19 replies to this topic

[mrdavesanchez]

This is a review of a 1984 gig. It's actually a bad review so maybe it's a bit enjoyable in that respect. Anyhow, for what it's worth I thought I would post it.



REM

London Marquee, Cynthia Rose, NME

Back in 1982, the New York Times carried a fascinating exclusive entitled 500 Plastic Pink Flamingos Offer Flight of Fancy. This item detailed the communal psychological preoccupation of sleepy harbour hamlet Quincy, Illinois with the "plastic pink flamingo, a popular lawn ornament". It's scoop angle consisted of details about how anonymous hooligans had taken to night-time flamingo-snatching replacing each plastic prisoner with a note decrying the lack of entertainment for young folk in town.

Despite picnics, bowling, jumble sales and occasional movies (as well as a habit of "parading their motercycles and vans up and down main street") it seems the youth of Quincy just had to save Something Else. Something more romantic, more suggestive, more evocative. Something like pink plastic byrds - sorry, birds.

Now that I've seen it through full circle, the REM media circus reminds me of Quincy's unique dilemma. Disc-wise, this group has certainly managed to live out their acronym, establishing a dream-state whose particular flights of fancy do sound whimsical rather than twee. Pleasing undercurrents of melody create a sunny amusement park of neopsychedelica which has promised instigation rather than imitation for most of the two LPs. Not everyone can carry the weight of the world" and these guys were first in line to confess.

Onstage and hamstrung by diabolical sound until the last two pre-encore numbers, however, certain unexpected facts asserted themselves. One: Well, just like its inspirations, a lot of neopsychedelica comes off as gauche if not dumb, monotonous if not numbing. Two: This certainly is neopsychedelica, and a certain coyness combined with surprise poseurie reminded me with a jolt of all the American Anglophilia I hated about the FIRST 'British Invasion'. Three:  This set evinced no dynamic at all, natural or forced, Given a keen guitarist (albeit buried in the mix) and several guaranteed crowd-pleasers, that's pretty weird.  It makes one speculate  that Drive-In Chief/'Murmur producer Mitch Easter saved us from some really static music.

For much of this evening Stipe and secondary vocalist Mills were singing out of tune; where they met at all, intended harmonies tended to collide. Potential new faves such as 'Pretty Persuasion' rambled and shambled as shamelessly as any American hometown talent whiling away a week-night, and heavier stuff like 'Moral Kiosk' spiralled downwards, singing lugubriosly.

By encore time the sound had just righted - and the famous cheesy guitar was indeed cheesy (if nothing like the Byrds, which a clubbing to death of 'So You Wanna Be a Rock And Roll Star' demonstrated). A honky-tonk version of 'Pale Blue Eyes' fared better as country than did the bands own 'Don't Go Back To Rockville'. The former was perhaps the high spot of the evening, but the less said about 'Ghost Riders In The Sky' the better, and 'I Can't Control Myself' contributed nothing to history The Troggs haven't already.

I still love my 'Murmur' and these guys can live on my block any time, but as an entire evening, rack this one regretfully right under Rick Johnson's seminal definition of Wimp Rock: dentist's office music minus the drill. Worse - it had me almost seething as one with that correspondent who convinced the Quincy Herald-Whig that "any flamingo thief is doing your city a favour, removing the pink junk".

[Zarok]

Wimp rock is what my friends describe R.E.M.'s music! They are heavy metal fans though so that's okay.:)

Eric, do you know if this show is available? I'd like to hear if the review was accurate or not.

[mrdavesanchez]

Zarok said:

Wimp rock is what my friends describe R.E.M.'s music! They are heavy metal fans though so that's okay.:)

Eric, do you know if this show is available? I'd like to hear if the review was accurate or not.

I am pretty sure it is. Although looking back I think this review is a combination of both nights, April 30th and May 1st. I know I have both of them though.

[dmacca]

I was at this gig, and it was incredible. I was about 17, and I was visiting the UK to interview my fave bands. Well, REM turned out to be my biggest discovery that trip, and I interviewed Buck a few days later in Miles' offices off Portobello. Great show, and I took some great shots of the gig.

I understand this gig was taped (sbd), and leaked online, but I've never found it. Looking for it is how I found this forum.

The NME was a snot-rag at the time, and few of the writers in London were worth a damn at the time, hence the crap review.

As I recall, they played the Marquee the first night, then a bigger joint the next night like Hammersmith O- Is the Marquee gig out there? The Barney Miller theme warming up the encore was a treat.

[DericksHam]

that wasn't too bad. in a lester bangs sorta way. this is probably the only time i'll ever read about pink flamingo teeny thieves in a review.

[kohoutekdriver8]

I have lived in Quincy, Illinois since 2003; not much happens here but with a population of 40,000, it's hardly a hamlet.

I'll have to ask some lifelong residents about the flamingo thing.

[Kelly A]

I miss Eric.

[dmacca]

I was there, fuck the Flamingoes.

Edited by dmacca, 04 January 2010 - 06:28 PM.

[dmacca]

So, the big Q is, does anybody have this show? They were always a great live act when I saw them, but that first gig was tops.

Stipe took off his glasses mid-set, said something like, "Well, I notice people in England don't wear glasses. It must not be cool". I never saw him wear them again.

I've got to dig out those Marquee photos. They came out great. They're a bitch to print, because the stage lighting was pure green and red/magenta, but the framing, perspex, and focus were tight.

Ciao for Now-

[Sweden]

I am pretty certain both April 30 and May 1 were recorded. When looking at the setlists I am also pretty certain that tapes of both these shows are somewhere in those basement boxes contain the 300 R.E.M. live tapes... I seem to rememebr one night was a better quality recording that the other. If Eric (mrdavesanchez) had still been posting herte I guess he could have confirmed that.

