The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, as a concept, is a wholly stupid idea. Taking something as subjective as music and trying to measure it by the same standards as baseball and football players is just ridiculous. It's bad enough that Billboard tracks sales of records instead of just letting them stand on their merits. That anybody buys an album because of how much it sold is so foreign to me. Radiohead debuts at number one every time they out out a new disc, but that doesn't stop me from thinking they suck hard and are one of the most pedestrian and overly-pretentious bands of the last decade. That they will be in the R & R HOF someday and Robyn Hitchcock won't is all the proof I need that it is a joke. And also pointless. So pointless, in fact, that they put the actual museum for it in Cleveland.
That being said, I have to admit I was interested and excited about REM being inducted last night. For the first time they were airing the induction ceremony live on VH1 Classic. I didn't even know there was such a thing as VH1 Classic until I heard about this. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I found out that we actually have it, buried in with the other gazillion pointless stations that come with digital cable. So I stayed up last night watching the ceremony waiting for them to get to Michael Stipe and company. The good thing about it is that when they do the inductions you get treated to a performance of a few songs from the artists being honored or maybe a few of their songs being performed by another band if it someone who is dead or a band that refuses to reunite for the occasion. Or in the case of the Sex Pistols refusing to even accept being inducted, which was just brilliant last year. That was my favorite Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame moment ever, them being told to fuck off by the Sex Pistols.
So I wanted to see REM perform last night because original drummer Bill Berry was going to be with them in one of only a handful of times he's performed with them since leaving ten years ago. No way I could miss it. I had to endure the crappiest band ever Velvet Revolver butchering Van Halen before it got there, but I finally got my payoff.
They were inducted by Eddie Vedder, who feted them in a really sweet, albeit clumsy, speech. He said something about REM not only being able to hit the emotions that were already in your heart but also putting some there that didn't exist before. I really understood what he meant.
REM has been in the soundtrack of my life for so very long. I met the girl who would become my wife because of an REM concert. They got inducted last night less than a week after the 18th anniversary of that night and one week before our third wedding anniversary. And it was happening just a few blocks from where we live.
But their music has been more then just something that coincidentally coincided with my personal life. REM is more than any other group responsible for my lifelong love, some would say obsession, with music and even, dare I say such a gooberistic and melodramatic thing, my musical awakening.
I grew up in Stone Mountain, GA, a short 60 miles from Athens. So I became aware of them a lot sooner than if I had grown up somewhere else in the country. I think I was about 14 or 15 when I first heard them. Up to that age in my life I liked music but I had no real love of anything. I know people my age that grew up with parents who introduced them to things like Highway 61 Revisited, Sgt. Pepper, Joni Mitchell's Clouds, Velvet Underground and Nico, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Who or even Tom Waits. My mom listened to the Four Seasons and Air Supply. The first record either of my parents ever got me was my dad's birthday gift of Bobby Vinton's Greatest Hits. My second one was my mother giving me Disco Duck. You could see why I didn't think I liked music very much.
This all changed after hearing REM. Though I did discover U2 (the first band I truly loved) before them, it wasn't until hearing REM that I really started to discover my passion for music. They were responsible for leading me directly to both Robyn Hitchcock and Billy Bragg, two singer-songwriters who would go on to surpass REM as my favorites. But they didn't just lead me to other great music directly. They showed me that there was more to find out there beyond the shitty pop they played on Z-93 in Atlanta, which as a kid I thought was the only radio station that existed since it was all that got listened to in my house.
After REM happened for me I never heard music the same way again. And I actively sought out new and interesting stuff as much as I could, spending hours upon hours in local record stores in search of anything that "spoke" to me. If I hadn't heard them in my teen years, I don't know if I would have ever become as curious about music.
I also don't know if I'd be alive.
