Customer Reviews

And I Feel Fine... The Best of The I.R.S. Years 1982-1987

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Firstly, the music on this collection is stupendous. In the 80's, R.E.M. was the most consistently excellent, yet idiosyncratic and unconventional, band around and each release was a new gift. I don't have many quibbles with the song selections made for this best-of, and getting the second disc for not much more than the price of the single-disc version is a value. If you don't know early R.E.M. very well, this is a great place to start.

But... as several other reviewers have commented, this release was mastered to sound as loud as possible. And at first listen, it sounds great. Then, after it's on for awhile, you will probably find yourself turning the volume down, and even thinking about turning it off. That's because the mix has been highly compressed - that's how they get newer CDs to sound so much louder than old ones, but it's akin to how a loud commercial suddenly comes on when you're watching a TV show and sends you jumping for the remote to turn it down. It becomes obnoxious and irritating when everything is so loud all the time, and robs the music of all dynamics. And if you listen closely you'll hear distortion - they mix it so high that they're actually introducing clipping, which means flattened sound waves that results in a static-y edge to the sound.

Unfortunately this is a trend that has been going on with CD mastering for the last decade, though it gets very little publicity. The record companies do it because they think we like it, and actually many of us think we do, judging by a lot of the positive comments on the sound of overloud remasters. But once you're aware of it, you'll notice it, and you'll start to feel ripped off. The public needs to tell the record companies we want quality remasters that don't compromise true fidelity and range for shallow loudness and distortion. To learn more on this topic, do a web search on "loudness war".

This is really sad, this is an otherwise excellent collection. But in today's quest for everything to be LOUD, the over compressed this so that it's lost almost all dynamic range, and is just stressfull to listen to. You hear things you never did before-- BECAUSE THAT WEREN"T SUPPOSED TO STAND OUT IN THE MIX! Everything just stays at the same level, it sounds like there are some phase issues on some tracks as well.

I just encoded a couple tracks and the originals, do that if you want to see it-- the songs are all peaked at max level throughout on the remaster. The original has highs and lows...well, dynamics! imagine that! This is unlistenable to me, stick with the original. Of course it may be worth having for the rare stuff, sadly that's no better. Every instrument at the same level. REM from this time is classic, but they've butchered it.

Not bad, could have been better. The more I hear this, the more these remastered studio cuts sound muffled. Less than 4 stars if I could; 3.5 at best in a calibrated estimation. I agree with many comments posted here: more rarities, live cuts, unreleased songs, and alternative mixes should've filled up all of disc 2--the reason anyone with the REM albums would bother to buy this anthology in the first place, right?

Why not three discs: one live, one rare, one great tracks (not merely the familiar ones)? Oh well. What works best on disc 1 is the sequencing; I imagine this is what circa 1987 might have been a wonderful concert set list. Even the five or six songs out of the 21 that I tend to skip when playing the original albums fit in and you can see the intelligence with which the melodies segue from track to track.

But, if this was all, as on the cheaper one-disk version, it'd be another cash cow, milking the magical potion that sparked the imaginations of REM at its best around twenty years ago. Less so by ten years ago, and as for now, well their last two post-millennial CDs show sadly another band that should have packed it in like they promised, either by our millennium's arrival or the departure of one of the original quartet. Both events came and went, and what REM stood for in the annals of college rock is best left to the best songs on this disc.

These may not be the songs with which they'd rise (like U2) to the top of the charts across the world, but as the notes show, these are the songs that built, listener by listener, town by town, concert at the club and college radio station at a time, their artistic reputation among their first American followers. In the mid-80s, each album sold a bit more than its predecessor, and each year brought another vinyl chapter in the band's sonic experiments. They sang of their political musings and left behind a quasi-spiritual chronicle. Berry, Buck, Mills & Stipe tripped up here and there. Lyrics could be clumsy, but they were honest and sincere.

Yet, only one cut from the Chronic Town EP? The other four tracks would have benefited from sonic upgrading. The remastering by Capitol's Dave McEowen is certainly controversial. The realignment was not as dramatic to me since I have Murmur on the old "gold standard" Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab "original studio master" series, and that version sounds sharper and deeper than the cleaner renderings on this anthology.

