Ranking The Concerts I've Seen

My post about Van Halen a few months ago got me to thinking about all of the concerts I had attended and whether I thought I could rank all of them. My concert attendance has slowed down very significantly in recent years since I have actual obligations and no money to meet those obligations, but figured I would give a ranking them a shot. I'm probably missing a show or two. I'm not including stage shows I saw in college because I went to quite a few stage shows in college with local college bands and probably was not sober for a good portion of them. I went to a concert one time in a small club and it took me five songs to realize the lead singer was black. I probably pregamed too hard. I have my favorite concerts in reverse order below. The worst one is probably obvious. It's Van Halen, but you know that already. Hopefully the year I went to the concerts are not incorrect either. And yes, you can laugh at some of these. I'm fine with that.

Van Halen (1998)- As much fun as it would be to harp on this, it wasn't a good concert. I've stated why and I still think Eddie Van Halen is a great guitarist.

Steve Miller Band and George Thorogood (1999)- Not that this was a BAD concert, but I don't like either of these two artists enough to attend a concert to see them, yet I did. This one is on me. Nothing I saw in concert convinced me to like them otherwise. Steve Miller was pretty good, though I'm not really passionate about their music, but after about 20 minutes of George Thorogood playing the whole "rowdy blues riff while women scream and he sings a little bit more about drinking" it got slightly grating for me. The two women in front of me really, really, really enjoyed the show though. Enough to scream the whole time and jiggle their scantily-clad bodies in my face when they were not of age or size to be scantily-clad.

Angie Aparo (2001)- I went to this concert, on a whim, in Atlanta. It is probably considered a stage show, but I had no idea where I was going so we were almost late and I spent most of the concert upset that all of the songs on his album were a full band and he played with just him and a guitar in concert. My friend who went with me, she could have explained that he played stripped-down, because it was a sort of letdown for me. She did not explain it. Curse her for this. I drove to Atlanta to see him and got surprised by not having a full band. I like acoustic, but only when I'm expecting it. He did a great version of "Rocket Man," but I felt awkward the whole time because everyone was so much older than I thought they would be and I couldn't yell or talk loud in the venue or else it would disrupt the music. Still love his first album, but this was a disappointment.

Guster and The Avett Brothers (2007)- This is a somewhat interesting story. My wife and I had never heard the Avett Brothers music, but we knew of them considering they were North Carolina legends already that point. We heard they put on a good show and we love Guster. We happily went to Raleigh to see the show. Well, the opening act came on at 7:30pm and didn't leave the stage until 8:30pm. Then the Avett Brothers came out at 8:45pm and would not leave the fucking stage. Guster didn't come on stage until 9:45pm and at that point they were nearly running into the Avett Brothers as they left the stage. They had to be off stage by 11pm, but the Avett Brothers would not leave the stage. Their set lasted too long and to make matters worse, the entire crowd was thrilled they were on stage. Every lyric was sung loudly and obnoxiously, not obnoxiously because it was bad music, but because I wanted to see Guster play, not the Avett Brothers. Naturally, this colored our opinion of the Avett Brothers for a few years until "I and Love and You" came out and now they are one of my favorite bands. The lead singer of Guster (they have two singers and one sings most of the songs these days) even didn't do an encore. His words were, "We usually leave the stage and come back on, but we are almost out of time. Pretend you clapped for us and we came back. Also, we can only do one encore because we are out of time." That was annoying. Eventually, I forgave the Avett Brothers and the unnamed opening act.

Counting Crows and John Mayer (2003)- It was pretty blah. I got roped into going to the concert with an acquaintance I didn't really like all that much, so that probably ruined it. John Mayer can play guitar and for some reason the only thing I remember about Counting Crows' set is they did a great version of "Miami" after Adam Duritz told a really long story about the song. Also, they changed the rhythm and lyrics to "Round Here" so that wasn't cool.

Kenny Chesney, Dierks Bentley and Rascal Flatts (2004)- I don't do country concerts and this is part of the reason why. The environment ruined this show for me. It was very...country. I am not a huge fan of Rascal Flatts but my friends were all going and I used to like Kenny Chesney a lot, so I figured I would go. I think the fact I can't really comment on it much probably shows what kind of concert it was. Chesney did a melody of his slower songs, which was nice since a concert isn't supposed to be a downer, but also a bit disorienting at the same time when one song starts and then the lyrics to another song start after a minute.

Chicago and the Doobie Brothers (1998)- Yeah, I went to a Chicago concert. My friends left the concert early because they thought Chicago's music was too slow. What the fuck did you expect? Really? Have you heard any of their music? The tickets were cheap and I like the music of the Doobie Brothers enough to bear with the slow parts of Chicago's half of the concert. The sad part is Chicago is really great when they do their material that is more horn-heavy, but there are the children of the 80's who just HAVE to hear "You're the Inspiration" and that's a problem for me. So the slow 80's stuff was the main material on the menu. The end result is I got a Doobie Brothers beer holder that I still own to this day. It was "The Doobie Brothers koozie" that gained infamy in college for some reason as my go-to koozie.

The Eagles (2003)- It's funny how a concert experience can be affected by the events around the concert. I went to this concert on a Thursday night (I believe) and had to be back at school the next morning at 9am for a summer law school class. It was a four hour drive by the way. Four fucking hours. So I left the concert and got home at about 4:00am after driving home in a rainstorm, smoking cigarettes and wondering if this wasn't a bad decision in retrospect. The concert was pretty much by the numbers and the band's set list, which isn't exactly uptempo as it is, was even more down tempo than usual. Plus, they led off with "The Long Run." Open the show with "Hotel California" or go home.

Carbon Leaf (2009)- This concert was on me. I went to see Carbon Leaf after they released an album I didn't really love (Nothing Rhymes with Woman) fully knowing they would play most of the album and I wouldn't like it. My wife wanted to see them and I wanted to hear "The Boxer," plus the concert too place three miles from our house. To make matters worse, I remember them backloading the set with songs from their new album, so as I got tired of standing, the music got a bit worse for me. Overall, a great band who I would love to see play again though...just not in support of an album I don't love.

Train and Far Too Jones (2001)- I went for Far Too Jones and the girl I went to the concert with went for Train. So that sort of created a minor issue in that we didn't really have a shared band that we liked. At the time, Train wasn't a band whose sole purpose was to stay together long enough to create more Top 40 singles. They had Top 40 singles, but were a band, which is the opposite of what they are today, which is a singer and a guitarist. Far Too Jones was really good and Train put on a good show too. I know it is hard to believe, but the lead singer of Train had a great stage presence and really engaged with the audience. I was more entertained than I probably care to admit at this time, given the fact "Hey, Soul Sister" and "Marry Me" are still the bane of my existence.

Mae and Locksley (2009)- I had no idea who Mae was, but they turned out to be a rock/pop/art band whose music had small Christian overtunes, but not to the point the songs seemed to actually be about God. They put on a really good show and the songs fit well in the club I saw them in. They were the main act and I wasn't disappointed after hearing Locksley play. Locksley is like a power-pop version of the Beatles and they were very fan-friendly, plus I love how high energy the concert was. Locksley's had a new bassist at the time and his girlfriend was standing beside me. I mention this to say she could not have been 17 years old. He threw her his pick about halfway through the concert and I heard her tell her friend after that something to the effect of "I'm showing this off in school tomorrow" and I am very sure she wasn't talking about a college-school. So that was interesting.

The Eagles (2013)- I dragged my wife to this concert because I wanted to see them play before I died. Sort of fortuitous now. They were doing the "History of the Eagles Tour" in support of the Showtime special that was out. Even if you don't like the Eagles, I would encourage you to watch that special. It's kind of crazy and few people mix the reaction of "What he's saying is making total sense" with "My God, he's such a condescending asshole" better than Don Henley does. His explanation for why tricked Don Felder into leaving the studio so he could cut his own vocal for a song was a mixture of, "I get it" with "What a fucking dick move." They played songs that didn't usually play in concert and had much more energy than the show the decade before. I love it when bands play songs in concert you don't usually get to hear. I'm not always there for the hits. Do I need to hear the Eagles hits over and over again? Probably not.

Locksley and Rooney (2008)- This was a really good show that I saw in Carrboro, NC. At the time the guitarist for Rooney was dating Mischa Barton and when the lead singer (Jason Schwartman's brother, son of Talia Shire) introduced him as the guy dating Mischa Barton you could tell he wasn't happy. Pretty sure they broke up shortly after this (he and Mischa Barton, not Rooney). One of the most entertaining parts was watching the bassist for Rooney stand in the very far left corner with sunglasses on acting as disinterested as possible in the fact he was performing at a concert. He could have been cooking spaghetti. He didn't care, he was just playing bass and standing very still wearing sunglasses. The lead singer of Locksley stood outside the club door after the concert and told the people attending goodnight and wanted to know where they had heard of them from. He desperately wanted his band to be FOUND and to know how that could happen. The fact he was so nice made me like the band even more.