I had a rough time in my teen years, like a lot of people. On top of having to deal with being a social outcast in high school, we also moved right before my senior year. Because my life wasn't difficult enough in high school without having to be a new kid on top of it. I guess my mother didn't think high school sucked enough for me so she had to give it a nice twist for my last year. And we moved to a suburban hell called Lake Zurich, IL that I considered the worst place on planet Earth until I lived in Boston. Luckily for me the great album Document came out close to the beginning of the school year. It was the perfect soundtrack for my life that year, with its beautiful raw energy. Peter Buck's most wailing guitar work, a driving rhythm anchored by Bill Berry's ferocious drumming and the most intense Stipe has ever been vocally. It was the perfect soundtrack for my senior year. And I listened to it almost every day. I had to.
Suicidal teenager is probably one way to describe me at 17. Coming home from another day of being knocked up against the lockers by the idiot football player tying to prove how tough he is by picking on a geek, having my hair made fun of by the cheerleader bimbo who sat behind me in Consumer Econ and being challenged to fights by some jackass named John Knox because he didn't like the way I dressed or my political leanings (I wore a peace sign button on my jacket). Or it was because he had a small dick, I forget which. And then I had to go home to an emotionally and physically abusive mother who liked to tell me that I would get along better in school if I tried to "fit in". There were so many days I just wanted it to end. And I really thought about ending it so many times.
But I would put on my headphones, slap Document in the CD player and crank the volume as high as I could handle. The opening riffs of Finest Worksong would come on and fill me with its energy. By the time I got to It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) nothing seemed so bad anymore. And by the ending of Oddfellows Local 151 the day would usually be washed away and I could breathe again. On some days, especially when my mother was in a particularly raging mood about her life and decided to take it out on her children again, it took more than one listening. Sometimes three or four.
But it always worked. And I believe it's why I survived my teen years.
I've always said that if I ever got the chance to meet anybody in REM I would thank them for saving my life. Without Document I really think there is a good chance I would have been one of those 17 year-olds who gets found in the bathtub with slit wrists or hanging in the garage.
Even though they are not my favorite band anymore and I've really not liked their last few albums, no band could ever hold the special place in my heart that they do. Hell, I wouldn't even have the phrase "favorite band" in my vocabulary if it weren't for them. Or a wife.
And keeping me from killing myself was pretty good too.
Thank you Bill, Peter, Mike and Michael.
Six
3 days ago
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An objection, and a question.
I wish to voice my extreme disagreement with the following statement:
...but that doesn't stop me from thinking they suck hard and are one of the most pedestrian and overly-pretentious bands of the last decade.
Sir, I call bullshit. You could've said it about The Strokes, Coldplay, or Wilco even. (I kid, I kid, though I'm not a fan)
Question: When did REM "lose" it for you?
REM did, in fact, put out some of the greatest music going. I'm glad you had it to get you through.
On the other hand, what's with the Cleveland hate, ya cheesedick?
And I'm lucky enough to have gone to my first REM concert with you. I still have the t-shirt to prove it. How cool were you to take your 9th grade cheerleader sister with a bad bleach job?
I don't neccesarily disagree with that Jose, the Strokes and Coldplay could also qualify for that title (I'm going to forget you said that about Wilco, which by the way I have now heard their new album that comes out in May and it is soooooo much better than the last one), but for me Radiohead inches out the victory for that title. And my disdain has a lot to do with their "indie cred" that I think is wholly undeserved.
I wouldn't say that REM "lost it", they just went in a direction that, frankly, bores me to death. They didn't sell out like I think U2 did with Pop. New Adventures In High-Fi has some moments that are great, but not a lot. Up is an absolute snooze-fest. I listened to that album so many times trying to like it, but it is just dull and uninteresting, which was a frighful thing for me to finally force myself to admit about the band that saved my life and possiblt my soul. And the ones since then have been just as dull.
I think they are still doing what they want to do, without worrying about record sales or chart location, and I love them for that. It just doesn't appeal to me like all of their pre-1996 stuff.
