Rake wrote:Interesting stuff. Very hard to retrospectively judge albums by your favourite bands when you haven't got them in chronological order. I came to the REM party late, buying Life's Rich Pageant when it first came out and Murmur at the same time, having only heard Radio Free Europe and Don't Go Back To Rockville previously, which had got me interested. I played LRP first when I got home and was absolutely blown away, never forget the feeling listening to the opening riffs of Begin The Begin. When I played Murmur straight after I was somewhat underwhelmed at first, and it was only later that I completely fell in love with that album, and then bought Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables. I've spoken to a lot of REM fans who were there from the beginning who were really disappointed with LRP, and have also read that the band struggled putting it together, rehashing old early set songs and tour jams. But to me it will always be special as it was the album that got me hooked.
Strangely I had been thinking along these lines whilst pondering my responses to this thread. I had a very similar experience with discovering The Moody Blues =, coming to the band via hearing Nights in White Satin on Jimmy Savile's Sunday morning radio one show when I was 13. I used to buy whatever back catalogue album Virgin or Windows had in stock so my exposure was all over the place and many years after the album's release date. Still, I would argue that there was a palpable sense of excitement and expectation every time I unwrapped the plastic and stuck the vinyl on my parents' shitty stereo. Some albums exceeded my expectations and others fell far short and I probably felt more let down by some of the older stuff than by the albums that came out post 79, when they started recording again. I guess what I am trying to say is that the onus of delivering is actually on the band, not on me lowering my expectations. No one can come to any album as a tabula rasa, so of course what we've thought/heard before will have some impact but that doesn't stop anyone from making a value judgement on what is presented to them album by album. DYLRM didn't fail to meet my expectations because I couldn't look beyond Decline but because the lyrics left me cold and the whole album felt it had no soul. That's not to say, that I can't understand how it might be great to someone coming at the band amidst whatever other dross was circulating then. Nor have I closed the door on the band .. some of the tracks on MOJ I really enjoy and A light above descending, the most obviously old school track, is probably in my top ten BSP tracks.