July 15, 2011

When college radio sweethearts R.E.M. released “Lifes Rich Pageant” (the missing apostrophe is not a typo) way back in 1986, it sounded like their bid at the arena rock brass ring, sort of an Athens twist on Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Like the Boss before them, R.E.M. managed to simplify, buff, and polish their sonic approach for maximum commercial impact, but they did so without completely dumping the album-era conceptual strangeness that had already helped earn them a rabid cult following.

Although I played it to death when it first came out, I hadn’t listened to “Lifes Rich Pageant” for at least 12 or 15 years when I downloaded its remastered, 25th anniversary edition the other night, and the improved digital sound drives the commercialization tactics home even harder than the original vinyl did. The drums on this baby fucking SLAM, the bass notes BOOM, and Michael Stipe’s vocals sound genuinely aggressive for the first time on record. But such developments aren’t always a positive thing.

The band (Peter Buck on guitar, Mike Mills on bass, and Bill Berry on drums) can sound almost too enthusiastic at times— it’s with good reason that the posters promoting the record featured the “Swan Swan H” lyric, “What noisy cats are we.”

Some of the songs are so frenetic, so committed to barreling ahead at all costs, they quickly grow tiresome (“These Days,” in particular, is a good tune in dire need of a slackened tempo.) And let’s just say that many of Stipe’s non sequitur lyrics are better off mumbled into his shirt sleeve, the way he initially opted to do it. But you already knew that.

In effect, the underbrush had been chopped away, revealing a highway to superstardom that would make the group richer and far more famous than they could have ever hoped to be when they were learning to play their instruments down in Georgia. But they also became a great deal less intriguing than they were before they recognized their real-world potential.

Just because you can’t blame them - and I don’t, because every band does it sooner or later - it doesn’t mean you can’t mourn what might have been.

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Let’s be fair, though. “Lifes Rich Pageant” isn’t in the same league as “Murmur” and “Reckoning,” because those are two of the more rewarding discs of the 1980s— I’d argue that “Murmur” was actually the best album of that decade, with the possible exception of the Clash’s “London Calling.”

I do think, however, that “Lifes Rich Pageant” is a more coherent release than R.E.M.’s third album, “Fables of the Reconstruction,” and a quarter of a century later it remains an often powerful record played with real conviction. The tracks that work, and they’re in the majority, are classics of a sort.

Producer Don Gehman (he made his name with John Mellencamp, which gives you an idea where the group’s collective head was at) conjures a deep, imposing sound that suggests the R.E.M. many people had already come to know and love trying to blast their way out of an airplane hangar. Listen, for instance, to the album opener, “Begin the Begin,” the title of which suggests a conscious form or rebirth. Buck’s fat, grinding guitar is a shocking development, given the way he sounded before this, but Mills’ bass is just monstrous, pouring out a thick bottom that gives the tune an almost sinister undercurrent.

“Begin the Begin”

“Begin the Begin” may not blaze a spanking new sonic trail like “Radio Free Europe,” but not everything has to, and it’s a genuinely exciting recording. If you’re looking to introduce your band to middle America and maybe even get some of that radio airplay you’ve been hearing so much about, that’s how you kick off an album. Twenty-five years later, it still rocks, and rocks with conviction.

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I also remember frequently dropping the needle on “I Believe” back in the day (second song on side two, time travelers) and I remain convinced that it’s one of the more fully-realized tracks R.E.M. has ever recorded. I like the oddball banjo intro, which only they would dare include, and Stipe rip-snorts his way through a set of lyrics that are sometimes just as elliptical as his lesser work while featuring a homespun wisdom that’s rather reminiscent of the Band…or at least it is when you can determine what the hell he’s talking about.

“I Believe”

When I was young and full of grace
And spirited— a rattlesnake
When I was young the fever fell
My spirit…I will not tell
You're on your honor not to tell

I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract
Explain the change, the difference between
What you want and what you need
There's the key
Your adventure for today
What do you do between the horns of the day?

(chorus)
I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe

When I was young and give and take
And foolish said, my fool awake
When I was young the fever fell
My spirit... I will not tell
You're on your honor, on your honor

Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true
Think of others, the others think of you
Silly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfect,
Perfect is a fault when fault lines change

I believe my humor's wearing thin
And change is what I believe in
I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe in

(repeat chorus)

When I was young and full of grace
As spirited a rattlesnake
When I was young and fever fell
My spirit, I will not tell
You're on your honor, on your honor
I believe in example
I believe my throat hurts
Example is the checker to the key

I believe my humor's wearing thin
And I believe the poles are shifting

(repeat chorus)

Even though I had forgotten about much of “Lifes Rich Pageant” over the years, I always retained the line, “Perfect is a fault when fault lines change;” I find myself singing it out loud on occasion.

Surely, part of the attraction is Stipe’s full-throated delivery. But as offhand lyrics go, the phrase is a very smart way of forgiving human failings and saying that maybe people aren’t the useless, collapsing messes they think they are— a pivotal sentiment in hack pop (see Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and literally scores of others) that actually feels like insight when stated with a bit of flair.

Compare “I Believe” to Stipe’s whiney, Most Sensitive Guy in 8th Grade observations on “Everybody Hurts” - which, of course, couldn’t have been a bigger hit - and you’ll understand just how much R.E.M. lost when it ultimately became a blunt, record-selling monolith that couldn’t help but sound great on a car radio.

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Easily the biggest surprise out of all the surprises on “Lifes Rich Pageant,” however, is a juvenile but ultimately thrilling final track that’s a cover of a late-60s bubblegum tune and is sung not by Stipe, but by bass player Mike Mills! Go figure.

R.E.M.’s recording of “Superman,” a long-forgotten b-side by a long-forgotten Texas band called the Clique, came about because Buck, R.E.M.’s resident musicologist, pulled an old 45 out of the crinkled picture sleeve of his memory and offered it up to the rest of the band as a possible cover. The Clique’s version is weird and catchy…

“Superman”

…but it’s still hard to imagine these guys - at the time, they were hardly noted for their sense of humor - deciding, not only to record it, but to close their album with it!

Stipe, in fact, doesn’t handle the lead vocal on R.E.M.’s “Superman” because he wasn’t as impressed with the tune as everybody else seemed to be. Mills delivered with gusto, though, and they wound up with one of the more memorable, if bizarrely un-hip creations in their catalogue.

“Superman”

“Superman” is arguably R.E.M.’s ultimate accomplishment in its commercial juggernaut incarnation. You get the wacky touch of a sped-up TV clip at the beginning (it’s dialogue from a Godzilla movie), just to throw you off, then Buck’s trademark jangling guitar leads the song into a pounding explosion that boosts things off the ground. Mills vocal is stirring while simultaneously mocking the original’s nasality, and those wild background shouts in the latter part of the tune sound genuinely ecstatic. They get me going every time.

The album it draws to a conclusion may not be as consistently effective as their prior, more do-it-yourself work, but “Superman” is a first-rate radio single that suits heavy rotation because the guys playing it so realize they’re transforming silliness through an act of sheer passion and will.

It’s not “Shiny Happy People,” mind you. But what is?

DOWNLOAD: “Lifes Rich Pageant” by R.E.M. (1986), but you’ll undoubtedly be moved to skip a track here and there. This is another one of those records, by the way, that needs to be played at top volume.

Paul Tatara