Jimmy Buffett (1998) and Jimmy Buffett (2002)- I combine these concerts because if you have been to one of his then you know how it goes. Your parents or me (as the case may be in the future if Buffett doesn't die in the next 10 years...fingers crossed) get drunk and act like fools pretending they are at the bench when they are really in the middle of North Carolina and working at a job they just sort of like. One really good thing about a Buffett concert is he has his core songs he sings, but the set list changes every single tour and probably every single night. When you are a big fan like I am, it's nice to hear him end a show with "Survive" or bust out with "Lage Nom Ai" at some point. You don't always know what he will play and that makes it fun.

Bruce Springsteen (2008)- Then there are the drawbacks to a singer/band playing obscure songs that diehard fans enjoy. I enjoyed this concert, but went with my wife, who isn't a huge Springsteen fan. If she liked a song he was playing and knew it, things were great, but the obscure tracks didn't make for such a great time for her. Plus, I dragged my feet on getting tickets and we were behind the stage. It's not a great view, though Bruce tried his best to give us attention. 

The Bacon Brothers (1998)- I know. Go ahead and laugh. This is Kevin Bacon's band. Maybe it was seeing this concert at Myrtle Beach during grad week after high school. Maybe it was the fact I was in a good mood because I had obtained more alcohol for after the show. Whatever it was, this was a very enjoyable concert. The audience (in the parking lot of a Planet Hollywood...hello 1998!) was engaged and the band bantered a lot with the audience. They even played "Footloose" as the encore. I bought their album and listened to it a lot, much to the mocking of my friends. I still have that album and dust it off from time to time, much to the mocking of my wife. I don't care. I had a good time.

Guster (2010)- The worst part about this concert was I got there too early and was really tired by the time the concert actually started from standing the whole time. It was at a venue in Charlotte and there were no chairs. The venue was the Fillmore and I believed it had just opened. They opened with "The Captain" which I thought was kind of odd, since it doesn't scream "concert opener" to me. It was nice not to have the Avett Brothers present and hogging the stage.

Dawes (2011)- They are one of my favorite bands, so getting to see them live was awesome for me. They did not let me down. Oddly, the song I think I enjoyed the most was "Lawyers, Guns and Money" which of course isn't their song. They did a great cover version of it though. Of course, they played "A Little Bit of Everything" which is probably one of my favorite songs by them. I was distracted by the drummer's facial expressions though. My wife and I spent a lot of the concert figuring out if he had Tourette's or another condition which caused him to make odd facial expressions. More than likely, he was just into playing the drums. I did do a Google search after the concert and couldn't figure out whether we are the only ones that noticed it though or if there was some information about it on the Interwebs. Weirdly, this concert probably had the most hipsters of any concerts I've ever been to. I felt pretty uncool because I did not dress ironic enough.

The Eagles (1995)- Yes, I am very not cool. I recognize this. This was during their first "Grab some cash" tour after they had reunited after taking a 15 year vacation. Since I have been to two other Eagles concerts I can look back in retrospect and say this is the only one where they didn't feel/seem like they were doing a job of sorts. It seemed very natural up there, like it wasn't five guys who separate after the concert, which they probably did anyway and I have no delusions about this. I went to the concert at Death Valley, which is Clemson's football field. It was a pretty awesome venue to see a concert I have to admit. It was packed and they even opened up with Hotel California, did an acoustic set (or a few songs) and generally felt like they were the opposite of the band they are live...which is a band that tends to robotically play every note, instrument, and song as if it were programmed six months earlier. You know, like all the moves had been memorized so long ago they were second nature.

The Shins (2008)- I was very, very surprised how much I enjoyed this concert. I like the Shins, but my girlfriend (now wife) liked them more than I did prior to the show. This was one of those concerts that made me like a band more. I wasn't sure how the sound from the album would translate to the stage, but it did, and it translated well. I also didn't realize how many multi-instrumentalists there were in the band. "Kissing the Lipless" was the opener and it worked really well with the band behind a curtain until the rest of the band started playing a 1/4 of the way through the song when the curtain dropped. A pleasantly surprising concert.

Boston (1997)- There is a 56% chance I moved this concert up in the rankings because I spent almost half of the concert with a drunk middle-aged man talking to me like I was his brother. He thought I, a 17 year old at the time, was his brother and was joking around and talking to me like we were old family members who could recall stories together. It was very, very amusing...except when he put his sweaty arm around me of course. The band, who is of course old and not really selling a ton of records, was excellent in concert. They played all their hits and even some album cuts that weren't considered hits. Brad Delp, who has since died (see, they were old...though his death was a suicide), could still hit high notes and the band really sounded good. I did not win any cool points for going to the concert and I will win fewer cool points saying it was a great concert. There is something to be said for an energetic concert where the musicianship of the band is as impressive as the songs being performed.

R.E.M. (1995)- This was my first ever concert. I saw them on the ill-fated "Monster" tour where everybody in the band except the guitarist had major surgery or almost died. But I saw them BEFORE they all got sick, which was very fortunate. I'm glad I saw them after they put out their "rock" album, because it made the experience even better knowing there wouldn't be an entirely acoustic set. Not that I wouldn't want to hear an acoustic set. What was a little confusing at the time is how they played songs off "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" before the album was released. They were on tour to support one new album and ended up playing 3-4 songs off an album that would be released a year later. I'm not sure that R.E.M. ever got their due as a live act. It may be because in the small window where they were huge stars they didn't tour and when they did tour they almost died. So there is a small window where they were a huge act and got to play large concerts while touring behind a loud album. I got to see one of those concerts. I feel fortunate about that. Prior to this "Monster" tour they were a smaller band or a college band, and after the tour, they generally played behind albums that were a little bit on the slower, moodier side. They are really good live.

Bruce Springsteen (1999)- It's not a cliche at all that he is good in concert. This was an absolutely amazing show. It helps I'm a big Springsteen fan and knew all the songs, but he does a great job of setting a mood for a certain song and generally putting on a show. I remember moving seats so I could be more to the front and the crowd going crazy when he played "Badlands." Even the songs I could go without "Land of Hopes and Dreams" and "41 Shots" were great performances. This is the tour after the band got back together and seemed to combine Bruce not being too old and the band being excited to play together again. Fantastic show and it will be hard to top this experience.

A Brutal Review of a Van Halen Show

I went to go see Van Halen when they came to Charlotte in 1998. That was when Gary Cherone was the lead singer. They opened with "Unchained" and it didn't get much better from there. When I'm asked to name the worst concert I have ever been to then I usually name this concert. This is something coming from a person who attended a Doobie Brothers and Chicago combined concert in the late 90's. "Detached" would be a polite way of describing the attitude from the band that night. I was about done when I realized there were synthesizer sounds coming from the stage and there was no one actually playing the synthesizer. It's not like Van Halen are poor, they can afford a touring keyboard player I'm sure. They just chose not to hire one, because why the fuck would they do that? This isn't the first time Van Halen played backup music in concert, including one time here in Greensboro. 

Right now, David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen hate each other. It's not a big deal because it has been quite a few years since Van Halen was a band, instead of a group of musicians who choose to play together in front of fans for money. They turned the corner from a band to a group of musicians who play music in front of their fans for money around the mid-90's, right after they fired Sammy Hagar, but not really, then decided they may want David Lee Roth back, but not really, but here is Gary Cherone, and then really who gives a shit let's just tour with David Lee Roth, but after we briefly get back together with Sammy Hagar. Now the band has again chosen David Lee Roth as their lead singer. The fans want David Lee Roth? They get him, they just don't get much else when they see Van Halen in concert. So here is a review of Van Halen at Red Rocks and it's brutal, but funny. 

Roth isn't a good vocalist, there's no doubt about that. Isolate his vocals and it makes you gain respect for his ability to put on a show and then wonder why he sounds so odd at times. So it's not surprising that his vocals didn't age well. He wasn't ever going to be Freddie Mercury. If a band hates each other and goes on tour to line their pockets or give fans a chance to see them, at least put on a good performance. 

The pioneering blues metal band Van Halen – anchored by the mighty Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex – once bridged the gap between pop and metal. They defined a sound. Today, they remain as loud as ever, but their tired rock has reached its sell-by date.

I thought back in 1998 the band sounded tired in concert. I can't imagine how they sound now without Michael Anthony. And yes, Wolfgang Van Halen gets by well in this review, but I have no interest in seeing a person who wasn't born when David Lee Roth left the band originally performing on stage. Even if his last name is Van Halen too.

Even with a stellar setlist that included hits, deep cuts and some of the pioneering band’s most compelling riffs, the show fell spectacularly flat on Monday.

This reminds me, the first thing Gary Cherone did on stage when I saw the band in 1998 was do the "devil horns" thing that Elaine used to do on "Seinfeld." Maybe it felt like a "rock" thing to do. I don't know where the fuck Van Halen finds these guys. Well, they find them in other rock bands like Extreme...