And Joe, I kid about Cleveland, sort of. I mean, if they took that HOF more seriously they wouldn't have stuck it in Cleveland. I also think it is a stupid idea that the baseball HOF is in the middle of bumblefuck upstate New York, for no reason other than a legend made up by Spalding that has no historical signifigance to the game.
And yes it is true, my kid sister was also at the show where I met my wife.
I'm coming to Florida to steal that shirt Sis, mine wore out years ago.
You just don't like the sound...that's cool, why not just admit that?
And my disdain has a lot to do with their "indie cred" that I think is wholly undeserved.
This is the band's doing how? I kinda doubt they ever said anything along the lines of "Oy! We've got indie cred!"
If you determine a band's "indie cred" by their "doing what they want to do, without worrying about record sales or chart location," well, I'm still not sure how you could accuse Radiohead of not doing that, with the exception of one song, in their entire career.
In many ways, Radiohead is the Flaming Lips of Britain. Going their own way, even though they were signed to major lables rather early on.
D'ya have a problem with the Flaming Lips?
Yes, the Flaming Lips also suck.
I guess I had to ask.
Love ya, pal.
I have to second TBO's objections re: Radiohead, chime in with one of my own regarding the Flaming Lips, but also concede that the disagreement may come down to aesthetics. "Indie cred"--and the absence, presence, or perception thereof--seems a paltry worry, since that has more to do with how music is marketed and distributed than with how it's made.
Wilco's one real contribution to the dialogue is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (not coincedentally referred to as their Radiohead album); other than that, they're alt-rock's answer to the Eagles (though I don't hate Wilco NEARLY as much as I hate the Eagles). Uncle Tupelo was better, and Neko Case and Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter have already kicked country's evolution into a much higher gear.
On R.E.M., there's not much with which to argue. I, too, was first introduced to them via Document, and while Life's Rich Pageant became my favorite for many years--until Automatic for the People came out--upon purchase of their back catalog, Document will always have a place in my heart.
In a way, Document was the best U2 album R.E.M. ever recorded, with its chiming guitars and proclamatory vocals (though that sense of shouting from the mountaintops had already emerged in "Time After Time" from Reckoning, the precursor to Document's "King of Birds"; both songs share a march-derived drum roll under processional guitar and reverb-laden vocals delivered comfortably from Stipe's middle-range). Maybe it was more that it was the best Daniel Lanois production job ever pulled off by Scott Litt. But the content illustrated what was different about the two bands: Where U2 was always specific, R.E.M. was always elusive, cryptic.
"Alternative" rock was often called "postmodern" rock before Nirvana kicked it into the top 40, but only two bands--R.E.M. and the Smiths--ever really embodied that label for me. The Smiths accomplished this with coy literary references and ironic autobiography. R.E.M., on the other hand, accomplished it by contantly playing with enigma, Stipe's lyrics erupting in elliptical bursts telling stories with no discernible characters or structure, saturated with urgency and the appearance of sincerity, but with content so indistinct that everyone thought they knew what it meant (even if they couldn't make out what it said).
I agree that they haven't so much sold out as gotten old and kind of dreary with integrity; for me, Up is still a great listen ("Sad Professor" is actually one of my faves, perhaps because, once again, I feel like Michael's singing about me), but I sold Reveal after failing to get into it. I didn't even bother after that, but I still claim them as one of my favorite bands.
Wow, Lyam, we couldn't probably disagree on any more things. While I can respect what you hear in Document (not my first REM btw, I got into them a few years earlier), I don't get the U2 vibe at all. And even if you wanted to make that comparison, I think it would be more in line with U2s Steve Lillywhite-produced albums (Boy, October, War) rather than those of Eno/Lanois.
You are the first person I have ever heard call YHF Wilco's Radiohead album. I don't think there is anybody who really calls it that, and I don't hear any reason to. I find Radiohead to be derivitive crap and one of those bands that have everybody fooled into thinking they're great, the same way Sonic Youth did.
