I've been having particularly vivid dreams for about a year now. Last summer I got a high cholesterol reading and started taking statins (as well as cutting down on crisps, cheese and cake). Statins can have all kind of side effects and apparently vivid dreams and disturbed sleep is one. The dreams aren't all necessarily nightmares but they aren't always pleasant either and they are often vivid enough to wake me up suddenly, unsure for a few seconds what is real and what is dream, and then I spend a few minutes calming down as the reality sinks in and I try to drift back to sleep. These vivid dreams, coupled with the fact that occasionally I dream about Isaac, means my sleep is pretty erratic- and dreaming about him always wakes me up, leaving me unsettled. In my dreams he's still alive. I also have some lucid dreams, where I think I'm aware that I'm dreaming. I have got used to it over the last year to some extent but it's all quite odd.
R.E.M. are named after the stage of sleep where dreaming occurs, where brain activity is high and there is rapid eye movement. In 198 on Green Michael Stipe wrote a song, Get Up, where he deals with sleep and dreams. I say deals with- it's as close to dealing with as Stipe got in the 80s. Get Up is wonderfully simple sounding song with layers of complexity. Peter Buck's guitars clang and riff, the drums and bass thump and surge, there's a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic breakdown/ middle eight and some of the best vocal interplay between Stipe and Michael Mills on any R.E.M. song, especially in the 'Dreams, they complicate my life/ Dreams, they complement my life' call and response vocals. In the late 90s, on stage, Stipe announced that song was written about Mike Mills and his tendency to lie in and then be late to the sessions for Green. Get up Mike.
It's right up there as one of my favourite R.E.M. songs. In 1989 they toured the world playing Green and songs from their previous albums. I saw them at the Royal Court in Liverpool, 26th May 1989, what felt like a big venue at the time but pretty small in comparison to the arenas and domes they played in the mid 90s. They were superb- electrifying, urgent, arty, rocking- and it was impossible to take your eyes off them all night. R.E.M. filmed some of the U.S. shows and released a concert length video Tourfilm, based mainly around the gig at Greensboro in November but also containing some sections from four other American shows. In the middle of Tourfilm R.E.M. play Get Up and if anything it's even better live than on Green. They power into it, all the guitar psyche- pop turned up to the max, Stipe bouncing around in his ragged white clothes, his late 80s pony tail hanging down his back, the strobe effect projections producing a dream- like effect. Get Up at breakneck pace, two and a half minutes of intense dream/ indie/ psyche. 'Where does time go?', Stipe sings, the smudged mascara blurring around his eyes. 'I don't know'.
Yes, yes, yes. I think there's a case to be made for Green being their best album. Certainly this late-80s period is peak REM. Having only ever seen them in enormous settings, I envy having seen them a little more up-close.
ReplyDeleteNot sure its their best album but I'm happy to listen to a case for it. It's the end of the first cycle I think, from Murmur to Green. What came next is part 2, up to NAIHF and Bill's departure. But maybe in terms of a live band this is absolute peak R.E.M.
ReplyDeleteThey played Old Trafford cricket ground twice in the 00s, literally just up the road from me, and I didn't go on either occasion. Bit bemusing. In 2003 my daughter was just 1 month old at the time and in 2008 it was not long after Isaac had been in hospital with meningitis so maybe those 2 events explain it. But even so, R.E.M., up the road....