R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Dan: 

I thought Steve discovered R.E.M. in 1983 when the hype surrounding their Murmur album was reaching a fever pitch. I never caught that early fever myself and continue to regard Murmur as primitive (which may be why the indie college band fans loved it). As one of two bands from Athens, Georgia to remerge in the late 70s (the other being the B-52's), R.E.M. leveraged their cult following into an international phenomenon. 

By the time Fables of the Reconstruction was released, I too was in an R.E.M. frenzy. I remember going to Spec's with Steve to find their earlier recordings and coming home with Reckoning, which we played often. Such visits were like little adventures, not knowing what we might find. Surfing the Internet for music is just not the same. 

R.E.M. were touring in 1985 to support Fables, so Steve and I decided to attend the concert in Miami. He was about 15 at the time and I was 40. (Once again, he was probably the youngest person in attendance, and I was the oldest). There was an opening act, which Steve will brag about, but which I did not place much importance on. Then the first notes of Peter Buck's guitar pierced the room, and R.E.M. opened with "Feeling Gravity's Pull." It was an electric moment for me, as the crowd reached for their lighters and cheered. I felt pretty old at that moment, but I knew the music as well as anyone there. 

Michael Stipe emerged wearing a skirt, as several girls jumped on stage to grab Peter Buck. Mike Mills and Bill Berry stayed away from the action taking care of business on bass and drums, respectively. I truly enjoyed the concert, which was one of the handful of rock concerts I've ever been to. (I've been to many more live jazz performances, but that's another set of stories).

My favorite songs on the album are "Gravity's Pull," "Life and How to Live it," "Can't Get There from Here," and the closer "Wendell Gee." "Wendell" is perhaps the best actual song on the album because it's about someone and something; Many R.E.M. songs, especially from early albums, don't make much literal sense and Stipe has admitted to being afflicted by the "stream of consciousness syndrome." 

I followed R.E.M. through Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, Green, Out of Time, and Automatic for the People. Monster was a big disappointment that I never overcame. For me, their best work ended with Automatic, and the older Document rivals Fables for top honors in my rankings of R.E.M. recordings.

R.E.M. got cute with the title of Fables. The full title of the album was Fables of The Reconstruction / Reconstruction of the Fables. Side A was titled "Fables of the Reconstruction." Side 2 was designated as "Another Side - Reconstruction of the Fables." For a Georgia- based band, the meanings of these titles were certainly intended to be more than cute. I'll invite readers to ponder any hidden meanings.

Steve:

Although I first heard R.E.M. by way of their first single, "Radio Free Europe", the first time I became interested in the band and heard a full album was with Fables of the Reconstruction, contrary to Dan's guess above. In our post about New Order's Low Life album, I wrote about my summer of 1985 when I got a job as a 16-year-old in a big record store and learned a lot about what I then called "college rock", but which is now more often described as "80s Alternative". Fables was one of the key albums that I heard daily in the store during that time, and its strange, languid folk rock really grew on me. Apparently, the band thinks it is their worst album - at the very least, they never made another album like it. The fact that it quickly became and remained my favorite R.E.M. album put me in a difficult position as a fan of the band, as each subsequent album moved further away from what I liked about the band in the first place. (Dan comment: yeah, me too!).

"Feeling Gravity's Pull" is one of their weirdest songs. Not only does it open Fables, but it gave me my first impression of the band (notwithstanding "Radio Free Europe", which I hadn't heard in a couple of years by that time). Imagine hearing Elvis Costello for the first time by putting on Imperial Bedroom and having "Beyond Belief" be your first introduction to the man. Not a complete departure for him, but definitely of a different breed than the rest of his material, and even the rest of that album. "Feeling Gravity's Pull" opens with a dissonant guitar note sequence played through what sounds like a Leslie speaker, and as the song progresses it acquires spooky string sounds, as Michael Stipe sings about the sensation of falling asleep while you read. Most of the songs on the album have that hazy, drifting-off-to-sleep quality, but it's an uneasy, troubled sleep. That's a neat mood to capture.

For the concert Dan mentioned, I originally wanted to take this girl at school I wanted to ask out. She had never heard of R.E.M. (admittedly, not many people had at this early point in their career) and politely declined because of the "it's a school night" rationale. I remember I was denied the chance to accept a free ticket to see Rush in 1982 on the same grounds. Oh well, what can you do. We were only teenagers, much younger than my own daughter is now, and I'd probably tell her the same thing. If my preferred date had gone with me, I might not be writing this today, because in her stead, my father Dan came with me to the show.

Incidentally, Dan insinuated that I would probably brag about the opening band, and indeed I will. The Minutemen, a punk band from California, opened for R.E.M. on that tour, and their style was so unusual that it was admittedly a little off-putting at the time. However, the longer-term effects of that show were considerable: I bought a couple of their LPs a week or so later, and my interest in them snowballed to the point where within a month or so they were my favorite band. Just as my fascination with the band and my eager anticipation of their next move was at its peak, singer/guitarist D. Boon died in an auto accident, abruptly putting an end to the band. That was my own JFK moment. Still hurts to this day, and my fandom hasn't faded a bit. Today, the Minutemen are hailed as innovators and a model of independence and ingenuity outside the confines of genre classifications and corporate labels.

So thanks, R.E.M.!