/David

[Martine]

Sweden said:

I am pretty certain both April 30 and May 1 were recorded. When looking at the setlists I am also pretty certain that tapes of both these shows are somewhere in those basement boxes contain the 300 R.E.M. live tapes... I seem to rememebr one night was a better quality recording that the other. If Eric (mrdavesanchez) had still been posting herte I guess he could have confirmed that.

/David

I can confirm that, David. Both nights were recorded, and I have the second night, but not the first.
Tell me more about those 300 tapes?

[dmacca]

kinda funny. I know they had to be taping the shows. When I called the Marquee for an interview (! yep, that ez), Mike Mills was given the phone and arranged it.

He was busy setting up equipment, and I got an interview without really asking.

It turns out they taped nearly everything back then. Too bad they don't have a decent live LP to show for their roadwork.

...

[Martine]

dmacca said:

kinda funny. I know they had to be taping the shows. When I called the Marquee for an interview (! yep, that ez), Mike Mills was given the phone and arranged it.

He was busy setting up equipment, and I got an interview without really asking.

It turns out they taped nearly everything back then. Too bad they don't have a decent live LP to show for their roadwork.

...

Oh, I know they taped everything, but that is not the recordings I am talking about. I don´t think any of those are out there, there are in Peter´s possession, somewhere.
The ones I have are audience recordings, mostly. The odd one is soundboard but usually done by the venue or fans plugging in. And some radio broadcasts, of course. But mostly audience.

[Sweden]

Martine said:

I can confirm that, David. Both nights were recorded, and I have the second night, but not the first.
Tell me more about those 300 tapes?

Oh, the tapes are just the results of those nutty tape trading years in the mid-late 90's. I think I had somewhere between 3-400 tapes when the "market" first moved to CD's and then online trading. A large portion of what I have on tapes I have also later on gotten electronically. I think the main difference is that pretty few radio shows, interviews and other snippets have been distributed online. Whenever I get a year off I will probably try to go through those tapes and see what could be worth transferring to electronic media and distributed. When it comes to the majority of the shows, I assume others have lower-generation copies of those. Of course there are also lots of peopole who have far more tapes than those I have.

/David

[Martine]

Sweden said:

Oh, the tapes are just the results of those nutty tape trading years in the mid-late 90's. I think I had somewhere between 3-400 tapes when the "market" first moved to CD's and then online trading. A large portion of what I have on tapes I have also later on gotten electronically. I think the main difference is that pretty few radio shows, interviews and other snippets have been distributed online. Whenever I get a year off I will probably try to go through those tapes and see what could be worth transferring to electronic media and distributed. When it comes to the majority of the shows, I assume others have lower-generation copies of those. Of course there are also lots of peopole who have far more tapes than those I have.

/David

Well, as you probably know, I collect live shows too. I have about 700 or so now, I reckon, maybe more. I would love to get as close to being complete as possible. So if there is any chance you could uproot some rareties, I for one would be very happy.

[Sweden]

Martine said:

Well, as you probably know, I collect live shows too. I have about 700 or so now, I reckon, maybe more. I would love to get as close to being complete as possible. So if there is any chance you could uproot some rareties, I for one would be very happy.

Sure, we'll see what happens. The problem is of course it's a manual and time consuming process... :(

Since a very large portion of the shows from the 2003 tour and onwards have been made available, I assume that while my electronic copies of earlier shows mainly doubles what I had on tapes, I assume I'm decently close to your number of total shows at this point. Haven't made a proper list since 1999 or something but have downloaded close to everything that has been distributed online since then.

/David

[Martine]

Sweden said:

Sure, we'll see what happens. The problem is of course it's a manual and time consuming process... :(

Since a very large portion of the shows from the 2003 tour and onwards have been made available, I assume that while my electronic copies of earlier shows mainly doubles what I had on tapes, I assume I'm decently close to your number of total shows at this point. Haven't made a proper list since 1999 or something but have downloaded close to everything that has been distributed online since then.

/David

I have everything between 80 and 83...and almost everything from 1999 onwards. A lot of the 84, 85, 89 an 95 tours is still missing.
Especially the earlier shows are hard to come by. And who knows, what with people moving, house fires, tapes going bad etc, some of your tapes may be the only copies left!

If you could index them, I could certainly give you a hand in deciding which are worth converting...? :)

[Sweden]

Martine said:

I have everything between 80 and 83...and almost everything from 1999 onwards. A lot of the 84, 85, 89 an 95 tours is still missing.
Especially the earlier shows are hard to come by. And who knows, what with people moving, house fires, tapes going bad etc, some of your tapes may be the only copies left!

If you could index them, I could certainly give you a hand in deciding which are worth converting...? :)

I think this is the latest indexed version...it's from 1999 and a slightly  embarrasing old webpage of mine...  :-)

http://hem.passagen....thens/tape1.htm

A lot of stuff I have, not only stuff that has been recorded since 1999 but also earlier things that have surfaced in the last ten years, is however of course not on that list. From a quick look, I see that 1985 especially has been much expanded since.

/David

[dmacca]

Gotcha, Sweden. Thx for the info.

Funny, I just found a couple scans of the the photos I took of the Marquee show. I was going through all my old backup CDs trying to condense them so I could burn them onto a DVD, and the Marquee shots popped up. I'll go grab 'em and see if this forum really allows me to post them.

Thx again.

[Aardwolves Lower]

r.e.m. not God? that's horseshit! they are too God!  try this: drink 2 spicy bloodymarys and a shot of Jagermeister then listen to New Adventures In Hi-Fi! There's God!