Monday, April 8, 2019
9-9
My favorite R.E.M. song by far - , and I never noticed this at the time, but in its slashing rhythm guitar frenzy, there's an audible link to the flint-chipped Andy Gill / Gang of Four sound (Stipe did once say that when Entertainment came out it took the Athens, Georgia scene by storm, you heard it at parties constantly - and it either influenced the likes of Pylon or struck a chord with what B-52s were already doing (musically-rhythmically, underneath the camp 'n' kitsch)
Murmur was a huge album for me, as it was for so many, at the time of its release. But while I kept on loyally buying their albums all through the Eighties, and enjoying them, in hindsight I think there's a sharp nosedive into stodginess and college-rock dullness of sound as we move deeper into the decade. Certainly nothing ever scaled the mystic heights and sublimely tensile dynamism of Murmur again.
Do you know what, I've owned a copy of Chronic Town EP for decades now and have never even pierced the shrinkwrap? How daft is that? I bought it much later - I think in the US in the late Eighties, probably from a branch of Tower Records - to a visiting Brit those stores seemed paradisical in the sheer range and depth of stuff they carried - - but because things were so hectic with new stuff hurtling out at the young reviewer, I just never got around to listening to it.
Playing Murmur and "9-9" again, it made me realise (did I not notice this at the time? seemingly not) how much early Throwing Muses is an extension of R.E.M.'s American-but-not-quite-"Americana" folk-punk sound. (Much more so than Hersh & Co's professed prime influence, Violent Femmes).
Listening to "9-9", I also heard a connection with this thrilling rhythm-guitar driven stiletto-slashing slice of New Wave.
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3 comments:
I was about to mention REM, in the discussion a couple of posts back about supergroups and supernatural group consciousness. There was an egregore if ever I heard one.
I see your point about REM's descent into stodge, but for me they were still intermittently exciting into the 90s. For as long as they were a four-piece, anyway.
Up until 1995, if you had asked people to rank the members of REM in order of their importance to the group, the drummer would surely have come last every time. But when he quit, whatever they still had that made them intermittently interesting vanished overnight.
I have 2 entries for the "acts consciouss of their egregore" list. First Carlos Santana who said that before the release or composition of his 1999 album - the one with the "smooth" single- He was told during deep meditation by an entity called Metatron that he was going to get put back in the airwaves. And he went back big time indeed. I recently saw "smooth" is #2 in the billboard all-time singles category. This whole list is very surprising actually.
Then The Happy Mondays, the guy that dances must be critical to the egregore effect, and they must know....
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