I don't get the Eagles reference to Wilco, especially since I hate the Eagles as well and no way would I be into Wilco if I heard even a tinge of that shit in there. As far as kicking country in to a higher gear, well even Uncle Tupelo wasn't a country band, and Wilco has gone far and away from that and I don't think you could really talk about them in the same context as you might have been able to in 1996 when Being There was out.
As far as Neko Case goes, well don't even get me started. Another over-loved boring artist and she hasn't taken country to any other level at all. She's just rehashing all of the tired old sound of old. I liked her better when she was bringing me eggs at Hattie's Hat. If you want to hear something really creative and original in that vein a much better bet is Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins or Robbie Fulks. And for a real kick of just how good a modern alt-country band can be, pick up the Blanche album If We Can't Trust The Doctors... Most members of Blanche can also be heard on that kick ass Jack White-produced Loretts Lynn album Van Lear Rose, which as a senior citizen, Ms. Lynn put out something much more exciting and fabulous than Neko could ever dream of.
We'll just have to agree to disagree about Up (among maybe all of those other things listed above :)), I still find it to be the first real garbage REM album. I pull it out and try to listen to it from time to time, but I just can't stand it and have to make it stop it drives me so crazy.
But then I pop on Green and I'm all better...
dude, surprised you approve of anything Jack White related...
Let's see, Sonic Youth, Neko Case (and by extension New Pornographers?) are all now on the "overhyped crap acts" list.
Come on, who else is on the list? I wanna know!
(Sorry to highjack your REM tribute blogpost, but I find this entertaining in the best way.)
While I can respect what you hear in Document (not my first REM btw, I got into them a few years earlier), I don't get the U2 vibe at all. And even if you wanted to make that comparison, I think it would be more in line with U2s Steve Lillywhite-produced albums (Boy, October, War) rather than those of Eno/Lanois.
I'm thinking more of production and tone than songwriting (though if you object to anyone comparing the two bands, you might note how often they've compared themselves to one another). Hence Eno/Lanois, the team that gave U2 that sense of endless, open space, and the proclamatory vibe to which I refer.
You are the first person I have ever heard call YHF Wilco's Radiohead album. I don't think there is anybody who really calls it that.
Perhaps you just don't read as much music press. EVERY review I read the month it came out compared it to Kid A, and I could see why. That said, there's no reason you have to agree with the assessment, just as long as we're clear that I didn't pull it out of my ass.
I find Radiohead to be derivitive crap and one of those bands that have everybody fooled into thinking they're great, the same way Sonic Youth did.
As a Sonic Youth lover, I offer that we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I don't get the Eagles reference to Wilco, especially since I hate the Eagles as well and no way would I be into Wilco if I heard even a tinge of that shit in there.
And I DO hear a tinge, and therefore don't like Wilco. Seems simple enough.
I don't hate Wilco like I hate the Eagles, please understand. I just hear enough of that that I can't get excited; and, as you feel with regards to Radiohead/Sonic Youth, I personally think Wilco has usurped their position as a music critic's darling.
As far as kicking country in to a higher gear, well even Uncle Tupelo wasn't a country band, and Wilco has gone far and away from that and I don't think you could really talk about them in the same context as you might have been able to in 1996 when Being There was out.
They're still writing in country chord changes, though, and the lyrical content is in that vein (production notwithstanding). In terms of their kicking country into a higher gear, YHT is an interesting example of an album that both absolutely is and absolutely isn't country. That's what keeps it interesting, and from being another slack indie-rock lead ball like, say, ANY Modest Mouse album.
As far as Neko Case goes, well don't even get me started. Another over-loved boring artist and she hasn't taken country to any other level at all. She's just rehashing all of the tired old sound of old.
I think she finds some of the narrative luster and fractured theatricality of Nick Cave or Tom Waits (and I'm not at all cavalier about name checking those two).
If you want to hear something really creative and original in that vein a much better bet is Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins or Robbie Fulks. And for a real kick of just how good a modern alt-country band can be, pick up the Blanche album If We Can't Trust The Doctors...
