.E.M. was a damn fine band. By this time, however, Out of Time had broken big and everyone and his brother knew about R.E.M. I'd missed the scene.
In the last few years, R.E.M. has lost some of its vitality and importance, but at least they haven't become totally ridiculous. Metallica, of course, has been an arena-rock nightmare for the last decade. I actually had to walk out of a Metallica concert back in 1993 because I was so sickened at what they'd become. I still think their first four albums (five if you count Garage Days Re-Revisited) are good, but I can't listen to them anymore. Those '80s R.E.M. albums still sound great, though. None of this makes me feel any better about shunning the alternative/progressive kids back in '87.
[update: make that Green. cripes...]
The thing is that I wasn't into R.E.M. back then. In those days, if you were my age, you worshipped either R.E.M. or Metallica, but not both. I had friends -- mostly girls -- who were into R.E.M., and the whole scene was kind of alluring to me, though of course I couldn't admit that to my friends. We used to speak of "alternative people" (in the days before "alternative" became an MTV buzzbinword) with much disdain. (We also used the term "progressive," which I swear people used to use for college-rock bands like R.E.M., though no one seems to remember it meaning anything but stuff like Yes, ELP, and Genesis. Hell, maybe it was just us.) Secretly, however, I thought "Orange Crush" was a pretty cool song.
By the early '90s, I was less hung up on labels, and I started acknowledging that R.E.M. was a damn fine band. By this time, however, Out of Time had broken big and everyone and his brother knew about R.E.M. I'd missed the scene.
In the last few years, R.E.M. has lost some of its vitality and importance, but at least they haven't become totally ridiculous. Metallica, of course, has been an arena-rock nightmare for the last decade. I actually had to walk out of a Metallica concert back in 1993 because I was so sickened at what they'd become. I still think their first four albums (five if you count Garage Days Re-Revisited) are good, but I can't listen to them anymore. Those '80s R.E.M. albums still sound great, though. None of this makes me feel any better about shunning the alternative/progressive kids back in '87.
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Date: 2002-03-11 11:36 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-03-11 12:54 pm (UTC)