If there was any star, it was Eddie’s 24-year-old son, Wolfgang, whose dynamic bass built a rich backdrop for his dad’s expressive guitar.

Maybe Eddie Van Halen is having the rest of the band perform shittily so his son looks better?

But Roth’s struggle eclipsed all moments of glory. If the consummate showman is troubled by blown lyrics and missed notes, he very likely spiraled into a deep funk late Monday. But Diamond Dave, who rotated through a rainbow of sparkling outfits at Red Rocks, has always been more flash than substance. With his fresh Japanese tattoos peeking from beneath his sleeveless vest, the 60-year-old did his best Jazzercise kicks all night while gasping and chanting every third word.

I love everything about this paragraph.

1. The knock against Roth for blowing lyrics (lyrics? How the hell can you blow Van Halen lyrics? It's not like they write 10 verses like Bob Dylan) and missing notes. 

2. The mention of Roth's sparkling outfits. He's the Madonna of rock. Wardrobe change!

3. "fresh Japanese tattoos..." Making it sound like Roth gets tattoos in order to seem younger.

4. "Jazzercise kicks..." But they are, they are Jazzercise kicks.

“Running … pant … devil … pant … whaaah!”

At least he sang the chorus. If you listen to the isolated vocal take he only sang the chorus as part of the background vocals on the album version of the song.

In one of the strangest moments ever for Red Rocks, Roth strummed an acoustic slide and blasted into a harmonica as he relayed the boring details from a decades-ago night with Ozzy Osbourne.

And now the drunken party boy who wants to act like he just came fresh off the beach to sing a few songs, Sammy Hagar, doesn't sound so bad does he? He may hawk some tequila, but at least he's not relaying stories about hanging out with one of the Nelson twins after a show one night.

Like him or not, it seems implausible that Roth can make it another 30-plus shows to Van Halen’s end-of-tour homecoming at L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl in October. 

Brutal. I swore off Van Halen after the 1998 show, so I feel very bad for those who are duped into buying tickets on this tour. It may not be so bad at times, but it seems like you gotta catch Roth on a good night.

While he never dropped his gape-mouth grin, Roth could not hide the fact that his voice is shattered after the tour’s first eight shows.

Given the fact Van Halen doesn't use that many different instruments on a song in the studio and didn't want to waste their time hiring a keyboardist a few tours ago, it wouldn't surprise me if they just had Roth's vocals dubbed in and he stood up on stage and pranced around for the entire show. They get paid either way, right?

And yes, when I saw Van Halen in '98 the piano intro to "Right Now" was played while the band just stood there on stage. There was a piano playing, but clearly no one was playing it.

Maybe it’s time to take a page from the Journey playbook and start trolling Manila nightclubs for a singer who can hit those sustained notes. 

(The reviewer drops the mic and walks away)

It's not that this is a funny comment, but Van Halen is currently touring with a lead singer the guitarist admits he doesn't like and who doesn't like him. The comment is funny because this would be something the band would do, because after all, why play with a guy who can't hit the notes and they hate when they could put some puppet strings on a complete stranger and have him sing karaoke on stage? It's not out of the realm that Van Halen would do this, so it's funny in a "Shit, they may do that in the future" type of way.

Eddie, graying a bit and casual in jeans and sneakers, joined his son in rescuing the spluttering Roth many a time, offering strong harmonies on every song, including rock-solid vocal arcs inside “Beautiful Girls” and “Ain’t Talking About Love.”

I'm betting $100 these vocals were supported by some form of background dubbing as well. If they will dub instruments in, why not dub a few vocals too? Plus, I'm supposed to believe a 60-year old guy who has had a third of tongue removed is throwing around some strong harmonies on stage? Not so sure about that one.

Touring in support of their first-ever live album with Roth – “Toyko Dome Live in Concert” – the band stormed through 25 songs in about two-and-a-half hours. 

Absent a reunion tour with a reunion album behind it, the idea of touring behind a live album always makes me chuckle. It's the lowest form of collecting cash by touring behind an album that is a recording of a previous tour. And yes, I attended the Rolling Stones "No Security" tour and don't regret it. I knew it was a cheap way to tour, but wanted to see the Stones. I have no regrets, but do recognize the whole "touring behind a live album" is the quickest and most effective way to do as little work as possible and separate a fool from his money.

The crowd thinned considerably about halfway through the show.

The reviewer didn't put a "thinning hair" joke in here. I wish he had. Such a missed opportunity.

Eddie and his older brother Alex on drums make an all-time team. Adding the younger Wolfgang has created an even more vibrant dynamic. The Van Halen family vibe was buoyed by Eddie’s apparent high spirits. He’s obviously stoked to be playing with his son and brother. Eddie roamed the stage on Monday, joining his brother on the sculpted steel drum platform and laughing with his old pal Roth. Those days of alcohol-fueled acrimony between Eddie and Roth seem distant.

Except for the part where they don't like each other.

If there were any fiery moments, they came late in the show with Eddie’s turbulent licks in Unchained” and their unique – yet straight off the album – take on the Kinks’ bluesy “You Really Got Me.” Roth played the drum major on the closer “Panama” twirling his mic stand like a baton and leaping maniacally in the encore “Jump.”

Probably doing Jazzercise kicks.

The lesson here is that if you plan on seeing a band in concert, try to decide if you just want to see that band play live or you actually expect that band to sound good live. I learned my lesson concerning Van Halen quite a few years ago. Maybe they were just having a bad night, but they were the worst band I have seen in concert and I have seen Kevin Bacon's band in concert. They were really good actually. One wouldn't think The Bacon Brothers would be better than Van Halen.

Best and Worst R.E.M. Albums

I find R.E.M.'s discography to be fascinating. It's most likely because I have really liked their music for most of my life, but their discography is very interesting to me. It's full of experimentation, whether it be ideas that really worked or ideas that didn't work at all, and through this experimentation they still maintained the "R.E.M. sound." What makes their changes in sound most interesting is they were always a working band. They longest they went between albums releases was four years, between "Around the Sun" and "Accelerate," and in a span of seven years released five albums (this was at their peak by the way...when they could have toured and counted their money instead of making new music) that went from pop-rock, acoustic-rock, grunge, a road album, and finally their attempt at being Radiohead. It's a bi-polar discography, especially considering they spent most of the 80's as the typical college band that made it big.

It's a cliche to say they spent most of their career going against the grain. It's also not true, but they were making jangle rock in the 80's when hair band music was popular and spent part of the 90's pulling what I call the "Rolling Stones fuck you we can do what you do better than how you do it" move. What I mean by that is the Stones (in my opinion) had a habit of taking a popular form of music during an era and putting out an album that shows they can do that music better. The Stones put our "Some Girls" which was an obvious answer to disco and the sort of New York punk rock at the time, they answered the country rock trend in the late 1960's/early 1970's with a string of four albums that were as good as anything "real" country rock bands put out, and of course there was the "Satanic Majesties Request" album which wasn't that great and was a friendly answer to the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's..."

R.E.M. was sort of drifting and doing their own thing with "Out of Time" and "Automatic for the People" when the grunge phenomenon hit. They decided it was time to put out their rock album they had promised for years and showed they could do grunge pretty well too. They then tried to combine their early 90's sound with the grunge sound on the next album to mixed results. Then in 1998 after their drummer, Bill Berry, left the band they decided they would do some electronic-sounding music like Radiohead was putting out at the time and I fell asleep so I'm not sure how that ended up (I'm kidding). It was pretty fucking dreary. So in a nutshell this is what makes R.E.M.'s discography so interesting to me, that they spent part of their career chasing what was popular in mainstream, another part going away from what was popular, but started out creating a sound that would become popular in the mainstream. Any time I listen to early Strokes albums I feel like I can hear the R.E.M. influence in the way the guitar sounds and how the vocals are unintelligible.

So I figured because R.E.M.'s discography was so interesting and varied I would rank the albums. #1 was the easiest one for me. It's one of my "desert island" albums. The rest weren't so easy because some albums had really high peaks with filler and other albums had fewer high peaks but less filler. That's probably true for nearly every album I guess. So here goes. I'm going in reverse order until I get to the R.E.M. album I consider to be #1. I rank these albums essentially in order of which albums I would most want to hear from the first to the last track. How good is the album as a whole if I am tied to a chair and forced to listen to the whole thing? That's how I rank them. It's all relative too. A low-ranked R.E.M. album is better than some other bands' high-ranked album.

These Albums Just Aren't Good

15. Around the Sun

Oh, this album. It's easy to tell in retrospect when a band's album is probably the worst. When band members are like, "Oh yeah, we almost broke up after making that album" or "We specifically made further albums before breaking up to prove that we were better than this album." Those were paraphrased quotes from R.E.M. members about "Around the Sun." Oh, and Peter Buck (the guitarist) said "it wasn't listenable" and they were "bored with the material." That's the material THEY WROTE by the way. So yes, this album deserves to be in the very bottom of any R.E.M. album list based on these quotes alone. Unfortunately, the music backs up these quotes.

