#Peter Buck

[astralbondpro]

R.E.M. // Losing My Religion

[the-hottest-band-tournament]

Round Four of The Hottest 80s Band Tournament

Queen

Defeated opponents: Green Day, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Psychedelic Furs

Formed in: 1970

Genres: rock, glam-rock, hard rock, pop-rock, pop, disco

Lineup: Freddie Mercury- vocals 

Brian May- guitar 

John Deacon- bass 

Roger Taylor- drums 

Albums from the 80s: 

The Game (1980)

Hot Space (1982)

Flash Gordon (1982, movie soundtrack)

The Works (1984)

A Kind Of Magic (1986)

The Miracle (1989)

Propaganda: “HAVE YOU SEEEEN THEMMMM???? these men never lost their looks as they aged. smoking hot 20 somethings to smoking hot 40 somethings. in their own words, "we was glam" and "we were all stunning". all four had impeccable style choices 99% of the time, from leather jackets and wraps to monochrome to undone blazers and ties to brightly coloured /everything/. Deacon changed his hair style every few years and even in just tshirts and booty shorts, never missed. Roger had a sleazy mullet and sunglasses for what felt like forever, hot Persian dad, did not miss. Brian forgot how to fully button shirts. bell bottoms. same hair for 50 years. no misses. even after Freddie got sick and started wearing makeup and had to grow a beard to cover up, MAN NEVER FUCKIN MISSED. he was beautiful to the day he died. and thats not even touching on the leather daddy look from the early 80s.king shit. we love wrinkles and laugh lines in this gd house. if they don't sweep I’m blowing this whole website up we was glam”

“a few years back i was obsessed with these guys and i would find it hard to not have a crush on all of them. in the 80s especially brian was GORGEOUS.. BEAUTIFUL”

R.E.M 

Defeated opponents: The Stone Roses, Chicago

 Formation: 1980

Genres: Alternative rock folk rock college rock jangle pop post-punk

Lineup: Bill Berry – drums, percussion, backing vocals, occasional bass and keyboards 

Peter Buck – lead guitar, mandolin, banjo, occasional bass, keyboards and drums 

Mike Mills – bass, keyboards, backing vocals, occasional lead vocals and guitar

Michael Stipe – lead vocals, occasional harmonica, percussion and guitar

Albums from the 80s: 

Murmur (1983)

Reckoning (1984)

Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)

Document (1987)

Green (1988)

Propaganda: These Georgian boys invented "college rock" with their sound that was at once a throwback and a move forward. 

Visual propaganda for Queen:

[guessimdumb]

The Baseball Project - Sometimes I Dream Of Willie Mays (2008)

my hero as a kid - R.I.P.

[transfloppa]

corkboard

(guys ignore that I misspelled m stipe)

[peterbuckmichaelstiperem4ever]

This photo, taken by Henry Diltz means everything to me ❤ Taken on November 3rd, 2023 in Wuxtry, Athens.

[all-rock-and-roll-is-homosexual]

Select Magazine November 1992/ REM

if you like my scans and want to help out you can do so here

[natalia-lafourcade]

R.E.M. Losing My Religion (1991)

dir. Tarsem Singh

Image Description

(1/4) A sepia-toned shot of singer Michael Stipe falling to his knees as if struck by something. He is wearing a white dress shirt and black slacks. Behind him are two large feathered angel wings and an open book propped up on a stand.

(2/4) Scene of an older white man with angel feathers falling from the sky against a black screen. There is another man dressed in brown and tan robes looking up at him as he falls and leans over to help him.

(3/4) Shot of Michael Stipe dancing in a large brown room with a single window. He dances by spinning in a circle, clapping his arms together, and waving them around. The scene changes to reveal another man wearing a black blazer and white dress shirt watching him.

(4/4) Scene of an angel reaching down into the ground, grasping at something. The actor playing the angel wears golden wings and golden boxer shorts. The angel is against a backdrop of a sky and on a set filled with trees and plants. The scene changes to reveal the other angel and man dressed in robes from the previous gif. They look up to the sky in fear as a hand reaches down towards them.