The only one of those I've heard is Fulks, whom I didn't like. I'll keep ears out for the others.
Most members of Blanche can also be heard on that kick ass Jack White-produced Loretts Lynn album Van Lear Rose, which as a senior citizen, Ms. Lynn put out something much more exciting and fabulous than Neko could ever dream of.
I disagree with your comparative analysis, but I did enjoy Van Lear Rose. Not as sexy as Neko Case--hell, not as sexy as Neko Case's gym shoes--but a good album.
Are you familiar with Howie Gelb, his old band Giant Sand, or Calexico (Giant Sand minus Howie Gelb)? That's pretty amazing stuff.
But then I pop on Green and I'm all better...
I enjoy Green, but consider it one of their sillier albums. There are a few true classics on it, though.
Actually, I think New Pornographers ARE a little overrated.
Of course, I also think Led Zeppelin's overrated, so these things will, as always, expose themselves as insurmountably subjective.
I'm always a little uncomfortable with the notion of "overrated," myself. You're not really saying anything about the music when you suggest a band is overrated; you're critiquing the audience, the critics, the mechanisms of preference. Which is well and good, but it seems like it puts one in a position I find myself in too often (and usually, in relation to my actual volition, by accident), that of insisting that my criteria, and only my criteria, are the correct ones by which to judge music, and that everyone who likes this overrated band/artist has been duped. Rather than asking people to truly question their musical assumptions--a noble enough request--it asks people, instead, to admire my cleverness in noticing the poverty of those assumptions.
That said, lest I should seem to be critiquing the critic's critic (???), I call bands overrated ALL THE TIME.
So I'll offer my list of what I consider to be the four ('cause that's how many I felt comfortable naming) most overrated bands/artists ever:
-Modest Mouse
-Led Zeppelin
-The Eagles
-Eric Clapton
Of those, I only really hate the Eagles. The rest are just . . . well, overrated. You've all been duped. ;^)
Actually Jose, I think the New Pornagraphers are pretty good, not good enough to make me buy it with my limited music buying cash, but not bad. I think they are better when she is singing. I think Neko has a great voice, just dumb boring music as a solo artist. I agree with Lyam that she's sexy as hell though. I just wich her music was more intersting.
I also think the White Stripes are good, and sometimes great. They've never put out an album that was start to finish great, but always put out ones out that have some great songs. He should dump Meg (a really boring drummer) and just do the Raconteurs full time, that's a great album. Though a member of Blanche, one of my faves, is in the Raconteurs and is why I haven't been able to see them on tour in so long.
Lyam, I was thinking of tone as well when I made the point that Document was more like the Lillywhite produced U2 albums. I don't object at all to them being compared, they are both my favorite bands from my teen years. But I hear more in common on Document with Boy, October or War than I do with Unforgetable Fire or Joshua Tree when in comes to tone and production value.
"They're still writing in country chord changes, though, and the lyrical content is in that vein (production notwithstanding). In terms of their kicking country into a higher gear, YHT is an interesting example of an album that both absolutely is and absolutely isn't country. That's what keeps it interesting, and from being another slack indie-rock lead ball like, say, ANY Modest Mouse album."
I can pretty much agree with this whole statement, though I would use the word "folk" instead of "country". That becomes really apparent if you see Jeff Tweedy live, which is how I prefer his music these days. Trying to do too much with simple, wonderful songs in the studio. It's why my copy A Ghost Is Born has mostly collected dust for a while now. And I can certainly agree that Modest Mouse sucks serious donkey dicks.
And true, I don't read much in music press, except for No Depression religiously, though I did read a lot of reviews of YHF when it came out and don't remember the Radiohead reference.
What I've heard of Howie Gelb I've loved. A listened to his most recent album at the Virgin Megastore listening station and really dug it. Couldn't afford to buy it though. What I've heard of Calexico (which isn't much) hasn't really drawn me in.