I think the song titles on this album are a meta-criticism of the music they were making. Some of the song titles are Make it All Ok, The Final Straw, I Wanted to be Wrong, Boy in the Well, High Speed Train, and the Worst Joke Ever.

If those titles aren't the sign of a band crying out for help then I don't know what titles would be. To be fair, Leaving New York and Electron Blue are decent songs, but this album just isn't very good overall. It's a slog, it's slow and the song writing isn't as crisp as any other album in their catalog. It's the typical late-career album where a band simply is mailing it in. There's very little crispness and fight in the songs, which aren't characteristic of an R.E.M. album and probably is a reason why their next album came out with songs that are fast and punch hard immediately. I would like to talk more in-depth about this album but there's really not much to say. It's a drag and if anyone starts their R.E.M. collection with this album then they will never understand what's great about the band. It's like handing a copy of "Undercover" to someone who wants to hear a Rolling Stones album or give someone looking to get into Bon Jovi a copy of any album they have made in the last 20 years.

(Though as an aside, I almost always recommend a certain band's second-best album to those looking to get into that band. I learned that lesson from buying a band's best album and then buying their other albums only to be disappointed the other albums don't measure up to that one. If you recommend a band's second-best album then it's still good, but there is somewhere to go but up from there...speaking of "Up")

14. Up

It's interesting this album is called "Up" since it's the first R.E.M. album that really was "down." What I mean by that (and not just being cutesy) is this is the first R.E.M. album without Bill Berry and the first album that consists of slower songs which tend to meander. This album isn't bad, but it's clearly the sign of a band that is lost. They tried to be Radiohead and use some more electronica in their sound. They even hired Radiohead's producer to work on the album. The problem is Radiohead may not always play upbeat music but playing weird electronica isn't what R.E.M. does well. What comes off as creative when done by Radiohead comes off as meandering and aimless when done by R.E.M. It's not a criticism of them, because if Radiohead tried to do jangle pop or an album of mostly acoustic tunes I don't believe they could pull it off.

What's most frustrating about "Up" is even the good songs on the album sound like R.E.M. trying to sound like someone else. Daysleeper is a mid-tempo song that sounds like R.E.M. doing a cover of an R.E.M. song, At My Most Beautiful is a rip-off of a Beach Boys song and sound without adding anything that makes it sound like R.E.M., while Lotus again sounds like an outtake from "Monster." The amount of aimlessness on this album is astounding and I chalk it up completely to Bill Berry's absence. R.E.M. always had a very collaborative approach to music and without a permanent drummer it seems the urge to let the songs wander overcame them. Songs 6-14 consist entirely of wandering music that doesn't seem to know when to end. One of my favorites on the album, Why Not Smile, would have been perfect as a sub-3:00 minute melancholy tune, but instead has a fade out that lasts for almost a minute and a half.

It's like the band decided there's really no need for instrumentation and they would just let Michael Stipe's voice carry them. No offense to Stipe, but he's a great vocalist in the concept of a band (which is why I give him total credit for never going solo...he gets that he's great because the people behind him are great and he can't carry a band by himself, which is a lesson Richard Ashcroft had to learn the hard way) and a focus on his vocals helps the listener recognize the lyrics aren't always strong and focused. It's amazing how a little instrumentation can make average vocals sound better (see: Van Halen during the David Lee Roth era) and while Stipe is certainly not a weak vocalist or songwriter, an entire album of his thoughts without a strong melody starts to call out his weaknesses as a songwriter.

The Highlights Don't Overshadow the Lowlights

13. Green

I recognize the next three albums probably are people's favorite albums or there is a belief they should not be ranked so low. It's just how I feel. I like "Green." I really do. There is some strong material on here that looks great on a Greatest Hits album or stands alone as a single. It's just taken as a whole, there is a lot of filler, and put all together the album isn't as strong as some of the individual highlights. It's difficult to explain. I like many of these songs individually, but when put together they sound very fluffy and meaningless, which isn't something a strong R.E.M. album should sound like. I think this record was intended as a reaction to the more political and focused "Document." Except, this album was political too. It's a weird dichotomy to go from light pop ditties to songs about war and Agent Orange. 

Three of the first four songs are the simple pop ditties that I enjoy, but are also the reason I wouldn't consider this to be a great album. Stand, Get Up, and Pop Song '89 are good tunes but not the sort of tune I want to hear followed by a few more political songs. It was like the band was saying, "Hey, we are political but we can be fun too!" and they never quite got the combination right. This was their first major label release so I'm sure Warner Brothers probably didn't get a hard-on for a bunch of songs about war and vague-sounding critics of politicians. They wanted "It's the End of the World As We Know It" because that's a fun fucking song. Do that again! So they did try. But being a band that likes to control their own destiny they also put World Leader Pretend, Orange Crush, and Turn You Inside-Out on the album as well.

The highlights of this album, which I consider to be 7 of the 11 tracks, should overshadow the lowlights and move this album up in my rankings, but they don't flow for me. The album was originally going to be a side of harder material and a side of softer material (this plan was thrown out) and what resulted was an album where it wasn't entirely clear what the band wanted to be. The second side of the album is a great example of this problem and that's where most of the filler from this album comes from. The first side doesn't flow well for me and the second side is filled with filler. Maybe better sequencing would have corrected this (for example, I've always hated Orange Crush being the 7th track, it seems the track was buried there in order to prevent listeners from just rewinding the first side constantly), but the individual tracks don't make a great album.

12. Out of Time

I have an incredibly difficult time being impartial about "Out of Time." It sold over 18 million copies, so clearly someone liked it, but it absolutely drives me crazy. The entire album does. You can tell by now I don't like R.E.M. albums without a central theme, but "Out of Time" is the worst of the worst and the only reason it's ranked above "Green" is because the best tracks on this album are some of the best stuff the band has ever written, even though there is less of it. This album was R.E.M.'s attempt to be a strong pop band and it worked. There are five songs on this album that would have fit in perfectly with "Automatic for the People" and are indicative of the band's strengths and then there is stuff like Radio Song, Shiny Happy People, Me in Honey, Low, and Endgame that I consider to be pretty much shit songs that only serve to get the band on the radio and speak to the lowest common denominator.

Then there is Losing My Religion, Country Feedback, Near Wild Heaven, Texarkana, and Half a World Away that are some of the best songs that the band has ever written. Tracks 8-10 (Half a World Away, Texarkana, and Country Feedback) are one of the strongest three song stretches in the band's catalog and sets up the band for their (spoiler alert) masterpiece album that came out a year later. It's good music and highlights the band's ability to create atmosphere in a song. Not coincidentally, two of the tracks on this album are sung by the underrated Mike Mills and he does a bang-up job with both of them. The highs on this album are really high, but there is some junk to be waded through in order to get there.

The line that begins Half a World, "This could be saddest dusk I've ever seen, turn to marigold..." and the ad-libbing of Country Feedback where Stipe ends up repeating "It's crazy what you could've had, I need this..." over and over just can't make up for the pop crap of Shiny Happy People and Radio Song (which is probably why some people bought the album). "Out of Time" is a great example of how the best music doesn't necessarily mean album sales. If someone started an R.E.M. collection with this album it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I have a feeling after some time the bloom would be off this rose.

11. Fables of the Reconstruction

This was the second R.E.M. album I ever purchased. I still don't think I completely get this album. It's not bad, there's just not a lot of great songs on the album and there is an overall feeling of drab to the album. It's definitely a more experimental album for them and was probably worth recording simply so the band could start to test the limits of their sound. Feeling Gravity's Pull is a slow, weird way to start off the album. It's not a death-knell to start an album off with a slow song, but it's almost five minutes long and doesn't feel like it necessarily goes anywhere.

The middle portion of the album like Drive 8, Life and How to Live It, Green Grow the Rushes Grow, and Can't Get There From Here are the highlight of the album. Again, this is a grading scale that acknowledges this is basically R.E.M. albums being compared to each other. It seems like there are 4-5 really good songs on the album and the rest are just album filler that aren't some of my favorite tracks. The energy wasn't quite there on this album and this may be due to the increased use of different instruments not melding well with the band's sound. It could also be "the difficult third album" effect where bands want to do something different on a third album and aren't quite sure exactly how to take their sound in a different direction.

There is a dark tone to this album that I'm not sure the band was entirely able to work into the confines of their current sound. They did a much better job on the next album and on future albums in taking a different sound and trying to put together a group of songs that aren't loud, but aren't dreary.

The Album That's Not Overly Bad, Just Hard to Get Through

10. New Adventures in HiFi

This album frustrates the shit out of me. It's a long album at almost 66 minutes and seems to be the band's attempt at a "road record." The problem is it's a road record that stays around too long and has a tremendous amount of filler on it. Unlike Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" where he seemed inspired by being on the road, R.E.M. seems just tired and the songs reflect it. Of course they had just gotten off the "Monster" tour (where I saw them in Charlotte) and everybody in the band seemed to have gotten sick at one point or another, so there's a good chance they were tired. It's not good to put out a road album where the songs seem weary from the road trip and the songs become a slog due to this.

