Blue Moon Playlist Review Club - Season 2 - Episode 27 - Out on blue 6 - Gone Too Soon (pg 438)

[OB1]

Pleasant enough play list on the whole.

Didn't like the last track although it was inoffensive.

Altered Images a bit sub Siouxsie but I'm both old enough and young enough to have seen Gregory's Girl at the cinema...

 

[RobMCFC]

Thanks to @Mad Eyed Screamer for the playlist and thanks to everybody who listened.

Next up is @FogBlueInSanFran - feel free to post any time today.

And with that, my current tour of duty on this thread is complete, so I'll hand over the reins to @Mancitydoogle

@Coatigan - remember that we promised to give people three weeks notice before their playlist is due, so you should start to think about nomimators for January in the next couple of weeks.

 

[threespires]

What I found about this playlist was it put me in the mood to listen to other artists (I don't mean that in a perjorative way). My Favourite made me want to play a bit of Kirsty Maccoll and with God Bless the Girl I decided to listen to a bit of the Beautiful South afterwards. I even sought out a one time guilty pleasure, Frente's version of Bizarre Love Triangle; not sure what I was thinking with that one though, suspect it had more to do with trying to ingratiate myself with someone. Might be a good playlist theme, bad music I've tolerated in an attempt to get into someone's pants.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Thanks all and my apologies for having written little so far here though I have been listening to the selections!

For me, I hope you'll forgive me skirting the intended bounds of this thread by choosing five songs that actually comprise my hands-down favo(u)rite EP of all time, R.E.M.’s debut “Chronic Town” from 1982.

Through a decade of a lot of very good things (that presaged some not-so-good things in their later years), this is the best thing R.E.M. ever did in my mind -- five perfect little songs.

I know that roughly 42% of Michael Stipe’s lyrics are utterly unintelligible. But every tune runs at pace with Buck/Mills/Berry driving their instruments along like an outboard motor. Moreover, there are no slow, mournful numbers about the demise of the South, nor character studies about wrinkled old men, nor introspective doleful schmaltz.

Granted, I do love three of R.E.M.’s 14 LPs top to bottom: “Murmur”, “Life’s Rich Pageant” and “Document”. And I have a lot of like for everything else they did up to and including “Out of Time”.

It’s always puzzled me that so many Brits like their later stuff better than their early stuff, which is one reason I chose this. To me the band died with “Automatic For The People”, which was 1992 (I’ve always found that record cloying and irritating).

To me “Chronic Town” has stood the test of time – to me, it will always be evocative of what R.E.M. is SUPPOSED to sound like. Just unpretentious, skittering, jangling, speedy, expeditious fun, and (crucially) unspoiled by the demands of the marketplace too.

Even 40 years later, unspoiled fun still sounds good.

1. Wolves, Lower
2. Gardening At Night
3. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
4. 1,000,000
5. Stumble

 

[bennyboy]

I cannot find Chronic Town on Spotify.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

I cannot find Chronic Town on Spotify.

Hmmmm. It’s on US Spotify.

See if these songs are attached to the Dead Letter Office record in the UK.

I know it’s annoying but you should be able to YouTube the whole record too.

@RobMCFC @Mancitydoogle I am about to hop on a cross country flight. If there is a problem getting these songs up in the UK LMK and I will figure out something different tonight UK time.

 

[threespires]

Own a bit of REM from various periods but am no more than a casual listener and not familiar with this. Just had first listen, two things struck me:

• the lower fi/simpler production provides an immediacy and intimacy missing from their arguably overproduced approach of later years (even Document/Green have tracks where it's beginning to get a little bit overblown in comparison to this)
• Stipe made no more sense at the start of their career then he did at the end

The songs do move along at a nice lick, might be a bit samey if it was a full album worth but for an EP it works very well. Looking forward to listening a few times.


Btw - this is defo cheating and just a way of getting a half album in whilst you wait for your next go in the album thread :-)

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Own a bit of REM from various periods but am no more than a casual listener and not familiar with this. Just had first listen, two things struck me:

• the lower fi/simpler production provides an immediacy and intimacy missing from their arguably overproduced approach of later years (even Document/Green have tracks where it's beginning to get a little bit overblown in comparison to this)
• Stipe made no more sense at the start of their career then he did at the end

The songs do move along at a nice lick, might be a bit samey if it was a full album worth but for an EP it's works very well. Looking forward to listening a few times.


Btw - this is defo cheating and just a way of getting a half album in whilst you wait for your next go in the album thread :-)

It is totally cheating :). Had the argument of why late REM is the best REM not come up on another thread I would not have had the need to post this inarguable rebuttal.

 

[RobMCFC]

Hmmmm. It’s on US Spotify.

See if these songs are attached to the Dead Letter Office record in the UK.

I know it’s annoying but you should be able to YouTube the whole record too.

@RobMCFC @Mancitydoogle I am about to hop on a cross country flight. If there is a problem getting these songs up in the UK LMK and I will figure out something different tonight UK time.

All those songs (and more) appear to be available in a playlist:-

 

[bennyboy]

Thanks all and my apologies for having written little so far here though I have been listening to the selections!

For me, I hope you'll forgive me skirting the intended bounds of this thread by choosing five songs that actually comprise my hands-down favo(u)rite EP of all time, R.E.M.’s debut “Chronic Town” from 1982.

Through a decade of a lot of very good things (that presaged some not-so-good things in their later years), this is the best thing R.E.M. ever did in my mind -- five perfect little songs.

I know that roughly 42% of Michael Stipe’s lyrics are utterly unintelligible. But every tune runs at pace with Buck/Mills/Berry driving their instruments along like an outboard motor. Moreover, there are no slow, mournful numbers about the demise of the South, nor character studies about wrinkled old men, nor introspective doleful schmaltz.

Granted, I do love three of R.E.M.’s 14 LPs top to bottom: “Murmur”, “Life’s Rich Pageant” and “Document”. And I have a lot of like for everything else they did up to and including “Out of Time”.

It’s always puzzled me that so many Brits like their later stuff better than their early stuff, which is one reason I chose this. To me the band died with “Automatic For The People”, which was 1992 (I’ve always found that record cloying and irritating).

To me “Chronic Town” has stood the test of time – to me, it will always be evocative of what R.E.M. is SUPPOSED to sound like. Just unpretentious, skittering, jangling, speedy, expeditious fun, and (crucially) unspoiled by the demands of the marketplace too.

Even 40 years later, unspoiled fun still sounds good.

1. Wolves, Lower
2. Gardening At Night
3. Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars)
4. 1,000,000
5. Stumble

I'm in the same boat as you Foggy.
Loved REM until Document.The warning signs started with Green,the last REM record I bought.
Drivel after that.
I use to own Chronic Town,though I think it was classed as a mini lp at the time.
I have not listened to it for over 20 years.Hope father time has been kind.