[iamedie]

Music will provide the light you cannot resist

[vampireofsorts]

fables of the reconstruction era REM my beloved

[billberrypie]

pete the cat is just peter buck's fursona

[musickickztoo]

Peter Buck *December 6, 1956

[lisamarie-vee]

[the-hottest-band-tournament]

Round Three of The Hottest 80s Band Tournament

R.E.M 

Defeated opponents: The Stone Roses, Chicago

 Formation: 1980

Genres: Alternative rock folk rock college rock jangle pop post-punk

Lineup: Bill Berry – drums, percussion, backing vocals, occasional bass and keyboards 

Peter Buck – lead guitar, mandolin, banjo, occasional bass, keyboards and drums 

Mike Mills – bass, keyboards, backing vocals, occasional lead vocals and guitar

Michael Stipe – lead vocals, occasional harmonica, percussion and guitar

Albums from the 80s: 

Murmur (1983)

Reckoning (1984)

Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)

Document (1987)

Green (1988)

Propaganda: These Georgian boys invented "college rock" with their sound that was at once a throwback and a move forward. 

The Damned 

Defeated opponents: Great White

Formed in: 1976

Genres: Punk

Lineup: Dave Vanian – lead vocals

Roman Jugg – guitar, keyboards, vocals

Bryn Merrick – bass, backing vocals

Rat Scabies – drums

Albums from the 80s:

The Black Album (1980)

Strawberries (1982)

Phantasmagoria (1985)

Anything (1986)

Propaganda:  The Damned propaganda because goths should fight for their faves to the last drop of blood, there's no other way. First, they have all the types of guy you can imagine, like it's some wild option. Second, Dave Vanian for sure looked good for 131 y.o.

I don’t really know how this propaganda fits in but I think it’s cool

[strictlysquaresville]

[mywifeleftme]

363: R.E.M. // Murmur

Murmur R.E.M. 1983, IRS

Some Short, Disconnected Statements on the Matter of Murmur

1. Insert the following into Waring blender

The Velvet Underground, Pylon, the Byrds, Gang of Four, Patti Smith, the Feelies, Joy Division, the Method Actors, Big Star, the dB’s, the Monkees. Press “Blend” button. (I’ve never owned a blender; I don’t know what the buttons say.)

2. Easy formula for a great band

Having one temperamental genius songwriter guy sounds kind of hard to maintain. Have you considered simply getting four people who are really excellent and distinctive at the respective things they do (at least three of them great singers), who all write well, get along, lack substance abuse issues, have good taste, and modest egos? Why don’t more bands do this?

3. Notes on the early discourse

A lot of the things people wrote back in the early ‘80s to champion this band were dumb as hell. R.E.M. weren’t good because they didn’t use keyboards or synths; pop music didn’t need to be returned to its "honest" folk-rock roots; giving them a thumbs up for not wearing flashy clothes and makeup is dork behaviour.

They were good because they made weird music that derived organically from their time (early ‘80s), place (a college town in the South), and selves (bright, independent, adventurous, sincere, ¼ gay).

Anyone who listened to Chronic Town or Murmur, with their post-punky murk and lyrical references to Laocoön and Marat, and thought to themselves, “As yes, the second coming of Roger McGuinn, this will put those effete new wavers to flight,” was an idiot.

4. Veteran of the psychic war

Somewhere around age 22, R.E.M. took over the mantle Metallica had held as My Favourite Band in the World Forever and Ever, and I proceeded to be almost as annoying about them as I had been Hetfield and the boys. I posted a lot about them; rigged “best music” polls on random message boards I didn’t even post on in their favour; cornered people at parties; crowbarred them into playlists; grumpily chose to dislike bands I saw as stealing their shine; etc. etc. Some (some) of this is maybe cute in retrospect, but really: don’t be like this about music. If you love a band this much, learn how to play their songs on an instrument; write a few poems; paint something. Worst case: review them.

