{"id":7889,"date":"2011-06-30T08:27:49","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T12:27:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=7889"},"modified":"2011-06-30T10:02:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T14:02:55","slug":"r-e-m-%e2%80%99s-first-three-irs-long-players-certainly-worthy-of-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/r-e-m-%e2%80%99s-first-three-irs-long-players-certainly-worthy-of-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"R.E.M.\u2019s First Three IRS Long Players: Certainly Worthy of Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The following post was submitted by my close personal friend E. Pluribus Gergely.<\/em><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ykp0Vq77IBw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Hi y&#8217;all,<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to get this whole thing settled&#8230;<em>once and for all<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>For years, the Moderator has been relentlessly jabbing at me for having the\u00a0first three <strong>R.E.M.<\/strong> IRS long players in my record collection. Granted, I haven&#8217;t\u00a0listened to them in years, but I decided to do just a few days ago. I&#8217;m here to\u00a0to tell one and all that they are nothing to be embarrarassed about. They&#8217;re\u00a0actually pretty solid. They feature a bunch of winners:\u00a0&#8220;Gardening at Night,&#8221; &#8220;Radio Free Europe,&#8221; &#8220;South Central Rain,&#8221; &#8220;Pretty Persuasion&#8221;&#8230;all are\u00a0tracks that still sound pretty friggin&#8217; good. And &#8220;Rockville&#8221; borders on great.\u00a0That&#8217;s right, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/lemggreat-l-emg\/\" target=\"_blank\">great<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I caught them live as well, right around the release of <em>Murmur<\/em>. I saw them at\u00a0the University of Pennsylvania, Bucknell, and the Tower Theater. They were\u00a0phenomenal. Take a good look at the Letterman clips. That&#8217;s more or less what\u00a0they looked like. To put it bluntly, they were cool,\u00a0really cool, which is\u00a0something that some of us (eg, Hrundivbakshi) refuse to admit is, was, and should always\u00a0be\u00a0a major point of criteria when judging a pop band.<!--more--><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KA57Pafq_NU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>All that pretty much ended when Stipe began to see himself as a visionary of\u00a0sorts and dress accordingly. The\u00a0debut of the\u00a0shaved head along with the\u00a0Harlequin coats and similar multilayered atrocities\u00a0introduced the public to a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/michael-stipe-is-he-an-irritating-dickhe\/\" target=\"_blank\">new insufferable pompous ass<\/a> that did nothing but make one&#8217;s\u00a0stomach turn.\u00a0You\u00a0wanna bust on the band after the six-lane highway was crossed? Go for it. I&#8217;ll\u00a0help throw the rotten eggs and tomatoes.<\/p>\n<p>True,\u00a0their initial trinity has been tarnished by a series of continual\u00a0Hershey squirts comparable\u00a0to what the Stones have served up\u00a0post <em>Some Girls<\/em>.\u00a0That said,\u00a0those early efforts still manage to make me tap my feet. If you&#8217;ve\u00a0got beefs with those records, I&#8217;d like to hear what they are. <em>And I&#8217;d\u00a0especially like to hear from the Moderator<\/em>. And I&#8217;d also like the Moderator to\u00a0be painfully honest about what bothers him most about R.E.M. He knows EXACTLY\u00a0what I&#8217;m talking about, and believe me, brothers and sisters, when the truth\u00a0rears its ugly head, it will be offensive on all levels, thoroughly offensive in\u00a0the same way as his highly negative critique of <strong>Stevie Wonder<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Songs in the\u00a0Key of Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0the words of the Moderator, <em>I look forward to your responses<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>E. Pluribus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following post was submitted by my close personal friend E. Pluribus Gergely. Hi y&#8217;all, I&#8217;d like to get this whole thing settled&#8230;once and for all. For years, the Moderator has been relentlessly jabbing at me for having the\u00a0first three R.E.M. IRS long players in my record collection. Granted, I haven&#8217;t\u00a0listened to them in years, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/r-e-m-%e2%80%99s-first-three-irs-long-players-certainly-worthy-of-discussion\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[88,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}