View From the Phlipside Radio - R.E.M. Farewell

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

It’s been a couple weeks since the rock group R.E.M. announced they were retiring.  I’ve been thinking about that announcement and trying to come to grips with it in my head.  It just feels peculiar somehow.  Some groups end because the band can’t get along any more, the majority simply run out of creative juice. At the other extreme of course are the Rolling Stones who simply refuse to die.  R.E.M. doesn’t seem to fit into the usual scenario.  They seem to get along just fine and their last two albums debuted in the Top 10.  “Accelerate” released in 2008 was called one of their best albums ever by some critics.

But then R.E.M. has always done it their way rather than anyone else’s.

Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Bill Berry and Mike Mills came together in 1980 without any grand plan according to Stipe.  Their first  gig was playing at a college friend’s birthday party.  The name was chosen at random out of the dictionary.  Musically Stipe and Buck were fans of punk music and with their band they would lead the way into the next wave of music.  R.E.M. stands right at the birth of the alternative rock movement.  It’s not that they created it but in many ways they led the way for the success of all the now many flavors of alternative.  From their debut album “Murmur” they became the first recognizable name for most mainstream listeners.  They had been approached by major label RCA but signed with the much smaller I.R.S. Records.  It hasn’t been without a few bumps along the way.  During the 1995 tour following the release of “Monster” 3 of the 4 members of the band would end up the hospital.  When Bill Berry announced he wanted to retire two years later he said he would only do it if the rest of the band promised not to break up.  I’m hard pressed to think of a similar situation happening with any other band.
Along the way R.E.M. made some incredible music.  They tried some different things along the way, some succeeded and some not so much.  They took the energy of punk and wedded it with melody and intelligent lyrics and became part of the vanguard of a vital new music style.  So if they’ve decided it’s time to step away all we should really say is “Thank You”.

Call that the View From the Phlipside