The other songs gussied up do flatten and fill up more of their allotted space, although this fits the Don Gehman & Scott Litt-produced albums and their boomier, more accessible, classic "heartland" arena rock-ish drift. I never liked the slicker sound on these LPs as much, as they strove for a more commercial, easier to listen to expression in music and especially enunciation which broadened the band's appeal but detracted from their calculated charm and cultivated mystique. These tracks tend to simmer more steadily on the anthology; they bubbled, sank, or floated in their original album niches. But the harmonium that sighs in the danker corners of many Life's Rich Pageant tracks does emerge here. The more idiosyncratic, underwater-sounding Fables with Joe Boyd and the first records' Mitch Easter & Don Dixon carnivalesque productions do not necessarily gain from the brighter remastering. They sound dimmer, evened out and diffused. Maybe more palatable for today's ears via iPods? A tonal adjustment follows after these songs have been laid out in the disinfectant sun and hauled out of the tangled kudzu.

The wobbly nature of the originals, their shimmering surface yet murky depth, do become pushed more to the front and their quirky shifts in volume and tone are somewhat smoothed out. Once in a while, you can hear bits of the Easter-Dixon LPs calliope swirl and sudden chunk with an off-kilter placement that the remastering possibly by accident manages to highlight. The choice seems to have been made for a more expansive rendering of the IRS years, so some of their stranger songs and eccentric efforts are left out. For instance, there are no Dead Letter Office cuts: selections would have benefitted the scope of this project, which to me lacks surprises in its studio cuts. However, I Believe and Life & How To Live It, for me the best cuts from their albums, are often ignored so it was good to find their classic jangle lilts here.

Disc 2 does mercifully leave off those annoying songs from the increasingly ponderous second side of Document, for instance, so some quality control persists. As with the "In Time: The Best of REM" WB two-disc anthology mostly from their 90s period, the unreleased songs on this collection are too few, and not as revelatory as we fans might have hoped. Pavement in their double-disc, very affordable, overly generous re-issues of their Matador LPs show what could have been done: lots of ephemera, studio failures, concert cuts, alternative mixes. Why R.E.M. chose not to do this puzzles me. But the live tracks, as others have observed, do show what only "In Time" for the later years and the discredited "REM in the Attic" odds-and-ends WB disc from a decade ago has done for the IRS era as a (semi-)official release: to demonstrate their rawer thrust and rowdier concert appeal.

I do agree with Steven Malkmus and Pavement who in "The Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" lamented "'Time After Time' is my least favorite song" from the band, and ending it with this track perhaps is a sly wink at them and those of us who, while we are devoted to the early efforts of this band, have enough critical savvy to not follow along blindly with every song and every album with equal fervor and shallow enthusiasm. REM does respect their audience-- this is good value for the money (especially when combined at Amazon's price with their clunky and self-conscious primitive videos on the companion DVD. The band members' comments and Anthony DeCurtis' liner notes do provide enjoyment and add to the value of this flawed but still essential purchase, naturally, for any committed REM fan who longs for more than the band's usual ten songs played on the radio.

On the lower floor of my college student union building, next to the coffee house, was a small, dark room with some couches and a projection TV. Every day at around noon, they would play a videotape of the previous night's "Late Night with David Letterman" show, and it was here that I got my first look at the four rag-tag guys who called themselves R.E.M. It was the mid-80's and popular music was in desperate need of something meaningful, having been caught in a strange brew of MTV celebrities (Michael Jackson, Boy George, Madonna); boyish, one-dimensional Teen-Beat groups (Duran-Duran, Culture Club, Wham); and the heavy-metal hair bands who couldn't accept (as in "This is Spinal Tap") that the late 70's were over.

Then appeared R.E.M. Four guys who weren't from London, New York or L.A. but from the unlikely southern college town of Athens, Georgia. Their music was simple but catchy, hard-edged but not offensive. Their lyrics (if you could make them out, which was always part of the fun) actually made listeners think, something that had been out of style since before the disco era. The band wasn't self-consciously political but they soon found a college audience who were looking to be challenged a bit. The rest of the story doesn't need to be told. Not until Nirvana came along in the early 90's would another garage-rock band influence music in such a profound way.

Sadly, as all good things must end, so did R.E.M.'s IRS years. 1988's "Green" moved the band to a major record label and put them in the national spotlight. Their small audience could no longer claim the band as their own. College radio gave way to "alternative rock" and eventually to hip-hop and rap.