5. Learning nothing, 2024

6. Athens: Lyrics & Enunciation

The matter of what exactly Stipe was singing on the early R.E.M. records was a subject of intense speculation, and eventually, parody. Some of the mystery’s in the mixing, some’s in his Georgian accent, and some’s in his enunciation (never quite as mushy as people claimed, but not exactly Ella Fitzgerald either). But most of it’s in the arbitrary decisions he makes with regard to syntax that cause even accurate transcriptions to seem implausible. Stipe is probably a little bit autistic, which goes some way to explaining the impressionistic intuitiveness of his words, and also went to art school, which fetishizes that sort of thing, but he was always shy of people seeing the words to something like “Sitting Still” on the page because he thought he might be exposed as a nincompoop. “Up to par and Katie bars / The kitchen side, but not me in / Sitting top of the big hill / Waste of time sitting still,” goes the chorus, according to at least one gnostic sect, but the important passage is the one everyone agrees on, when the stream of impassioned babble releases into a howled “I can hear you / Can you hear me?”

Later on, when he would sing more clearly over airy arrangements, with the lyrics neatly printed in the booklet, he’d occasionally try one of those old sound-over-sense moves and embarrass himself (“Leaving New York was never my proud” still rankles). But Murmur’s eternal elusiveness is in the way fragments of sense catch your ear from out of its sleeptalk glossolalia:

“The pilgrimage has gained momentum” “Conversation fear” “Lighted, lighted / Laughing in tune” “Hear the howl of the rope / A question” “A perfect circle of acquaintances and friends / Drink another, coin a phrase” “Shaking through / Opportune” “Take oasis” “Heaven assumes / Shoulders high in the room” “Did we miss anything?”

7. Permission to be arbitrary

I remember sitting in the basement of my college house with my old hometown buddy Brad (mostly a metal/classic rock guy), playing him “Shaking Through” and explaining one of the things I love about old R.E.M. is that it’s great music to yell to. I don’t know how much he really got it, but we were drunk and it’s a catchy song, so we howled and made keening, wordless, Stipean noises along with it and the next few until one of my roommates came and asked us to keep it down.

Also: one theory for why cats purr when they’re injured is that the vibrations somehow reduce pain and encourage healing. From many experiences humming these songs while wrapped up in headphones and bedsheets in the middle of a day that’s passing like a kidney stone, I can confirm.

8. Note on the modern discourse: Influence?

Black Francis, Kurt Cobain, Bob Mould, Steve Malkmus, Bob Pollard, and Thom Yorke loved R.E.M. So did, to his own apparent consternation, Metallica’s Cliff Burton. Still, you sit down with someone and listen to those musicians with the goal of showing them the R.E.M. influence (don’t do this, why would you do this?) and it’s honestly pretty oblique. Most of the bands who directly aped aspects of R.E.M.'s early sound were at best pleasantly minor (see Captured Tracks’ Strum & Thrum comp), and the ones who seemed to be listening most closely to their ‘90s efforts were not who you want.

Their ultimate influence was probably simply showing what an art-first, indie-adjacent rock band could accomplish by sticking to their guns and bending the system to their desires instead of being bent by it. They were like a Velvet Underground for the college rock era, except everyone talented who heard them was inspired to start a band that didn’t sound much like them. They always used their spotlight to introduce people to other bands and, when they really got huge, they modeled how to deal with success. There don’t seem to be many R.E.M. stories, Peter Buck’s airplane incident aside, about them being anything other than kind. That’s a fundamentally less exciting type of influence than most other “great” bands have. But I do think it’s kinda cool they were the wise old heads for an entire national movement of alternative music.

8b.

Of course, it still bugs me people don’t think they’re cool. Murmur at least, should be considered cool. And Reckoning, mostly. Chronic Town for sure. Some of Fables. Am I crazy for saying some of Monster and New Adventures even? I’ll stop. I’ll go on.

9(-9). The music

They were a pop band, they were an art band; they sounded like children, and like craggy old men buried in kudzu weed; natural and pretentious; date-stamped and timeless. Decide yourself. Happy 41st birthday Murmur.

363/365

[peterbuckmichaelstiperem4ever]