Jenny Lewis is the lead singer of Rilo Kiley, who are good, but not as good as her solo album with the Watson Twins. A link to her site and Blanche are in my music link section.
Most recent thing I've gotten into was FINALLY getting a Belle & Sebastian CD, used for $6 the other day, and it is the newest one. I'm in fucking love with it. I can't believe I didn't hear these guys years ago.
Yay Lyam, common ground. My most over-rated list is pretty close to yours. Though mine also includes the Rolling Stones.
My number one band that I hate is Led Zeppelin. God they annoy me.
It's why I don't like Nels Cline being in Wilco right now, he seems like he's trying to be Jimmy Page all the time. I hate that wonky trying to show off guitar player shtick.
See, and what I've heard of B&S makes me think of a bunch of shoegazing wankers with no guts.
I don't know how you could get a shoegazing vibe from them, their music isn't the moody type at all. At least this album I got isn't. It bebops like crazy.
Shit is groovy, dancable fun.
Okay, Deni, I'm laying down the law here. You are officially never ever fucking allowed to mention Neko Case again. You don't like her, then you can just forget she exists. If I hear you rag on her again, I swear to god I will hit you upside the head with a dog turd. And I've got a huge supply of those, pal.
Oh, and another thing. Besides being just a paint-by-numbers boring country swooner, Case also doesn't allow her live shows to be taped, and has gone after people with her lawyers for it. Like hose ass-holes in Metallica. So she is very fan-unfriendly. Another reason she is annoying.
Hi Joe.
TBO, when I think of shoegazer, I'm generally thinking of the My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride, that sort of thing; the term actually referred to musicians who were so busy making a big, heavy, alcohol-weed-and-painkillers drone that they spent whole shows looking at their effects pedals.
That said, I think I see what you're getting at. Belle & Sebastian in general--I can't speak to the most recent album--are more twee than a Sherlock Holmes convention, and their ouevre does tend to consist of post-Morrissey laments with a less literate, more pre-sexual vibe. It's cardigan sweater music. I happen to LIKE cardigan sweater music, am an old disciple of the Smiths, and as such tend to find Belle & Sebastian more or less fine, if not all that exciting (I think Mosquitos, in adding a touch of bossanova and samba to the mix, along with a touch of Serge Gainsbourg wit and light psychedelia, do it better). Apparently the new album's doing something a little different with it, according to Deni; I'd be curious to hear.
I did think of another Wilco project I liked: Mermaid Avenue. Of course, it was Billy Bragg that really attracted me, and I still think his contribution was better than Wilco's, but I thought they captured that road-weary aspect rather beautifully.
Other than that and YHT, though, I'd take one Neko Case over TEN Wilcos (Wilcoes?). That's just the way I hear it. I find the gothic absurdities in Case's music more prevalent than the classic country swoon, which is why I don't get the paint-by-numbers aspect as much (like I said, more Nick Cave than Patsy Cline).
I thought about putting the Stones on my overrated list, but a) I do like Exile on Main Street, and b) Mick Jagger used to date Marianne Faithfull, who's a goddess (I will hear no argument on the matter of Marianne Faithfull's divine status; that last album she did with P.J. Harvey--goddess in waiting--and Nick Cave--surely a god--was just plain unreal).
One last thought on the R.E.M./U2 matter: If we're comparing the trajectories of the two band's sounds, we might see what I'm getting at. Both bands started with more angular structures, faster tempos, a little more rage, during their periods with Lillywhite and Easter (respectively). Scott Litt did for R.E.M. what Lanois did for U2: slow the tempos, open the sound, expand the size, create an illusion of space. If we take the comparison to sound too much to heart, Document sounds like Lillywhite's U2 because R.E.M. at it's biggest is only really as big as U2 at their smallest, largely because R.E.M. was always more art-school coy and Appalachian minimal than U2 would ever have thought to be. But if we imagine (I hope this isn't too hard) that Joshua Tree and Document happened at similar points in the respective band's careers (that seems nearly beyond debate, going by the timeline), and that the albums each represent the biggest sound either band ever achieved (more debatable in U2's case, since they're ALWAYS big), the specific analogy I'm making might make sense.