There's a lot being juggled on this album. The songs are a step back from the reverb-feedback sounding "Monster," but still contains the basic sound on some tracks, while also trying to get some of the mellow vibe the band had on "Automatic for the People," all while writing a road album. It's too much. So what results is an album of good songs, but it runs out of steam and even the good songs hang around too much. I love E-bow the Letter but does it have to be over 5 minutes long? The synthesizer effect on Leave is great, but 7 minutes of it isn't so great. New Test Leper has Michael Stipe singing in an octave below his normal voice (either that or he is really, really tired...and he sounds really, really tired) but it goes long as well. It does have a good organ part.

This would have been a much better album if the tracks were cut down into a real road album and the sequencing were changed. Here's the track listing I would have chosen for this album:

1. Leave (cut it down to below 7 minutes)
2. New Test Leper (cut it down)
3. Wake Up Bomb
4. E-Bow the Letter (again, cut it down a bit)
5. Bittersweet Me
6. How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us
7. Departure
8. Be Mine
9. So Fast, So Numb
10. Electrolite

It's shorter and even if the songs aren't cut down the album won't be such a drag to get through. I thought Leave would have been a great way to start the album and Electrolite is a great way to end the album. It's just there is too much mediocre music that takes too much time to listen to. It's just not a fun album to go all the way through.

9. Collapse Into Now

This was the band's last album and it's not a good thing and it's not a bad thing. They went out like a lot of bands probably would like to go out, on an album that wasn't terrible to where it messed up their legacy, but also wasn't such a great album they felt the need to prove they are still on the top of their game. The band knew they were going to break up and made this album with the full knowledge this would be the last time they cut an album of new material together. Of course this album got all the typical reviews that contain quotes like, "Not their best, but they still have life" and "It's not Album X, but it's certainly really good." It seems all older bands get those medium-type reviews that don't bash the new album, while also acknowledging it's not as good as the old material.

If anything, this is a good album that only serves to remind the listener that there isn't a great track on the album. Therefore, it's hard for me to listen to the album despite the fact it's a consistently good album. You know how on certain albums there is a song or two (or three...or four...) you can't wait to hear? Well, this album lacks a song like that. So it's an album of really good music (Discoverer, All the Best, It Happened Today, and Mine Smell Like Honey) and the band still has an edge to it lacking from much of the late 90's and early 2000's material, it's still just an album of pretty good songs. It sounds crazy to write, since I put this as the 9th best album, but there are really no bad songs on this album. There's nothing shockingly embarrassing like "Out of Time" has, but there are also no great songs in the form of Electrolite. These songs if put on an album with any of the albums ranked above it would just be good songs on a good album.

So that's why I say it's hard to get through this album. It's good enough to listen to, not so bad you want to turn it off, but it mostly reminds you that R.E.M. still makes good music. Unfortunately, I don't see any great music on this album and that is the problem. An entire album of good, listenable music isn't a great album in this case.

The Ironically Titled Album

8. Accelerate

This was a "return to form" album for R.E.M. They had just made "Around the Sun," which was embarrassingly bad. They were getting older and probably didn't want to get into the "Dylan in the 80's" period of the band's career where they sold records off a good single or two and the brand name of the band. Plus, Michael Stipe is really liberal and George W. Bush was good for more liberal, political-minded songwriters to use for a muse. This was an exciting album at the time because it was the sign of the band being aggressive, loud and alive again. Seven years later some of that perspective is lost because "Around the Sun" is now a decade old and R.E.M. is broken up.

The album title is ironic because this album accelerates out of the game strongly with six really good songs in a row that have Mike Mills on background vocals and Michael Stipe spitting out lyrics from the outset of the album. It only slows down a little at the beginning of Hollow Man and then the pace picks up again. It's good, strong material, especially the first track Living Well is the Best Revenge, where towards the end of the song it seems Mike Mills' background vocals are simply trying to keep up with the pace of the song. Then Until the Day is Done begins and the rest of the album slows down and isn't as strong. It accelerated out of gate and then slows down into filler and songs that aren't as strong. This album is like a runner who is running a 10K who spends all of his energy on getting the lead in the first four miles and has no energy left to stay in the lead until the end.

There is a song called Sing for the Submarine which refers to a song from Around the Sun, Electron Blue. Why? I'm not sure. Then the album closes out with a song that, for me, is another silly song that I thought the band wouldn't record at this point in their career, I'm Gonna DJ. This song contains the lyrics:

"Death is pretty final,
I'm collecting vinyl,
'Cause if heaven does exist with a kicking playlist,
I don't want to miss it at the end of the world."

and then "I'm gonna DJ at the end of the world" is repeated over and over again. It's just not a great track. This is an album that proves R.E.M. can still write good music, but there's always some filler on their albums. If this were a seven track CD then there wouldn't be a weak track, but the way the album slows down after track 6 is very disconcerting.

The Highlights Do Overshadow the Lowlights

7. Document

When I was younger, I did not understand the politics behind this album. It's pretty damn political all the way through. They managed to include horns and a synthesizer on a song or two. I partly think this album came out of their attempts to vary their sound a bit more on "Fables of the Reconstruction" except they were a little more upbeat this time and the songwriting was much stronger. It's a more inspired album, mostly because the band was pissed off at Ronald Reagan (see? Republican presidents are good for songwriting) and the direction he was taking the country.

I tend to blame It's the End of the World World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine) for a lot of the later cutesy-songs the band tried to write. I'm probably off-base, but I feel like that song being a hit is responsible for side 1 of "Green" and the crap that is on parts of "Out of Time." This album has six classic R.E.M. songs on it, including the love song that is not at all a love song The One I Love. It's a song about using another person so I'm pretty sure the title is to be taken ironically and not literally.

The album starts off with three political songs that are only political if you pay attention to the lyrics, and since this is R.E.M., you probably are avoiding the lyrics a little bit since sometimes they are gibberish. Not so in this case. There is also one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, even though I have no idea what it's about, King of Birds, on the second side of the album. It's a very good album that takes a certain mood to listen to. If you want to hear R.E.M. at their kindest and most romantic then this is not the album to do so. It's more angry and jaded than anything else, though that's the brilliance of the band. It's angry and jaded but the music sounds happy and not angry at all. The lyrics are a different story of course.

On a different tangent, since I'm a person who has different moods then it makes sense R.E.M. has albums that can fit those moods. Sometimes I'm in the mood for jangle-pop and can put "Reckoning," "Murmur," "Lifes Rich Pageant." If I'm angry I put on "Accelerate" and "Document." If I want to annoy myself with what could have been I combine "Green" and "Out of Time" into one album without the crappy songs. If I want to hear more introspective and atmospheric songs then "Up," "Fables of the Reconstruction," "Automatic for the People," and "Reveal." If I want to fall asleep, I listen to "Around the Sun." Speaking of "Reveal..."

6. Reveal

This album deserves to be in the Hall of Very Good, but I recognize I'm biased because I love this album so much. There is some not-good material on here, so I have to place it at #6 and out of the "Hall of Very Good." On a day when I'm ready to hear the album, it's a top-3 album for me. It's moody, introspective and has a couple tributes to the Beach Boys on it. It's a really good album, though it's also not a very loud album. Sometimes it's hard to believe this album was made four years after "Monster."

"Reveal" has what I would consider to be the quintessential R.E.M. song on it in the form of Imitation of Life. I know, it sounds like high praise and it is. This song has all the attributes of a great R.E.M. song all packed into one.

1. Jangle-sounding guitar

2. Non-sensical lyrics

3. Mike Mills on background vocals where you can actually hear him

4. A chorus that sticks in your head and won't leave

5. A song title that just sounds interesting

6. Lyrics that may actually be nonsense or may actually be deep...who the fuck knows? Take it how you want.

My favorite song on this album is I've Been High. It's just a beautiful song (again, the meaning of it...I'm not sure, so take it how you want and I do take it how I want) about a person who wants to live their life "on high" but seems to be missing those things he wants and has seemingly tried too hard to get someone to believe in him.

do my eyes
do my eyes seem empty?
I've forgotten how this feels.

I've been high
I've climbed so high
but life sometimes
it washes over me...


was I wrong?
I don't know, don't answer.
I just needed to believe.

I've been high
I've climbed so high
but life sometimes
it washes over me...

close my eyes so I can see
make my make believe believe
in me

This song is seemingly the type of song that the band was trying to make on "Up," except this song is straight to the point in under three-and-a-half minutes. I'm a sucker for introspection and this album has a lot of that, as well as All the Way to Reno, which is another really great jangle-pop song. There's also The Lifting, She Just Wants to Be, Summer Turns to High, (the total Beach Boy tribute) Beachball, and I'll Take the Rain, which is basically a song where the narrator says if this is happiness he is experiencing with a person then he'll take the rain on his own (again, how I take it). It's not the most upbeat album, but on a given day I would put it up against nearly any other album in their catalog based on the great songs on the album. 

