When R.E.M. broke up last week, I didn't feel the loss. When the White Stripes called it quits, sure. When Sony announced it was firing Sam Raimi and rebooting the Spider-Man franchise, Jesus; I didn't answer my phone for a day and a half. Instead, I just sat alone in my apartment and drank, cursing Topher Grace at the top of my lungs. There really wasn't much else to do.
For the nerd, it is a painful moment of clarity when that object of his obsession (band, franchise, sports team, whatever) dies. He is faced with his impotence in the face of the infinitely distant. Such are the dangers of the modern world, when a particular and ever-growing group of otherwise frustrated hacks and losers allow themselves to become so emotionally invested in others' artistic works.
Now, I know a few music freaks, even one or two college-age kids who took the demise of R.E.M. like horse pill. I can feel it stick in his or her throat, and I can imagine the little twinge. I didn't have that reaction, despite the large expanse R.E.M. has staked in my life.
Until college, I had dismissed R.E.M. as uncool, even vaguely unsettling. When soul-searching, I am still haunted by memories of family road trips soundtracked by ""Shiny Happy People,"" played end on end for hours. My parents couldn't have possibly been that cruel... But then, on my last call home my mother, unprovoked, mentions that the sexy redhead from the B-52s guests in her favorite R.E.M. song and my hair stands on end.
Childhood traumas aside, the stunning, melancholic ""Nightswimming"" alone moves me to forgive R.E.M. for some of their worse tracks. Also taking into account their profound influence on the modern American socio-musical landscape, I can't honestly begrudge R.E.M. the unwholesome geek love they received. In a recent online column, Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called R.E.M. the ""band that invented indie."" Rolling Stone's frustratingly weak handle on that music scene notwithstanding, I find Sheffield's label spot on.
That R.E.M. may never have actually been an ‘independent' band is irrelevant. (I.R.S. Records was distributed by Universal and owned by Sting's manager.) It's no secret that the majority of the artists referred to as ‘indie' nowadays scarcely even bother pursuing the pretense of DIY upstart credibility. (Didn't Vampire Weekend score a Target ad last year? XL Recordings had better be treating those kids ‘crusts-cut-off' well.)
No, R.E.M. really created indie not by being on an independent label but by engineering its true DNA. Specifically, they established what would later become indie as ""the cult of cool."" Not insincere cool, by any means. The guys from R.E.M. must truly have loved the music of the innumerable bands they championed, from Minutemen to Charlie Pickett.
Only truly obsessive nerds would have bothered constantly name-dropping in big time interviews and headlining for bands they knew a large portion of their college-y fan base wouldn't dig. They, more than any band before them, were out-of-the-closet music geeks. Man, you can bet your ass that these guys cried their eyes out when D. Boon died—and not just because they had met the guy.
They were heroes, framers of the ‘Indie Constitution and Official Canon of Appropriate Influences.' Despite this, I have never really been much of a fan.
Sure, a few tracks from ""Chronic Town"" and ""Document"" had always floated around near the top of my ‘most-played' list. The vigorous, hard-rockin' (for R.E.M.) ""Exhuming McCarthy"" still ranks among my favorite songs, not least because of its crypto-political sloganeering (""Loyal to the Bank of America / Enemy met, I'm addressing the realpolitik."" )
Ultimately, though, my appreciation of R.E.M. was ruined by an early exposure to one of R.E.M.'s shaggier contemporaries. Judging from their AllMusic biography, you'd think that Husker Du had been R.E.M.'s closest rival in the battle for lordship over the folk punk underground, but R.E.M. were slightly left-of-center brains who wrote rewardingly mysterious jangle pop.
On the other hand, the Husker's music had pop elements but was off-kilter and ugly, all treble and chain smoking hack. I played it loud between the other underground/hardcore CDs I bought at the mall; I got lost in the music the same way a different kind of obsessive nerd might have gotten lost in Dungeons & Dragons.
Or maybe the way a young R.E.M. guitarist might have gotten lost in, say, Big Star. Of course, I had the good sense to become a fan of a band that had broken up years before I was born. I guess it's less painful that way.
Got questions? E-mail Alex at seraphin@wisc.edu
