R.E.M. at 21: Has-Been or Still-Is?
by J. Daniel Janzen

There's a new R.E.M. record out today! OK, so it's not exactly new — it's a best-of with two new songs. But still, even one new song would be cause for celebration, right? Twenty-one years into their recording career, R.E.M. is still making new music.

Is anyone still listening?

Things were different in 1982, the year of R.E.M.'s debut EP, Chronic Town. It was hard even to learn of new bands, much less hear their music. Rock 'n' roll radio was dominated by corporate rock (Styx, Journey, Jefferson Starship), trash rock (ZZ Top, .38 Special, Skynyrd) and coke bands (Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Clapton — no escaping Clapton). MTV was barely into its Martha Quinn infancy, and it played pretty much whatever anyone came in with — a strictly arbitrary selection dominated by pretentious post-punks and hair bands. Otherwise, names dropped by the cool kids at school or mentioned in the Rolling Stone critics poll floated disembodied from their unimagined sound.

Once I'd managed to hear of R.E.M., I called the local rock station and asked why they never played the band's songs, not even "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville," which practically could have been a Tom Petty song. It's not like the music was that radical; sure, the chords were weird and hard to parse, but it was still guitar, bass, drums and vocal — verse, chorus and bridge. "No market for it here," the DJ said, and that was that.

Program directors didn't know what to do with R.E.M. The band was a bunch of misfits, four guys from Georgia who didn't play Southern rock. On tour, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Bill Berry and Mike Mills shared a van with such hardcore bands as Black Flag and the Minutemen, but in concert they sounded more like the Byrds and played Velvet Underground covers. And then there was the mumbling.

Then again, R.E.M.'s sound stood out immediately from everything around it. It could almost have been defined by what it wasn't: not slick and commercial like the arena bands, yet not the synthetic foreign sound of new wave, either. The band drew its sound from the purest American sources: Velvet Underground, Television, Patti Smith, Gram Parsons. Right from the start, it seemed like it might one day measure up to its roots.

Roundly ignored by mainstream radio, R.E.M. roamed the hinterlands, begging its way onto college radio in hopes of boosting attendance at the next gig from a hundred or so to maybe twice that. Slowly but surely, the virus began to spread, passed from an undergrad DJ to a nonconformist high school girl to the boy who worshiped her and through his geeky circle. The seeds of revolution were being sown.

"Ah jeez, Grandpa, again with the R.E.M. story? I heard it all before — R.E.M. invented alternative radio, blah blah blah. I'll be in my room downloading Fitty Cent."

Who really cares anymore? R.E.M. may have been the best loved and most influential band in the country a dozen or so years ago, but its legacy has outrun its career. The bands R.E.M. influenced outrank it in popularity, and the indie music scene the group helped launch has long since drowned it out.

R.E.M. had a good run, following its mythic underground years with the "Losing My Religion" thing — No. 1 in every country with electricity. Automatic for the People — that's a great record, too. But then R.E.M. signed the biggest record deal in history and promptly dropped off the face of the earth. Albums crept out two years or more apart, often with no touring in between. Casual fans moved on to Beck, rap metal, emo, whatever; old fans sulked about losing "their" band. Even alternative stations didn't play the new singles much.

When Bill Berry left R.E.M. following a brain explosion on tour, many people wondered why Stipe, Buck and Mills bothered to stay together. The brave but uneven Up and the assured but over-produced Reveal gave few answers; they were reviewed well, sold poorly and sank without a ripple. Having performed together intermittently at best for more than a decade, now living on different coasts, the band seemed less a unit than three individuals. Stipe had his movie projects, Buck had his side bands, Mills just hung around Athens combing his beard.

This fall brings the most dire development of all: a best-of record and tour. It's official — the band has turned from the Beatles into the Who, barnstorming the hits with a borrowed drummer. The fans hung their heads and lined up for tickets. And yes — there are still fans out there, thinning-haired holdouts from the first generation alongside alternative energy supporters, dorky girls with Mike Mills crushes and bullied teenagers from Pittsburgh to Bakersfield, Calif. And overseas. Like Spinal Tap, R.E.M. is huge in Japan, as well as in Israel, England, Brazil — everywhere but here, and that's all that really counts.

The band has rewarded the listeners who've stuck around. R.E.M. has never sold a song for a TV commercial, though it did provide the theme for Chris Elliott's legendary sitcom "Get a Life." The band's members maintained a decent amount of cred as individuals regardless of their diminished draw, and Stipe has a mutual admiration society going with Radiohead's Thom Yorke. They've been politically active without being embarrassing about it. They did a "Simpsons" (though, regrettably, it wasn't that good). Members of the R.E.M. fan club get a free single at Christmas. The band still makes some great songs; when the group misses, it's by trying to do too much, not by phoning it in Stones-like.

A former record store clerk like Peter Buck knows well the implications of a best-of release for a band's career, especially one haunted by an offhand 1991 comment that they planned to retire at the close of the last century. Some have speculated that Warner Bros. is just trying to squeeze out a few last dollars before R.E.M. rides off into the sunset. But no — an all-new album is already well underway, slated for release next year. Will it fare better than its immediate predecessors?

It's hard not to wince, like watching Charlie Brown line up to kick Lucy's football. But you never know. There's certainly no precedent for a band entering its third decade to reclaim its past heights — well, except for U2, of course, who ruled the post-Sept. 11 world for two Grammy seasons after mid-career embarrassments far worse than R.E.M. ever approached. Could the new album be R.E.M.'s All That You Can't Leave Behind?

Signs from the recently completed tour were promising. With only three new numbers on the list (the two new ones from the best-of and a third written to protest the invasion of Iraq), R.E.M. turned to their fans for suggestions from the back catalog. The resulting 80-song arsenal made every night's show different and pushed the band to do songs they hadn't thought about since the Reagan administration — "Gardening at Night," "Sitting Still," "Life and How to Live It." Truth told, songs from the '90s were hard-pressed to hold their own against the older material — but the performance throughout was easily the strongest it's been in years. Half-empty arenas resounded with old-school Rickenbacker jangle. Stipe began each show by saying, "We're R.E.M. and this is what we do." This time out, few would question his words.

R.E.M.'s evident revitalization is especially timely as the group heads back into the studio to finish the new record, which is said to be more upbeat and harder rocking than the last few, always welcome news. After the much-discussed writer's block and brief breakup that doomed the Up sessions, and the lack of focus that drew out Reveal's recording, the group has finally become comfortable writing and recording as a trio. There's certainly no commercial pressure this time around. Each of the last four records sold roughly half what its predecessor did in the United States; no one is holding their breath for a monster hit next year, and neither the band nor its fans measure success in such terms anyway.

Still, it wouldn't be a bad time for R.E.M. to be big again. The group's perennial dissidence can give a lift to demoralized thinking people — one of the new songs,"Bad Day," gives a voice to people who are "sick of being jerked around," and it features a DIY harmonica solo by Stipe straight from the barricades. In an age of disposable pop heroes and of-the-minute tattoo boys, there aren't many big-time acts around with roots as deep as R.E.M. — Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, good old U2. Rock royalty serve a similar cultural purpose as sports dynasties: they tell us that we live in exceptional times, when greatness is within reach and history is being written.

If not, well, fans will be glad enough for another record on the shelf.

E-mail J. Daniel Janzen at dan at clownyard dot com.