R.E.M. - Green (1988)

Note: this release was originally purchased as a cassette tape, later replaced by a CD. On said cassette, side one (tracks 1–6) was labelled as the 'Air' side and side two (tracks 7–11) as the 'Metal' side. No idea what any of that has to do with anything.

Lately I've been revisiting albums from the late '80s that I listened to non-stop when they were first released - so much so that once I moved on from them, I set them aside and never heard the complete album again for 30+ years (U2's The Joshua Tree immediately comes to mind as another example). This album certainly fits into those worthwhile, retrospective exercises. REM's Green was a consistent companion as I graduated college in December 1988 and had a 'gap semester' before getting married and landing my first teaching gig the following summer.

As I mentioned, I hadn't particularly thought about this album for many years, but earlier this year I heard Orange Crush as track 1 on Never Mind The Mainstream...The Best of MTV's 120 Minutes, Vol. 2 and was reminded of how much I liked Green, calling it "my third favorite REM album." I saw this in the used bin within a month of that reminder and here we are.

Gone were the jangly guitars, mumbled lyrics and college radio playlists of the band's origins earlier in the decade. Now REM were a full-fledged rock band. Overall, I think IRS REM > Warner Bros REM, but this thing sounds fantastic with pedal down, T-Tops off, volume up.

Press of the time:

• High Fidelity: "Everything's changed, but everything's stayed the same."
• Billboard: "a delight"
• CashBox: "poppy, political, with every word of the lyrics intelligible"
• Rolling Stone (★★★½ ): "looks to be the band's biggest album ever"
• Robert Christgau (B+): "combines the bite of their realest rock and roll with the shameless beauty their cult once lived for"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard 200: #12
• Billboard Pop CD: #4
• Rolling Stone: #6

Tracks: My favorites are the non-apologetic pop rockers: Pop Song 89, Get Up, Stand, Orange Crush, and Inside Out. Of the slower cuts, I dig the simple mandolin/organ chords of Hairshirt. I remember normally skipping I Remember California, so I could flip the tape over, rewind, and start the album again from the top. So I rarely heard the untitled track 11 - as I listen now, I have no memory of it and barely remembered there were 11 tracks.

For more information on the brief life of the CD longbox,
go visit The Legend of the Longbox.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: In the spring of 1989, I worked in the development office of the San Antonio Symphony. From my window, I could look across the San Antonio River and see the back of San Antonio's Municipal Auditorium. REM played a concert there in March of that year in support of this album. I walked over and watched the crew unload equipment into the hall, all the while kicking myself for not buying tickets to that concert. 10,000 Maniacs opened - I bet that was a helluva show.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Eponymous (1988)
Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)
Murmur (1983)