This is like one of those announcements that Mae West just died, at 104 or something, and you’re shocked, not because she died, but because you thought she died decades ago.
Wow.
I’m a massive R.E.M. fan, as those of you on the board who frequent the occasional thread that pops up about them… definitely the soundtrack to my late high school/early college years. I discovered them around the time of Document (yes, “The One I Love” hooked me, and I was roundly ridiculed by the hardcore fan friends I had - “man, they sold out, listen to their old shit”). I went out and bought Eponymous, thinking it was a new record and discovered that I had to have all of their old stuff. Then senior year Green was released, and the stupidest song on the record (“Stand”) went global. Sort of. They had the good sense to release the best song on the record as a single (“Orange Crush”) and even the metal heads gave them props.
I went backwards and discovered Chronic Town and Murmur. Excellent albums, atmospheric, and I felt like I was in Athens at the rail trellis on the back cover of the first LP. But for me, my love for the band was sealed the day I bought a secondhand copy of Reckoning. It’s still my favorite R.E.M. album, and I’ve listened to it (or at least “Harbourcoat” or “Pretty Persuasion”) pretty much at least once a month or so since 1990. That’s an amazing album from top to bottom.
When Out of Time made them the World’s Greatest Band, my ardor had cooled somewhat. Before then, if you were into R.E.M., you were weird in some way, an oddball… now sorority girls were singing “Losing My Religion.” But it’s still a great album, and even though Stipe is completely decipherable, some of the mystique is still there.
Automatic For The People was probably the first album I “figured out” - pre-internet, listening to the songs, I realized that the album was about death. New Adventures was good, and I thought Monster (the album that nearly killed the band, literally) was the last epic R.E.M. album. (I think I have the chronology backward - NAiHF was recorded on the road during the Monster tour.)
I want to say I’ve seen them twice in concert. The first time was in Austin in '95 supporting Monster, with Radiohead and Natalie Merchant in support. Natalie came on during their set and danced around… cool.
I also agree that Bill Berry’s departure more or less ended the band. I loved his power, and he has never gotten his due as a contributor to the band. I know “Perfect Circle” and “Everybody Hurts” are more or less 100% Berry contributions, and it was said in the band, he was the common sense guy that would rein in (particularly) Buck and Stipe’s extravaganzas. He famously sat out the song “Untitled” (hidden track) on Green because “no one can play that badly for that long.” (Buck played drums on the track.)
R.E.M. hasn’t created a great record, top to bottom, since Berry left - or at least, I haven’t had the interest to find out. Up was criminally bad, and while I’ve enjoyed a lot of tracks from the subsequent albums, I’ve not had the same interest in the band since his departure. (I know the Accelerate album got a lot of critical acclaim but I haven’t heard it in its entirety.) I also think their association with Scott Litt produced their finest work from 1987 to 1992 or so.
So the declines in the history of R.E.M.:
[ol]
[li]Stipe becomes intelligible[/li][li]Scott Litt and the band part ways[/li][li]Stipe starts shaving his head[/li][li]Berry leaves[/li][li]Up[/li][/ol]
Thanks a lot, Messrs. Stipe, Buck, Mills, and Berry. You rocked in the weirdest way. 
I’ve been a huge fan since I first heard Murmur around the time of it’s original release. I worked at the campus radio station in college and remember hearing all the buzz about them when it first came out. I was lucky enough to see them play a live show shortly after that at a club in Austin. Over the years I have had the privilege of seeing them perform 4 more times, the last time around the time of Monster. I don’t think a week has gone by since the first time I heard them that I haven’t played one of their songs. I even found myself enjoying Accelerate much more than I expected.
Overall I can’t say I’m surprised by this. Calling it a break up is odd because there really aren’t any conflicts or animosity that seem to have caused this to happen. I rather think it really is more like a retirement. I guess calling it a break up frees them all to go and pursue whatever other creative interests they may have without feeling obligated to check with the others about possible conflicts it may cause.
Frankly, I doubt we have seen the last of them performing together somewhere or other given the right set of circumstances.
Michael, Mike, Pete and Bill:
I will never really be able to explain how much your music has meant to me over the years. Thanks guys, for all the great music and all the great memories.
It’s a woah, but. . .while I wasn’t expecting it, I’m not surprised.
I’m a huge R.E.M. fan. That was sort of my defining characteristic in high school; “writes; likes R.E.M.” I loved everything up through Up, and I actually thought Up was okay. Reveal was super hit-or-miss, and kind of meh. Under the Sun was effing criminal. Accelerate was actually really good, but not as good as some of the earlier stuff.
I personally thing the first side of Document was hands-down the best album side ever, and that Automatic for the People is just about the best album ever. I didn’t think that Michael Stipe lost anything by becoming more intelligible. I think they did suffer for the loss of Berry.
I’d whine and complain and gnash my teeth, but they’ve been together thirty-one years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive. I’ve seen them play three times, albeit never with Berry. All I can say is, thanks for everything.
Got to listen to this song while lying down in the back seat of a car, at night with the top down, head on my sweetie’s lap, riding home from my first <and only> REM concert. That memory was just…perfect.
Another <kind of weird> memory connection is that ‘Everybody Hurts’, well…I thought it was pretty dorky. But there was a day when I was just so damn down and sad, and the song came on and it was like I had permission to just cry it all out. It seemed really stupid at the time, but the fact that I remember that 20+ years later says something, I guess.
I’d say that I’ll miss them, but…I won’t. They will always be around in their songs, and I am thankful for that.
Thanks, guys. You made a lot of memories.