I hear what you are saying, and I understand your point. But I think that compring the trajectory of both bands in that way does not make Document "the best U2 album REM ever made." I think you could draw the same kind of comparisons to lots of different bands and albums, using the idea of a band that created a "bigger" or more lush sound than they had before and in a career changing way. You could compare Document to, say, Rubber Soul or T. Rex's Electric Ladyland, Dpeches Mode's Music For The Masses, The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Billy Bragg's Workers Playtime, the list goes on.
I also think in this analogy you are using the wrong U2 album to compare to Document. It would be more REM's Unforgetable Fire than it would be their Joshua Tree, with the former being the first time U2 workd with Eno/Lanois and made that different path with their sound for the first time. It also works out more directly in the timeline of the bands, REM being about 3 or 4 years behind U2 in how long they've been together. And each also marks the beginning of the transfomation of each band from college radio darlings to biggest band in the world. Green is so much more their Joshua Tree in both the way it is their next stepin the prograssion of their sound with Litt behind the controls as well as when they atarted playing stadiums.
(I would also defend to my dying breath the charge that it is a "silly" album. I spent so many a nights in college, usually fueled by lots of pot, discussing the meaning and depth of what I consider to be their "concept" album that I could probably have done my thesis project on it. But that's a discussion better for in person over drinks than it is written out on the comment section of my blog.)
As far as the argument overwho's Mermaid Avenue stuff is better, well I've been worn down by that argument so many times when I was spending time over at the ultra-annoying Wilco message board, ViaChicago. In that case of course, I was constantly having to stand up for Bragg, which was just ridiculous that it was neccesary. I find both albums to be genius from start to finish, without a low note between them. If you can't see the absolute genius of songs like California Stars, Remember The Mountain Bed, or Hoodoo Voodoo as much as you can in Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key and Ingrid Bergman, well I don't what I can say to that. But asking me to pick one over the other in that project is like Sophie's Choice to me. Though I would say that I was disappointed that we never got a joint tour for the album because Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett had to act like big dicks to Bragg during the recording of the records.
Billy, pretty much tied with Robyn Hitchcock, is my number one favorite artist on the planet, who I've seen over 30 times live. If you find his work better than Wilco, well, I'm not going to try to talk you down from that.
Oh, and did you hear that Morrissey just annunced a big North American tour?
You're right that I could compare a lot of similar trajectories, and I probably would, if I thought that's what my audience would "get." I picked U2 because they were both my favorite bands growing; I stuck with it because you seemed, at least, to be on the same page as I was regarding that. The fact that one could make other comparisons doesn't render any one comparison invalid, or even overly broad.
Also, the difference between R.E.M./U2 and any of the other comparisons speaks to the similarities between the two bands. The Beatles and T-Rex are other eras and genres of rock; Billy Bragg is political on a more minute level than U2, who seem to share a bigger picture with the admittedly more abstract R.E.M.; and while Depeche Mode (whom I must confess I've always quite enjoyed) are at least in the same overall school, it's always seemed pretty easy to note that R.E.M. and U2 were practically playing roots rock compared to the Mode, if only because they played real instruments.
You're 100% correct that The Unforgettable Fire was the correct album to compare to Document; I think I even started out thinking that, but I discovered Document and The Joshua Tree at about the same time in my life, so I was led, perhaps, more by autobiographical thinking than aesthetics.
Yeah, love Billy Bragg. Not much more to say on that, except that I've seen him live twice, and if someone else can keep it that engaging with one electric guitar and no band, I've not seen him/her/them.
Oh, and . . . I've never loved solo Morrissey like I've loved the Smiths. Like, yes; love, no.
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