Please feel free to share your thoughts and memories on the occasion of Lifes Rich Pageant turning 40 this month.
Photos of R.E.M. performing at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville, TN during the Pageantry tour on September 10, 1986 by Callie Hill of The Tennessean
I was 23, almost 24 when Lifes Rich Pageant was released 40 years ago. I don’t remember where I bought it but most likely Camelot Music at Berkeley Mall in Goldsboro, NC. That summer I made the mistake of leaving it in the back of my Toyota Corolla station wagon where it warped. Thankfully, I’d already recorded most of the songs onto a mixtape.
It would be several decades later before I’d purchase it on vinyl again when I found a used copy in a record store. I own three different versions on CD: the original album, The I.R.S. Years - Vintage 1986 (with six bonus tracks), and the 25th anniversary edition from 2011.
Though I became a fan with Murmur in 1983, it wasn’t until the Pageantry tour in ‘86 that I saw them in concert for the first time. The show was at Cameron Indoor Stadium on the campus of Duke University in Durham, NC. Let’s Active opened on what just so happened to be Mitch Easter’s birthday, November 15, 1986.
I remember making “Begin the Begin” the lead track on the b-side of the mixtape I made back then. The same older brother who seemed to enjoy listening to Murmur and Reckoning when I would spin them at his house years earlier went immediately for the eject button. I’m not sure what came over me (or him) but without thinking about it too much, I exclaimed, “But they sound like the Byrds!” which was met with, “It sounds like somebody SHOT the Byrds!”
Lifes Rich Pageant was a change but was not necessarily what I considered a radical one. Still, no other R.E.M. album sounds like it. There was a clarity and booming drum sound but the non sequitur nature of the lyrics and the jangle was still there. Also, the subversive quirkiness, which was also as evident in the album packaging as ever. Maybe the last R.E.M. album fully invested with the mythos of the I.R.S. years.
I always name Fables as my favorite but I could just as easily mention any of the first four, including a huge nod to Chronic Town. Such a fertile time for what would form the foundation for what would soon become (and remains) the favorite band of my lifetime. Who knew the collision of the vintage R.E.M. sound with John Mellencamp’s producer (Don Gehman) would result in such a potent mix? R.E.M. writ large. Mammoth. Huge. Colossal.