But the music and the memories live on in this great CD set, which charts the period from their beginning to their wonderful 1987 release, "Document". The 2-CD set is well worth the additional few dollars, the 2nd disc being every bit as enjoyable as the first.

I miss my old college coffee house and I miss the old R.E.M. but we don't have to miss the great songs. Grab this one!

Most "Best Of" compilations are comfy strolls down well-worn paths to revisit familiar, beloved friends.

Not so this one. Somehow this "listens" with all the freshness and vitality of the best new releases of the year. That's a testament to the strength of the material gathered here. Those unfamiliar with the band's early material could easily mistake it for the latest outing by a promising new indie band.

The effect is so pronounced that these I.R.S. tunes now seem far less dated than the band's more recent work! Pass this one around. Your friends will thank you.

A mild "thumbsdown" to the remastering team, though. Sure, they gave us clarity, and plenty of it. Unfortunately, though, there's no depth to the mix. Like nearly everything else that's been mixed this Millenium, they simply crowded everything into the front of the mix, where it all clashes and competes with no direction.

This crew didn't even bother to fix Buck's horribly out of tune guitar in "End of the World." Truly an inspiration to underachievers everywhere.

THE BAND: Michael Stipe (vocals), Peter Buck (guitars). Mike Mills (bass, piano), Bill Berry (drums & percussion). Origin: Athens, GA.

THE DISC: (2006) 21 tracks clocking in at approximately 78 minutes. Included with the disc is a 6-page booklet containing song titles/credits, what songs came from which albums, year released, and a storied 5-page intro from Anthony DeCurtis (NY Times & Rolling Stone Magazine). As the title of the disc states, this release follows the band's beginning only - from 1982-87. There is a 2-disc special edition available as well (with disc-2 containing an additional 21 songs of demos, unreleased tracks, and assorted live cuts). Remastered sound. Label - Capital Records / I.R.S.

SONG REPRESENTATION: Murmur (4 songs), Reckoning (4), Fables Of The Reconstruction (4), Lifes Rich Pageant (4), Document (4), EP Chronic Town (1).

COMMENTS: When I think back of R.E.M., the terms "college radio" and "alternative music" come to mind (especially back in the early 80's when alternative really didn't exist yet). The band decided their music career was more important than college (thus dropping out of the University of Georgia)... and so it was. "Murmur" (1983) was a huge success - labeled Rolling Stone Magazine's "Album of the Year". Records sales unbelievably remained slow, and their songs somehow evaded Billboards famed "Top 40" list... until "Document" (1987). "Document" contained the song, "The One I Love", which was their 1st Top 10 hit. Stipe has one of those voices that's instantly recognizable - singing crystal clear or often times mumbling - it was equally effective. As the band matured, so did their lyrical content... many songs touching on the environment as well as social/political activism. THE GOOD: All the early staples are here - "Radio Free Europe", "Talk About The Passion", "Pretty Persuasion", "7 Chinese Bros.", "So.Central Rain (I'm Sorry)", "Can't Get There From Here", "Driver 8", "Fall On Me", "It's The End Of The World As We Know It", "The One I Love", etc. The liners notes are informative (from writer DeCurtis). Remastered sound has it's ups & downs depending on your stereo. THE NOT SO GOOD: I love to hear the band change/mature through the years in chronological order, but you won't find that here... the track listing is random. The remastered sound is great in some aspects, but disappointing in others. The acoustic guitar on "Talk About The Passion" sounds incredible. As does the entire "7 Chinese Bros". On the flip side though (on many of the tracks), the remastering pulls the percussion up front, and the guitars to the rear. Sadly, some of those subtle little noises are now seemingly as loud as the drums & guitars. I think like so many of the "remastered" discs released today where quality issues come up... the sound will depend on the caliber of your stereo & speakers. A few minor tracks missing ("Pilgrimage", "Harborcoat", "Letter Never Sent"), but in the long run the song selection is perfect for a compilation. In fact, if I could add a song or two here, I wouldn't know what song(s) currently on the track list to get rid of... it's that good. The only solution is an additional disc covering that much more of their material. OVERALL: I liked R.E.M. because they were different at the time. I was in college in the early/mid 80's and they were just making a name for themselves. Their songs blended perfectly on the local college radio stations. And, decades later, the songs still sound fresh. This "And I Feel Fine... The Best Of The I.R.S. Years" shows the band in young form, prior to their monstrous commercial success. New fans looking for a great intro will like the single disc package. Long time fans should absolutely aim for the 2-disc version. Despite a few extremely minor flaws, this is a fantastic disc (5 stars).

