Obviously, I have thought way too much about the R.E.M. breakup this week. A few friends contacted me to say that I came to mind when they heard the news, which is touching, but I’m not distraught or anything. Since most albums in the past 10-15 years have been hit or miss, I’m not that bothered they won’t be returning to the studio. I’m more disappointed that I have probably seen them live for the last time – and that show wasn’t as great as I had hoped.
Anyway, the news has since come out that the band came to the decision while working on (another) greatest hits collection, titled “Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011” and scheduled for a November 15 release. Unlike the last two greatest hits albums, this will span the band’s whole career instead of splitting the songs between the I.R.S. era and the Warner brothers era. The album will reportedly have some stuff they finished since “Collapse Into Now” came out.
That makes me wonder if they really did start working on something else, realized they didn’t have what it took to put a whole album together (probably based on an accelerated timeline from the record company) and decided to just end things. The theory of record label politics playing a role in the end has already been floated by murmurs.com founder Ethan Kaplan, who also used to work at Warners and begs the question: was this dissolution more contractual than creative?
I don’t think they will re-form or anything, but I wonder if they have something up their sleeve. Peter Buck admitted a couple of years ago that “(a)s far back as 1982 we have live 16- and 24-track tapes, and we have a bunch of shows that sound pretty cool.” He admitted there wouldn’t be a treasure trove of live shows coming out, but as they worked on what would accompany the Reckoning re-issue a couple of years ago, he said he wished the band could share their early history with their fans.
We’re already sifting through stuff from 1984, ’85, and there are also filmed elements… We’ve discussed putting all that stuff up on the web site, ’cos we’ve got copies of every performance that was ever filmed, and there’s a lot of ’em. I’d love to get all that stuff out there. The live thing is such an important element of who we were, and if you only know us from the records you’re missing out on more than half of what we were about. I’m sure the record company would have a nervous breakdown if they heard me talking like this, but it’s not the earning money thing that concerns me as much as the band entering history in as representative a way as possible. Come on, let’s see the weird Dutch TV performances with us lip-synching in make-up!
But when a band like Weezer (and I am sure others) makes CDs and digital downloads of their shows available through their own site, I wonder if we might see something like this from R.E.M. in the future. Commissioning the mastering and release of shows through REMHQ.com sounds like a lot less work than doing what a record company tells you to do and would make the die-hard fans happy. I’m sure there are all kinds of legal reasons that might make this dream of mine impossible, but it’s at least worth consideration.
If they do it, I think they should start with the tape of their first concert in April 1980 which I like to think is hidden somewhere in Peter Buck’s collection of bootlegs. If I’m dreaming, why not dream big, right?