That's a "Coincidence". "Serendipity" refers to learning new unexpected knowledge while searching for some other knowledge. pushes glasses back up nose, makes nerd snort
"1754: coined by Horace Walpole, suggested by The Three Princes of Serendip, the title of a fairy tale in which the heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’."
Btw thanks for picking nits. New things can be learned no matter what
This is a really good synopsys, not too fawning, not too critical. REM was an early college band that was sincere and handled pop fame with tact and restraint (counterpoint: U2, of the same era). They sort of did exactly what a "normal" band should do: write music, find fans, expose people to a new style of music, become very popular, don't try to push it past the cultural shifts, and gracefully exit without any scandal are smarminess. Who does that anymore, or even gets the chance? I think the only bummer is that they influenced so many alt musicians that their style is in everything non-pop these days.
Of course, I'm pretty biased, though: I was a senior in highschool when the day after REM played my city half my graduating class was wearing the concert shirt.
Were they all that restrained? I'm thinking about Stipe's cringe-y activism, and the starfucker galaxy of Stipe, Courtney Love, and Billy Corgan; even the idea of "meeting [grunge] on its own turf" is a reframing of the band not as an authentic artistic endeavor but as a pop culture trend artifact.
How much influence did REM have? What's a well-regarded indie musician you'd say was prompted largely by REM itself, rather than Patti Smith and Big Star?
I concede Radiohead (though, of course, not Nirvana). First time I saw Radiohead was at an REM show (Patti Smith made a surprise appearance). I'd still go to bat for the argument that REM's influences are more influential than REM itself is.
Some other bands that list them as an influence are Pavement, Pearl Jam, Live, Collective Soul, Alice in Chains, Better Than Ezra, Liz Phair, The Decemberists, Wilco.
You hear Pearl Jam in that list the way you hear Nirvana, but I think that has more to do with the chronology and with REM's unofficial role as the bellwether/popularizer of alt radio (which I think is overblown) than any actual artistic influence. Whatever Liz Phair wants to say about Exile, her real influences (besides the Stones) are simply REM's influences.
I concede The Decemberists. Basically a band that blended the Athens Elephant 6 sound with 80s college rock. Sure: the Decemberists were more influenced by REM than by Patti Smith or the Velvets or Television.
Wilco is a weird one. I have a suspicion that Wilco, or at least Jay Bennett-era Wilco, is more influenced by mainstream early-90s alt rock than anybody is comfortable admitting. Heavy Metal Band is basically 1979 off Mellon Collie, which: what Chicago band is going to admit that influence?
Collective Soul, Better Than Ezra, Live: these are bands that kind of prove my point. The lead guy from Live once wrote Stipe a letter asking for advice on how to become a rock star.
Tweedy is from the Illinois side of metro St Louis and was touring colleges in southern IL, MO, KY, GA, etc as a member of Uncle Tupelo when he met and became friends with Buck. They collaborated on some projects, and Buck even produced an Uncle Tupelo album.
It’s probably better to think of it as “Tweedy influenced by REM” rather than “Wilco influenced by REM”.
I'm an unabashed Tupelo fan and I don't get as much alt-rock in No Depression or Anodyne (another top 5 album for me) as I do in Summerteeth and, especially, YHF.
But then Jay Bennett leaves and they're a krautrock band.
That subjectivity depends on what side of the political spectrum you fall.
>> starfucker galaxy
eyeroll
Love/Corgan are still trying to ride their 15-mintues TO THIS DAY. Love is like a venereal disease, she just keeps coming back. And Corgan groomed some teen-aged fan to be his bride and is currently performing 7 hour meditation synthloop pieces to select audiences.
I'm on REM's side of the political spectrum, and have always found Stipe's activism to be performative; in fact, a lot like Morrissey's activism, except Morrissey put his money where his mouth was (more's the pity for all the rest of us). I think of REM and immediately flash back to a high school friend that had "DIRECT" "PEACE" "NOW" "REM" buttons on her coat, and presumably no idea what those words actually meant (except for the REM bit) --- much like Stipe himself.
I'm not saying Stipe is morally equivalent to Corgan (though: be careful how much research you do here). I'm saying that, in the grim span from "Out of Time" to "Monster", Stipe was approximately as authentic as Corgan, and was a social scenester in the same way. It alarms me to realize that Corgan was a more formally interesting songwriter in that period than Stipe was.
REM didn't say they met grunge on its own turf; the article did. But I vividly remember the launch of Monster, and it was in fact an answer to grunge. The author of this piece is not making that up.
I think REM's first couple records (and, probably, Automatic) are basically unimpeachable. I'm not cynically dunking on REM.
> I'm on REM's side of the political spectrum, and have always found Stipe's activism to be performative
I don't think it's performative, but it was definitely a later-stage add-on. The blame for that (positive or negative) falls squarely on Natalie Merchant.
>> It alarms me to realize that Corgan was a more formally interesting songwriter in that period than Stipe was.
"formally interesting". I'm a native English speaker and composer and don't understand your phrasing.
>> I'm on REM's side of the political spectrum, and have always found Stipe's activism to be performative;
I disagree, but it entirely rests on what one person's definition of "cringey" is. I think your awkward attempts at sounding intellectual are alarmingly cringey and less formally interesting.
Something is formally interesting when it varies a basic aspect of the genre. A song that was one long verse with no chorus would be formally interesting. Throbbing Gristle was formally innovative in exploring noise rock and creating "industrial" music. Kid A was a formally interesting British rock album (to the point of alienating fans). The Flaming Lips made an album delivered on 4 CDs that you'd queue up and play simultaneously, so that the minute differences in timing would ensure no listen was precisely the same. Formally interesting (also: not very good).
By 1993, neither REM nor (obviously) The Smashing Pumpkins were formally interesting bands. But REM would go on to make the same album, just with fewer and fewer hooks. Adore, on the other hand, was the Pumpkins Kid A, a transition from "Shopping Mall Shoegazer" to gothy electronic (it gives me no pleasure to report that the album predates Kid A by 2 years, but may have been expedited by Corgan's hair loss). It wasn't, like, a great album, because the Pumpkins are not Radiohead. But it was a departure, both from their previous catalog and from what was playing on the radio at the time.
(I reassure myself by telling myself that both Radiohead and the Smashing Pumpkins stole this musical shift from Bjork).
An aside: I think you will in the future find that dunks work better when you don't precede them by saying out loud "I don't know what the words in this dunk mean".