The Hall of Very Good

5. Lifes Rich Pageant

I consider this to be a sort of transition album for R.E.M. It's got one foot stuck in the college rock they did so well (Fall on Me, Hyena), while also previewing the harder rock that can be found on "Document" and "Green" (Begin the Begin, These Days), while also previewing some of the more pop-oriented jangle-rock and acoustic numbers they would record in the early 90's (Superman, and Swan Swan H). There are some really great individual songs on this album.

This is just a personal opinion, but it just doesn't add up to a great album for me. I can't really describe it too well, and it's still a very good album. It lacks cohesion for me. They are all really good songs, but it feels scattershot when listened to all together. Maybe it's that the album has a foot in several different sounds R.E.M. had over the years, because the album would have sounded great in 1986, but I hear the songs and think, "Well they did that song better on 'Monster' or I prefer the acoustic sounds of 'Out of Time' better." It's an album of really good songs, but they are all sort of really good songs, not exceptionally great songs throughout the album. Therefore I can't really rate it as a masterpiece.

4. Monster

I can't ever forget the first time I heard What's the Frequency Kenneth? on MTV. I was in love with R.E.M. at that point and was really excited to hear their new album which promised rock songs. The second I saw the video and heard the song I knew I was buying the album (which I probably would have done even if I didn't hear the song). Ready for a contradiction? This album is TOO cohesive for me. R.E.M. promised a rock album and they delivered a rock album with a ton of reverb, very little acoustic guitar, and loud sounds. It's great, but it's also very consciously a glam-rock album.

I have mentioned how one of R.E.M.'s strengths is they can play different types of music and do it well while making that sound their own. They did that here too. It lacks the masterpiece status for me because some of the songs go on too long (which was intentional by the band) and the songwriting just isn't strong enough to justify it being a masterpiece. It's got a great front side and one of my favorite R.E.M. songs in Strange Currencies, but the second half tends to go too falsetto and ramble at times. Tongue, You, and even I Took Your Name aren't my favorite songs by the band. It's a very conscious record in that they know they aren't sounding like R.E.M. and it only shows on a few tracks. Tracks where it is clear Michael Stipe is doing things vocally he hasn't normally done and the reverb gets to be too much for me. It's those moments when I notice it's R.E.M. trying not to sound like R.E.M. more than it is R.E.M. expanding their sound. Still, I think "Monster" is a great album overall.

The Masterpieces

3. Murmur

2. Reckoning

I hate to package these two albums together, but I consider them to be the same kind of album. Like "Van Halen I and II," Boston's self-titled album and "Don't Look Back," and a lot of Dave Matthews Band's early output "Reckoning" and "Murmur" are different in packaging and name only. Each of those bands added a different sound or instrument to a track or two or in order to have some diversity, but if you through their first two albums together it would be hard to figure out which songs came on which album. I rank "Reckoning" over "Murmur" only because the songs on "Reckoning" feel like a more grown-up and expanded version of what R.E.M. recorded on "Murmur." I love "Murmur" (obviously from the ranking of it as a masterpiece), but the songs are a little thinner-sounding compared to "Reckoning."

There isn't a bad song on either album really. "Murmur" is the typical debut album from a college band that doesn't have quite the big production and Stipe's vocals feel buried and completely unintelligible at times. It's not a bad thing at all, but "Reckoning" has slightly more diverse song-writing and sounds on it while still being an obvious sequel to "Murmur." It's an album where R.E.M. takes the sound of "Murmur" and expands on it with a more country sound on Don't Go Back to Rockville or going straight acoustic on Time After Time. It's a stronger album for me because the production is better, the songwriting is tighter and more focused, while the performances are also more streamlined and don't feel like it's simply really, really good college rock.

"Murmur" is the sound of a great college band changing the sound of music, while "Reckoning" is the sound of a band continuing to change the sound of music while also changing the band's sound in small ways just to see what they are capable of while keeping their own sound. This attempt to change went bad at times on "Fables of the Reconstruction" and they learned from that, but the attempt to grow while still keeping their signature sound is what makes "Reckoning" a better album in my mind.

The Best Masterpiece

1. Automatic for the People

This is a desert island disc for me. It can be a depressing album, so if I was stuck on a desert island then I would probably be pretty depressed and this would be an appropriate album, even if I didn't think it was R.E.M.'s best album, which I do. It probably has more filler than other R.E.M. albums, but the filler isn't bad and fits perfectly with the tone of the album. While I wouldn't choose New Orleans Instrumental No. 1, Monty Got a Raw Deal, Star Me Kitten, or Ignoreland as my favorite R.E.M. songs, they fit in perfectly with this album and how it was sequenced. The last two songs on that list (Star Me Kitten and Ignoreland) are on the back side of the album as a preview of the sound the band would pursue on "Monster" and break up the melancholy first side and the melancholy last couple of songs.

New Orleans Instrumental No. 1 fits in wonderfully after Everybody Hurts and before Sweetness Follows. It's an incredibly nice way to transition between the two songs. It's not a challenging or great instrumental, but it serves as a great outro to Everybody Hurts while also being a good intro to Sweetness Follows. Whereas Everybody Hurts is about holding on when times are tough, Sweetness Follows is about the same topic, but is just a little more jaded about it. Everybody Hurts says that life sucks and sometimes you just have to carry on (as anyone who has seen the video knows) and rarely has Michael Stipe been this pointed with his message in a song. Sweetness Follows is basically saying why continue carrying on with life when people you love will die and bad things happen? It's inspirational to just carry on while also being less uplifting than Everybody Hurts. My point is I think the instrumental breaks up the sort of sameness and downerness of these two songs.

So the sequencing is great to where the songs don't have to be the best to make sense in the context of the album. It's impeccably sequenced and the album ends with three of the best songs on the album. It's dark, hopeful, nostalgic, depressing, funny (The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight) and even political at times. It's a very cohesive album with death and reacting to death in some fashion dominating the album, but not being so dominating that it influences the listener's thoughts about the album.

Nightswimming is a favorite of a lot of people, but I think I prefer Find the River (which the opening notes sound like were nicked by Lisa Loeb on Stay) to Nightswimming. It's a song that even Michael Stipe has said is so personal to him that it probably doesn't carry the same meaning to everyone else, as well it being a song the band has struggled playing live. I have no idea what the song is about. It could be about death, it could be about taking chances in life because at some point it all ends (which is death) or it's just about taking life as it comes and not trying to speed up things. It's one of my favorites on the album, especially when he sings about "Nothing is going my way." It seems so random since a lot of the song is more flowery and poetic imagery, while this seems like a simple statement of frustration. It's tough to analyze it too much I guess.

I never get tired of "Automatic for the People." I think it's a perfect album. It's an acoustic album that doesn't feel soft and a depressing album that doesn't always feel depressing. That ends the overly-long list of my ranking the best and worst R.E.M. albums. For someone who doesn't love lists I sure do write a lot of them.

Thursday Random Music Review: Glenn Frey's Greatest Hits (Actually Called "Solo Collection")

I realize this could be seen as a random entry to start off as my first "real" post on this site. I don't fancy myself a real music reviewer or an expert on music at all. I do love music and will try to do a random album review every Thursday or so. The purpose is to review an album and probably mock/praise the artist a little bit. I prefer to review random albums without reviewing the newest album that just came out as if I know exactly what I talking about, because I don't necessarily. I always listen as a fan of music. So I am starting with Glenn Frey's Greatest Hits (or "Solo Collection" as he calls the album...just in case an Eagles fan picks up the album thinking they are going to get to hear "Take it Easy" for the 293,392 time doesn't get confused). Glenn Frey is a founder, rhythm guitarist and co-dictator of The Eagles, who are a group that is on the radio every five minutes, broke up the first time before I was born and many people seemingly hate because they are an example of corporate rock at its worst. This Solo Collection goes to 1995 and it encapsulates Frey's solo career perfectly. He did have a solo career that didn't include "Heat is On," which probably would shock some people.

I listened to the album sometimes pleasantly surprised, confused at times, cringing at times, and wondering what the hell is up with all of his saxophone use. Did he purchase a saxophone in 1981 and feel like he absolutely had to get his money out of it? For a guy who writes country-rock songs and made a shit-ton of money not using the saxophone, there is a lot of horn work going on in his solo career. You would think since he wrote/sang "Peaceful Easy Feeling," "Take It Easy," and "New Kid in Town," Frey would be spending most of his solo career trying to replicate that success. But fuck that, he apparently stumbled upon Cinemax at 1am one night after the Eagles broke up and decided he would add sensitive lyrics about love to the soundtrack of "Bikini Car Wash Company II." There is definitely some of that softcore porn sounding vibe in Frey's solo career. What makes a person who has a ton of money go against what has made him successful in his solo career? All he had to do was call J.D. Souther and write some country-rock songs and then have a decent solo career. This is the guy who had the idea for the piano and guitar bridge on "Against the Wind" in 1980 and wrote "Last in Love" (a fairly obscure country song) so I know he could have had a successful career just doing what he did best in the '70's if he wanted. Seriously, why all the saxophone? I'm vexed. Onto reviewing the album track-by-track.

