As they related on their website yesterday, R.E.M., one of the groundbreaking bands of my lifetime, is calling it quits.
R.E.M. was alternative before alternative became a mass-market genre. Back then, if memory serves, many folks labeled them and other bands as "college rock," back when Rolling Stone covered the "college charts." I've listened to a lot of R.E.M.'s tunes over the years. The second concert I ever went to was R.E.M. playing at Carver-Hawkeye Arena during the Green tour.
When I look at the band's discography, there are only a few CDs of the band that I don't own: Dead Letter Office, Out of Time, and Around the Sun. I had Out of Time once, but I don't know what happened to it.
As much as I felt Reveal was a dog of an album, I went along and bought the band's last two discs, Accelerate and Collapse Into Now, both of which are good. For me though, they'll never stack up to the early works of Life's Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, and Document.
In yet another sign I'm getting old, a band I grew up with finally disbands after 31 years of making music.
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