Krexel (another reviewer) must not be very in tune with R.E.M., even on just a casual level. NOTHING from this album is previously released on the Warner Brothers "In Time" collection (1988-2003). This is an I.R.S. Records collection "1982-1987", thus the title.

The special disc 2 does have some previously released stuff on it, but there's some great stuff here that most fans haven't heard, and it's all interesting vintage R.E.M. that is worth the purchase price. If you're any type of fan of R.E.M., casual or otherwise, you won't be dissapointed with this double-disc set.

What makes this even better is that all four original members (Buck, Berry, Mills, Stipe) picked out each track and arranged it themselves. This is the first time Bill Berry has had such a major role in the band since retiring in 1997, and everyone misses him alot. On the Warner release "In Time" Peter Buck picked out and arranged most of the tracks alone, which is why he worte the liner notes on the double-disc version of that collection.

R.E.M. were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame last night, and they played a three song set with Bill Berry. They've also confirmed that they're recording a new song with Bill that will probably go towards a charity of some sort. We're all hoping Bill will rejoin the band officially, but if he doesn't, we have this great collection of songs to hold on to which remembers the guys when they were just a college-rock band from Athens Georgia. Proving that they were great, even before all the fame and wealth.

Funny, just a month or two ago I was thinking of how skimpy the "Eponymous" collection really is, and here we go. This new and much needed collection has 11 of the 12 tracks from "Eponymous", plus ten more. All those early classics plus "Begin The Begin", "Life And How To Live It", "Perfect Circle", and more. I could have thrown on "Exhuming McCarthy", "What If We Give It away?", and "Carnival Of Sorts (box cars)", but hey. It's hard to complain with 21 tracks that sound this good. Oh, and did I mention this comes with a second disc of demo's, live tracks, band member pick's, and unreleased songs? Yep. 42 tracks in all. Bye-bye "Eponymous".

If "Losing My Religion" made you an R.E.M. fan and you've been one ever since, you owe it to yourself before that radio hit made them a hit with the masses. I really recommend buying all the early albums; each is great it its own way. But if you don't have a pile of cash, this "best of" is actually quite decent. I've got all their CDs, but I also downloaded this when it was a $5 download, and then burned it to CD to play on my 90-mile commute across the desert to work. The early radio hits are mostly here (This One Goes Out to the One I Love, It's the End of the World (And I Feel Fine), etc. I would have liked Orange Crush, but I'd have to dig through CDs to see if it was an IRS release or not. Regardless, this is a good blend of relatively well-known songs as well as songs that never got much, if any, airplay. They probably could have put this out as a two-CD collection, but for one CD, if you don't know early R.E.M., this isn't a bad place to start. The audio quality is excellent, by the way.

I'm not going to lie to you - I like the idea of "Best-Of" & "Greatest Hits" albums in general. This medium allows for bands to gaze backwards through the annals of history so that they might view & review their work, in hopes of gathering together their best songs from a given time period. All of this is done in the hope of providing a means for which their fans (whether old, new, or as-yet-discovered) can listen to those songs in a fairly simple format. With "Greatest Hits" albums, you don't have to carry around all of the albums from your favorite bands just to hear the songs that you like the best. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved - a band gets to make a few more bucks by repackaging old material and a fan of the band only has to carry around one or two albums as opposed to 4, 5, 9, or 10 of them to get their fill of the band's music.

However, there is a dark side from whence a music listener can view a "Best-Of" album, since the whole concept of creating an album or two that will attempt to gather together a band's preeminent songs is one that has been used and disastrously abused for decades now. There are legions of rock snobs out there who disdain (quite rightly) the fact that many of these records only collect a band's singles and/or the songs that receive the widest levels of popularity & notoriety. Record companies too often get involved in the decision-making process, forcing the band to include songs just so that more records will be sold on the basis of that one song (i.e., how record companies have been pushing record sales for years, getting the dumbed-down public to buy an often crappy album for the one poppy, radio-friendly tune). "Best-Of" albums too frequently have been turned into "What-Sells-Best" albums, sacrificing content for sales.