1. This Way to Happiness

There are three ways an artist determines the tracking list of a greatest hits album that has new songs on it.

Options #1 and #2. If the songs are in chronological order of release then the artist puts the new songs at the very end or the very beginning of the album. This way makes it easier for these tracks to be skipped as the listener can just stop the CD or start the CD where she/he wants to. This method says, "These are new tracks, do with them what you will."

Option #3. If the songs are in a random order then the artist will put the new songs in random order on the album as well. This is done so the new songs are thrown in with the old songs to create whatever ambiance the artist wants to achieve. Sometimes this can be off-putting since you can go from a classic, great song to a completely new song the listener has never heard. The quality of the song can dip noticeably and show how the newer songs aren't very good.

Glenn Frey chose Option #2. He put all four new songs at the beginning of the album. It's sort of a risk for a guy who doesn't have an incredibly well-known greatest hits collection as it is. "This Way to Happiness" starts off with a saxophone blaring with some drums in the background. The saxophone would not feel out of place in the title credits to "Full House." In fact, I can almost see Bob Saget smiling into the camera as the song starts. Whatever happened to predictability? Glenn Frey killed it with a saxophone.

This song is notable in that it has a lot of saxophone and lyrics about a road, traveling on the road, and trying to find happiness. It's pretty clear Frey didn't put a ton of time into creating this track. He needed a faster track and his attempts to growl during the chorus seems to be his declaration of super-seriousness. The saxophone covers up for the lack of a hook. But dammit, did I find myself tapping my foot at one point? Yes. That probably says more about me than anything about the song.

2. Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed

There's no question mark at the end of this track name. So Frey knows who has been sleeping in his bed or he is a big Dr. Suess fan and there are Who's that have been sleeping in his bed. At this point I wouldn't rule out either option. His wife/girlfriend is cheating on him and acting suspicious. She "smells like Old Spice and whiskey," so clearly Frey is more of a Right Guard kind of guy who drinks beer.

This is another new song by the way and it has horns, but a guitar solo, and a bluesy feel. What's disturbing about this song is at the end of the song the singer books two rooms at a hospital (apparently in Glenn Frey's world you can book hospital rooms before an injury has occured...ah, the life of a millionaire) and says they will be reunited in the hospital. So the smell of Old Spice and whiskey has apparently caused Frey to beat the shit out of his wife/girlfriend. Not very admirable, even if he does find her to be a cheating hussy. If this song is really about Who's then Frey must be the Grinch.

3. Common Ground

This a new song that is all about being "up with people." We can make it together or we can lose apart. There's water and there needs to be a decision to cross the river or not. I'm guessing a boat isn't an option. Still they have to decide to cross the river or not. It's quite a burden and I would imagine these feelings are somewhat how George Washington felt before he crossed the Potomac River. I feel inspired, but not inspired enough to write anymore about this song. I prefer the song where he beats up people for cheating on him.

4. Call on Me

This is another new song. There was once a television show called "South of Sunset" and it aired one time on CBS. I mean it literally aired one time, like once, not twice. After that one airing it got canceled. The pilot was preempted for Malibu forest fires and then after that CBS decided they would rather show re-runs of the wild fires than another episode of "South of Sunset." Somewhere someone thought it would be a good idea for Glenn Frey to star in a television show. A real television show that people could watch or even possibly enjoy while watching. I'm assuming this person has since been long fired. "Call on Me" was the theme song to this television show. Basically if you need someone you can call on him. It was a show about a private detective so I'm sure the relevance of the song is lost outside of the show.

I've never seen "South of Sunset," but I've heard "Call on Me." It's a shame the forest fires didn't get to this song before the public could hear it.

5. The One You Love

So after four new songs, Frey comes out rocking----wait, check that, he puts his slowest hit that begins with a dreary saxophone playing as the fifth track. Why wouldn't he start with a slow song where he basically whispers the lyrics over a saxophone solo that would be rejected by even the most desperate of softcore porn producers. I knock the saxophone a lot, but it's really not all bad on this song. It's just Frey has a habit of writing songs with a saxophone solo where you imagine blue lighting and a young Pamela Anderson stepping onto the screen. I'm not turning into Bill Simmons, so if you listen to the track you will know what I mean...hopefully.

This lyrics to this song are actually really good. It's an interesting set of lyrics. As opposed to attempting to murder the girl that is thinking about cheating on him, Frey empathizes with her. She has to decide to stay with him (the guy who loves her) or go back to the one she loves (but he doesn't love her). I don't hate the song as it is if I'm being honest, except when I am cringing as the saxophone starts, but it is screaming for a re-do. I can imagine a stripped-down version of the song by a person who isn't Glenn Frey would make for a very interesting track to hear.

Back to the story situation presented in the song....seriously, what the hell do you do? Go back to the one you love who hates you (or as fans of "Burning Love" would say, "It's just Blaze being Blaze) or do you stay with the boring guy who doesn't like Old Spice and whiskey? This is much more serious than the question on whether to cross a river or not. I would go with Option C probably, whatever that may be. I am sure it has less saxophone involved.

6. Sexy Girl

Frey has a very attractive girl move in next door, show him the world (which I take to mean "drank whiskey with me and didn't cheat on me, so I didn't have to put her in the hospital"), and she is a very sexy girl. He sees her and it is like hearing his favorite song. It turns out at the end of the song she doesn't want to be with him, presumably because she wants to go back to the one she loves.

7. Smuggler's Blues

This is the video for this song by the way. It makes me laugh for some reason. Most likely because it was done in the 80's and 80's music videos have a tendency to make me laugh.

This song is not coincidentally given the same title as an episode of "Miami Vice" that Glenn Frey appeared in. I love corporate synergy. This is a different kind of song for Frey because he basically cautions us that drugs and guns are bad, but he also wants us to know we don't understand because we aren't him. So it serves as a warning to the listener, but the listener wouldn't understand because they don't have the smuggler's blues. It seems there is really no point in cautioning us. This is why you shouldn't look too deep into some songs, they don't make sense at times. The guitar part on this song was re-done later and called "Somebody" on the Eagles "Long Road Out of Eden" album. Okay, it wasn't re-done, but they are very similar guitar parts in my opinion.

This song is basically "The Heat is On" except it doesn't have quite the hook of that song and seems to play as a travelogue for the 1980's drug trade. The song will get in your head though, so be wary of it. I woke up one time in college at 4:30am after a long night out unable to get the song out of my head and it drove me crazy. I finally got to bed, but the fear of the song being stuck in my head at 4:30am lives on.

8. The Heat is On

This song shows the correct use of a saxophone. It is intended to compliment the hook of a song, not to BE the hook of a song. I think everybody knows this song. I was going to write that this song holds up really well in concert, but that would reveal I had been to a concert where I heard Glenn Frey play this song and that would be embarrassing.

I feel a lot of the reason Frey went away from his country-rock roots is because "Heartache Tonight" was such a hit for him and the Eagles. I feel like he tries to re-write that song throughout his solo career and it doesn't always work out for him. Bob Seger co-wrote "Heartache Tonight" during the period of his career when he was writing hit songs like it was nobody's business, you can't expect to repeat that success without him. Of course on this song Frey did repeat the success of "Heartache Tonight," but his other songs with a "harder" edge didn't always work out as well for him.

9. You Belong to the City

Again, this is a good use of the saxophone. It sets the tone of this song. Besides the fact this song turned into a pretty decent track for Jay-Z, it also represents Frey's voice at it's best. He likes to growl, but sometimes his growling comes out of nowhere and gets grating. He's not a very good singer really, but on this song he finds a way to make it work. I always call this song, along with "Smuggler's Blue" and "The Heat is On" the Miami Vice Trilogy because they seem at home as background music on the show. You can tell the tracks on this solo collection where Frey really gave a shit because it shows in how the song turned out. Those tracks where he seems to have cared are usually the better tracks.

10. True Love

In concert this song is dedicated to Al Green and Frey says he wrote it for Al Green. He probably should have just given him a watch instead. It's not a bad song by any measure and like most songs written by Glenn Frey it has a strong chorus. It gets repetitive at the end and Frey also includes...you will never guess...a long saxophone solo. I'm telling you, it is as if Frey is writing songs and using instruments that are the exact opposite of what made him originally popular. I'm surprised he didn't just do entire albums of him playing the accordion, backed by only a synthesizer and singing songs in Spanish. He may have been better off doing that on this song. It is a half-assed song, but of course it still works in a cheesy sort of way, which is really weird to me. It contains the lyrics,

"You lift me up, you make me strong,  you give me lovin' lasting all night long."