Well, I prefer this version…
I’d rather see them quit now than to lurch and wheeze into old age like the Who. I was on board from the moment Chronic Town came out (their most eerie release as it turned out-I left my original cassette copy in a bowling alley) on through Monster, which I hated, at which point I stopped buying their albums (except for Reveal which I feel is criminally underrated). Somewhere I have the original “Radio Free Europe” single, which sells on E-Bay for some pretty pennies nowadays.
They were still together? Who knew…
I was waiting for someone to say that.
I’m reminded of an anecdote Rodney Dangerfield used to tell. “When I was about 30, I left show biz, I just quit. And to show you how well I was doing at the time, I was the only one who KNEW that I’d quit.”
If REM had just stopped performing and recording entirely, without announcing it, how long would it have been until somebody noticed?
I think they really declined after Monster.
Good for them for ending it when they realized it wasn’t going to be worth it, anymore. Am I right that they end it on good terms?
I saw them once. It was 1995 for the Monster tour and they hadn’t toured in six years (hadn’t toured since “Green” - no tours for “Out of Time” or “Automatic”). They did a show at The Gorge in WA and I had to line up early at a Ticketmaster outlet to get my tickets. I heard the show sold out in 20 minutes and the entire tour sold out in 45.
The concert was simply incredible. Bill Berry was back with the band after his brain surgery and their energy was off the charts.
By the time Stipe got to “End of the World” his voice was completely gone and he had to shout-sing the chorus. I’ll never forget it.
Wow, just found the setlist for the show on this REM Timeline site. Awesome!
They definitely frame it that way, yes.
ETA: oh, and Hippy Hollow, nice write-up. They are worthy of acknowledgement and respect - they had a good run and left some great music behind.
Thanks Wordy, I think any props from you on a music thread is resume-worthy! 
What I loved about R.E.M. is that they were pretty much doing what the hell they wanted to on their own terms - nobody in the band was pretty - you’ve got a guy with bad acne and hair in his face, a guy with a monobrow, a guy who looks like Marcie from Peanuts, and Buck, I guess (I remember seeing a cheesy ass Olan Mills type early publicity photo that just screamed discomfort), the front man didn’t sing clearly, they had songs in weird time signatures, and the guitarist was arpeggiating at a time when his contemporaries were power chording and whammy barring through the decade. But somehow, the world turned to them.
I have an ancient Rolling Stone from '87 or so discussing the band’s ascent to relative fame with “The One I Love.” Buck has this great quote: “We’re a weird band. The only thing out there weirder than us is Prince,” and he was right. Prince at least was good looking, could dance, and was as funky as hell. I don’t know what world events transpired to make R.E.M. popular for a time, but it seemed that the good guys won for a while, and substance triumphed over style.
As we all know, Husker Du and R.E.M. were the two American post-punk bands of the '80s that changed the direction of rock & roll. R.E.M. mark the point when post-punk turned into alternative rock.
When their first single Album, Murmur, was released in 1981, it sparked a back-to-the-garage movement in the American underground. While there were a number of hardcore and punk bands in the U.S. during the early '80s, R.E.M. brought guitar pop back into the underground lexicon. Combining ringing guitar hooks with mumbled, cryptic lyrics and a D.I.Y. aesthetic borrowed from post-punk, the band simultaneously sounded traditional and modern.
With the release of Murmur, R.E.M. had the most impact musically and commercially of the developing alternative genre’s early groups, leaving in its wake a number of jangle pop followers
They’d shown how far an underground, punk-inspired rock band could go within the industry without whoring out its artistic integrity in any obvious way.
They invented a whole new ballgame for all of the other bands to follow whether it was Sonic Youth or the Replacements or Nirvana or Butthole Surfers. R.E.M. staked the claim. Musically, the bands did different things, but R.E.M. was first to show us you can be big and still be cool.
You left out one:
0.5 Mitch Easter and Don Dixon stop producing their music.
(In fact, if you want a pretty close approximation of that early R.E.M. sound, go listen to Mitch Easter’s band Let’s Active. Particularly their album Cypress. Sample. Sample.)
True. I was just commenting on the difficulty they had in finding the right producers - Joe Boyd made them sound old and melancholy - which actually fits the feel of Fables, I suppose - and Don Gehman made them sound a little too Indiana-ey and Mellencampish. Again, still incredible albums. I think Scott Litt was the producer that moved them forward and after they parted ways, the band lost the plot a little. Kind of like Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones… why do these great producer - performer pairings fall apart?
Been listening to a few songs and reminiscing. You know, for all of their weirdness that you describe well, it was clear that the pieces were there. As I mention upthread, Berry is such a groove drummer - simple and poppy. Getting his drums recorded right was a critical key to them sounding more up and poppy (in a good way) vs. melancholy or plodding. The other key to that was Buck - yes, he was a jangle/arpeggio guy - but NOT like, say Roger McGuinn of The Byrds (tight arpeggios with a folk feel) but more like a jangly Keith Richards - played jangly arpeggio’s, but was the driver of the groove who locked in with Berry to give the songs more of a rock than a folk-rock feel. I listened to Moral Kiosk - you want to think of Buck’s work as, I dunno, wispy or “jangly and ethereal” - but it’s not; it is locked in and groove oriented; especially with Berry providing a poppy backbeat. Mike Mills is an up-the-neck, melodic bassist who sits on top of the Berry/Buck groove and Stipe has a gruff-but-melodic voice.
So I think as Stipe got more intelligible, we were also hearing Buck move away from that type of groove-oriented arpeggio jangle - look at Losing My Religion with a mandolin - it simply doesn’t “rock” - and Berry toning down the simple groove drumming until he left the band for medical reasons. Mills didn’t change much and Stipe’s sense of melody didn’t change much - but they didn’t have that Buck+Berry foundation nearly as solid after maybe Fables or so…
They had one of my all time favorite songs - Shiny Happy People.
- They didn’t even release Chronic Town EP until '82.