I say all of that to say this - R.E.M.'s prior "Greatest Hits" release, In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003, was plagued by such issues, especially in terms of leaving often strong, fan-favorite songs in favor of ones that were more easily recognized by the average music-buying public. Case in point - while Automatic For The People is one of R.E.M.'s best records, it's also the fan favorite and received 4 nominations on In Time, while the critically-acclaimed New Adventures in Hi-Fi only had two songs included. Yes, an alternate track of "Leave" did make it to Disc Two, but you had to pay extra for it (even though it is an excellent remix). The band was in the thralls of a world tour in 2003 and this compendium of their years on Warner Brothers left much to the imagination. I mean, "Country Feedback" only made it on as a live track to close out Disc Two - as wonderful as the song is and as well-recorded as the live cut is, it's a travesty of justice for this song not to have been on the Disc One.

So, when I heard that And I Feel Fine was going to be released in Fall 2006 as a replacement for the nearly 2-decades-old Eponymous, released when R.E.M. left I.R.S. Records, I was filled with a mixture of excitement & trepidation. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, even with the promise of liner notes & comments left by all four members Yes, I will admit it - even the promise of long-retired drummer Bill Berry contributing to this collection did little to assuage my fears. As such, as highly- and fittingly-lauded as the band's early work is, there is much misunderstanding that revolves around the first five R.E.M. albums: there aren't any true singles until Document, the band seems overly indulgent in regards to experimentation & quirky lack of direction, and no one really knows what Michael Stipe is singing on any of those songs. I wasn't sure if the problems of over-reliance upon one album that afflicted In Time would burden down And I Feel Fine.

And I am so glad that my fears were dismissed (quite quickly at that). Each of the five albums from the I.R.S. Years (Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant, & Document) is appropriately and evenly represented on the 21 songs on Disc One. Four songs were chosen from each of the five albums, plus "Gardening At Night" from the Chronic Town EP. Thus, besides personal favorites such as "Moral Kiosk" off Murmur, I don't think that there's one necessary song missing between the two discs. Name a song that might be missing - I dare you. "7 Chinese Brothers"? It's there. "Disturbance At The Heron House"? Present. "Cuyahoga"? Accounted for. And even more to the point, the tracks on Disc One are arranged in a non-chronological format, with precedence given to how the songs will sound when listened to as a complete album, from song 1 to song 21, as only a mixtape should be.

There are definite highlights that must be pointed out, and they're all from Disc Two (even though Disc One is a wonderful & complete collection). The first notable selection is the 3-song live set from Boston, MA, on 07/13/1983 - "Ages of You," "We Walk," & "1,000,000." The energy of these four boys from Atlanta, GA is never more apparent than on these tracks as they flow effortlessly and seamlessly through their set. In second place comes the at-half-speed, demo version of "Gardening At Night" - the song sounds more hushed & intimate than a great many other songs in the R.E.M. pantheon. "Hyena" (in a scratchy demo version) represents my third choice, complete with the band's revealing in the liner notes that, while the song was released on Life's Rich Pageant, it was originally recorded during the Fables of the Reconstruction sessions. I've always been a fan of hearing songs in their early, unfinished, not-quite-complete phase - it gives new life to how you hear the "finished" version that you've been used to all of these years.

Do I have any complaints? Not really. As I said, there aren't really any songs that have been left off this 2-disc, 42-song compilation. If you've never listened to R.E.M. before, I would suggest you go purchase the album as soon as you finish reading this review. And I Feel Fine is what a "Best Of" album should be - representative of how a band has grown & developed over a given period of time and beautifully illustrative of the contributions that the band has made to the greater picture of music history. But in case you need just one more reason to buy this album, take this into account - it's both poignant and hilarious to read in the liner notes for Disc Two and learn how Bill, Mike, & Peter haven't always understood what Michael Stipe is singing or what his lyrics even mean, but they're certain that they have meaning for someone (and on occasion, the boys even present their differing interpretations of certain songs). So, if the band doesn't know what's going on with Stipe's beautiful mumblings, then it's OK that us listeners have also been confused for almost 25 years now.