Those are some lyrics that Taylor Swift would cringe at writing and almost nothing makes Taylor Swift cringe when it comes to song writing. If you have accidentally stepped on Taylor Swift's toe at an awards show, she is writing a song about you and this song will contain very, very simple rhymes and lyrics taken right out of the diary of a 13 year old girl.

11. Soul Searchin' 

We are now entering the part of Glenn Frey's discography where he apparently took a look at Don Henley's solo career and decided, "You know, I can be preachy about social issues too." This song is basically "Common Ground" except it is directed towards a woman and not society as a whole, plus there is a choir...because no greatest hits is complete without the use of a choir on one track. In this song, Frey begs his wife/girlfriend to be true to him so he can be true to her. Was this a common problem for Frey in the 80's and 90's, having women cheat on him or have his interest in a woman go unrequited? I feel like his breakup pattern with a woman can be seen throughout this solo collection:

Sexy Girl: She's sexy, but doesn't really love him. This is Frey's attempt to be flattering.

The One You Love: She has to make a choice on who to be with, him or the other guy. This is the attempt to be empathetic.

Soul Searchin': She is sexy and won't make a decision, so Frey encourages her to do some soul searching with him to figure it all out. "River of Dreams" probably takes place at this point, but we haven't gotten to this track yet. This is an attempt to appeal to her sense of belonging with him.

Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed: She's sexy, doesn't know who she wants to be with, he lured her on his somewhat creepy river of dreams and souls have been searched. She's cheating on him and now it is time for the bitch to get roughed up a little bit. Book the hospital bed.

12. Part of Me, Part of You

This a good example of what I am talking about when I say Frey goes against what he does best. The lyrics to this song aren't anything special, but it is a country-rock song that really works for me. Sure, it was the theme to "Thelma and Louise" (which also contains violence to women...I'm sensing a pattern), he yell/growls on the chorus and there is another mention of a river, but this is what he does best. It's a mid-tempo track about two people separating for some reason but still being together in spirit. We assume one person is older and the other is younger. It's cheesy and a little bit stupid, but about the point where he says,

"We never know about tomorrow, still we have to choose which way to go,"

I'm starting to think about that line and get confused about why I am thinking about that line still.

Rather than writing about sexy girls, Frey should go for some introspection. He wrote "Tequila Sunrise," which for my money is one of the best songs to wake up to after a terrible hangover and listen to while feeling sorry for yourself over the things you don't remember you did the night before. "Tequila Sunrise" is soft and that's the key to a good hangover song, that the song doesn't make too much noise. Noise is bad for a hangover. So back to "Part of Me, Part of You... Frey then begins the last verse with more introspection that works for me also.

"Look at you, your whole life stands before you. Look at me and I am running out of time. Time has brought us here to share these moments, to look for something we may never find."

Then there is talk of a bridge to forever, which is structurally/logically impossible because you can't build a bridge across time, so dock him a few points for not being up on his science. So this is a song that works and makes me wonder why he didn't write a better song 10 years earlier similar to this one. Then I remember this entire song is supposed to be viewed in the context of "Thelma and Louise" and I start wondering why I over-think everything.

13. I Got Mine

The song starts off as a bad rip-off of "Money for Nothing" with a keyboard playing over some drums. Then when you think all is lost...guess what happens...just guess. You know the answer, so guess. You got it! A saxophone kicks in with some 90's sounding keyboards. It's back to singing about social issues. "I Got Mine" is about wealthy people who don't care about others because they "got theirs." It could very well be a song where Glenn Frey merely brags about how wealthy he is. He is the person who has "gotten his." This song wins the award for "Least Self-Conscious Song of All-Time" I almost want to re-print the pertinent non-self-conscious lyrics here and dissect them. You know what, let's do it.

Someone's sleeping on the sidewalk
As the winter sun goes down
Someone's drinking cold champagne
In another part of town

That's you, Glenn. You are drinking champagne on another side of town. Probably with a sexy girl.

Someone's wandering the streets tonight
No way to warm his hands
Someone's turning up their fireplace
Making travel plans

His mind is on some sandy beach
Where the sun is gonna shine
He thinks, "I don't have to hang around
Now that I've got mine"

That person on the sandy beach? Glenn Frey. See where this is heading? This is an entire song about how rich people don't care about others, except Frey has the balls to use the pronoun "they" in reference to these wealthy people as if he isn't shockingly and ridiculously wealthy himself. Tickets to an Eagles concert range from $125-$195 per ticket. But yes, it is other people who don't care about the little guy.

You see them in their limousines
You see the way they stare
But they don't see us looking back
Because they don't really care

"Them," "they," and "us" are the ones looking back. This has to be one of the least self-conscious songs of all-time. The only way I could see there being a less self-conscious song that displays more cognitive dissonance is if Snoop Dogg (I'm not calling him Snoop Lion) wrote an anti-marijuana song or Mick Jagger started writing songs about the dangers of premarital sex. A person who charges $195 for a ticket to see the same songs that have been played for 30-40 years now wrote a song about how "they" don't care about the little guy. He seemingly wrote this song with a straight face. And don't worry, all along the saxophone plays and all I can hear is "I'm wealthy," whenever it plays.

There's another kind of poverty
That only rich men know
A moral malnutrition
That starves their very souls

And they can't be saved by money
They're all running out of time
And all the while they're thinkin'
"It's okay 'cause I've got mine"

"A moral malnutrition," you mean like not allowing other members of the Eagles to have full ownership into the band or do you mean running the band as a co-dictator?

I'm probably being too hard on Frey. After all, he has displayed a lot of cognitive dissonance routinely throughout his career. In the 70's he forced Randy Meisner to hit the high notes on "Take It to the Limit," but now when the Eagles tour Frey sings that same song and completely forgoes hitting the higher notes. I guess its okay 'cause he got his.

14. River of Dreams

This is a slow song that starts off with a piano playing and then, yes, a saxophone kicks in. This singer is trying to convince "Linda" to come with him on a river of dreams. To be clear, Frey invited Linda on the river of dreams before Billy Joel released his own obnoxious song about walking in the river of dreams. Aging 70's artists were very, very anxious to have a river with dreams in them whenever possible during the early 90's.

So...back to the "River of Dreams" by Glenn Frey. See the world is too heavy for him and he the only solution is to leave "this place" behind. By the time he wants to make love by candlelight I'm sufficiently creeped out. Frey says "if he could," he would take his girl on the river of dreams. I hate to be "that guy" who continuously points out how wealthy someone else is, but considering the amount of money Frey has made in his career he probably could go to his river of dreams. He chose to make "South of Sunset" instead. Frey does point out in the song a lot of people want to get away, but he fails to point out if everyone chased their river of dreams then the United States economy would collapse and there would be economic and financial anarchy. I think I'm going too far down the rabbit hole in discussing this song.

15. Rising Sun

This is an instrumental track, which seems needless to me. It is the introduction to the next song, "Brave New World," but few people even know that song. Is it even necessary to include the 39 second introduction to the song? Is he afraid someone wouldn't buy his Solo Collection album if the 39 second introduction to "Brave New World" isn't directly in front of the song?

16. Brave New World

This is the second country-rockish song on the album. I'm not even entirely sure what the song is about. I think it is about the apocalypse, which is always a nice song to include directly after a song about riding on a river of dreams. I guess it turns out the river of dreams is made of blood and we are going to die immediately. Perhaps the song is about the singer convincing everyone to commit mass suicide instead of the apocalypse? He sings,

"there's no turning back,
we have to be strong,
we have to travel the road to freedom no matter how long,"

Then it goes to the chorus that says,

"Don't worry darling this will all be over soon,
just remember you will always be my girl,
these are the times we are born into, this is why we're here
to live in this brave, new world."

It certainly sounds like he is suggesting a mass suicide to escape the apocalypse. I'm guessing the plan to move to a river of dreams is over. That plan got shot pretty quickly. I'm also guessing if Glenn Frey is going to kill himself to go to a brave new world, he's going to bring his saxophone along with him.

One thing I would change about this solo collection is the addition of "Lover's Moon" from his album "The Allnighter." It's a cheesy song, but I think it is as good or better than nearly half of the tracks represented here. Overall, this really isn't a bad album and "Brave New World" has a pretty catchy chorus, even if it has a slightly more gentle Jim Jones/Waco vibe about it. What's funny is that if you like the Eagles, I'm not sure I could recommend this album to you. It's so different from what they did as a band. If you like "You Belong to the City" and "The Heat is On" and know how to tune out a saxophone then you probably would enjoy this album. I don't know how many people are dying to explore Glenn Frey's solo material, but this is a good introduction even if I'm not sure it represents all of his best work as a solo artist. It is clear Frey kind of half-assed his solo career.