With the Trump administration defunding public radio and TV as part of their fight against a free press, R.E.M. are releasing a limited vinyl edition of Radio Free Europe with proceeds towards those affected. Good to know there are still good people with principles in the USA
“New” R.E.M. Release
by 44 Comments
Fine, but you clearly don’t get the concept of ‘scale’.
They’re re-selling a song no one bought and no one has ever heard as a… erm… ‘limited edition’.
I’ve got news for you… it’s always been a limited edition!
It’s like like those bits on Talk Sport where, after five minutes free advertising, a deserving charity gets, if the bets go their way, £500 from a Million Pound-a-day Bookmakers.
Or McDonalds, after feeding children crap 24/7 for 365 days, give £50,000 per annum to youth football.
REM come, I suspect, from an honourable place… but they are also as thick as mince.
Giving the current US administration the finger so publicly has got fuck all in common with Talk Sport adverts.
It was track one, side one, on an album which sold 600,000 copies in the US & UK in its first 8 years (I don’t have data to hand for global sales or the next 34 years, but I imagine it has shifted a few more copies since) plus a further 250,000+ sales of various best ofs.
That’s stretching “no one bought and no one has ever heard” a bit thin.
Trolling, innit?
I can remember the first time I heard it. It was a video of a live performance shown on The Tube. I bought the album on the strength of that once seen video the very next day. I can’t say I regretted it. Quite the opposite I continued buying their albums as they appeared for some time afterwards. I also remember seeing them headline at Glastonbury in 1999. A fair bit of ‘scale’ there as far as I remember it.
As an aside I am struggling to see how this reaction to what I think everyone here would consider a pretty far from ideal American administration could in anyway be considered as a measure of the participants intellectual prowess.
This is why you da man, Mr P – an intellectual response rather than a visceral one.
I’d call it a typical response from anyone who isn’t and I quote “as thick as mince”.
I don’t know why mince has this reputation. I find it no less intelligent than soya.
Also is it pork, beef or lamb mince and does this also include Quorn? It’s a headscratcher to be sure.
I always assumed its was an overtly effeminate walk.
REM ‘thick as mince’? What an extraordinarily crass statement based more, I suspect, on a desire to provoke than any specific evidence. At least REM have nailed their colours to the mast and have done something positive and constructive, however tokenistic it may prove to be. And re-releasing Radio Free Europe in support of, er, Radio Free Europe and other public service broadcasters which the Orange Moron is starving of funding and ultimately a voice of defiance in his bid to turn the US into a fascist state – well, not much to argue against there that I can see.
I’m curious what satisfaction you have got from 10+ years of telling everyone here that they are a bunch of stupid bastards? Like Prince Phillip on a mission to Lesotho. Can you just stick to talking about the music you like, because that’s more interesting, you have good taste as far as I can tell.
If I’m considered a ‘stipid bastard’ by someone so gratuitously narrow-minded, I’ll wear it as a badge of honour.
See also: Dodger.
I’ve never understood which Dodgers. Tax dodgers, draft dodgers, Brooklyn Dodgers? We need to be told.
Whatever the virtues of what REM are doing here, it’s got to be a better use of time and energy than following dai, a completely harmless human being you’ve presumably never met, round this blog continually trying to get a rise out of him 🙄
Not sure I’d put it quite like Deram (nobody could) but releasing a limited edition vinyl is hardly sticking it to the man, is it?
Didn’t REM sign the biggest recording deal ever ever, 80 million dollars or something?
One of the best bands ever they are but unless they’ve made some “bad investments” I imagine there’s still a few bob in their accounts left….
One of the finest concerts I’ve ever seen was REM at Hammersmith, the highlight was, of course, Radio Free Europe. The lyrics still resonate today –
“Mumble jumble radio’s gonna stay
Reason schumble cccrr gray
Put that, schmoot that gugging wall
That isn’t Bobbie Gentry at all
Radio station do it yourself
Callin out meal transit
Callin out meal transit
Radio Free Europe Radio
Stipe at his best…
…sentiments to which we can all relate, I’m sure…
Leave Meat Transit Alone!
While he sometimes makes good points, DD has the unfortunate habit of slathering them with ill-thought through nonsense.
How one of the more intelligent and articulate major bands of the last 40 years can be dismissed as being ‘thick as mince’ is beyond me
Surely the point is that we consistently rise to the bait!
Yep I just logged in to make exactly this point but in the face of such a moronic and wrong-headed response to Dai’s post it’s completely predictable that DDs comment would suck most of the air out of at least the immediate responses. Perhaps that’s the point? If so I think it is entirely permissible to call it ‘trolling’. It’s a particularly singular and dumb hill to choose to die on but there’s nowt as queer as folk, except prog of course which is downright weird. 😉
My word! You are a card, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so…
You are Sidney Greenstreet and I claim my £5.
I’ll tiptoe quietly off but take away some downright silly content doesn’t DD have a point re millionaires (perhaps the second best band of all time) releasing a limited vinyl in response to Trump’s moronic attempts to shackle the
free press?
I don’t know about that, but I for one quite like the fact that DD has always seemed unconstrained by the conventional boundaries of logic and meaning.
Contributors should be able to achieve that without the need to be offensive…
(Come to think of it: where is Moose?)
That this influential and widely read forum is discussing this means it’s going to spread like wildfire to at least err…10 people then pfft. So watch out Trumpers.
Yes DD has a point about the futility of re-releasing a piece of music as a response to the actions of the Trump administrations de-funding of public broadcasters in the USA. All the rest of it is couched in terms that can be deemed to be unnecessary and done to illicit a defensive response. Trolling. Do I care overly much. No. Just making a point.
Why are millionaires not allowed to protest?
They’ve got shortbread, with caramel and chocolate – what more could they possibly want?
Yeah, better to do absolutely nothing like 99% of acts.
Releasing a limited vinyl is certainly better than doing nothing… not a lot better mind you.
Like I said the ensuing publicity may encourage others to do similar things. As Peter Gabriel says “You can blow out a candle, but you can’t blow out a fire …”
Be great if a real anti Trump movement got traction, this is a guy after all who is trying to take over the country I live in
@fitterstoke
@pencilsqueezer
A real “joker in the pack” as the saying has it
Come to think of it: where is Moose? Anyone heard from him?
Anyhow, back to the music, here’s the previously unheard by – let’s say – a million people, 2025 remix by Jacknife Lee. One of five tracks on the EP.
Regardless of REM’s (and mince’s) intellectual prowess, bravo to them for representing at least some form of opposition to Trump, a man who seems to be getting more ghastly and chaotic by the day.
From this side of the pond, it appears that he is surrounded by a cabal of sycophants who nod along with any of his half-baked schemes. Tax foreign films (how would that even work?) because they’re “a threat to national security”? “Yes, boss. Great idea, boss.” Tell Canadians they should give up all their history, heritage, and national pride to become just another state of the US? “Brilliant, boss! They’d be mad not to!” Etc., etc.
No, releasing a limited version of a song that’s far from their best known is hardly the most powerful form of opposition, but at least REM are making a stand. Where is the real resistance to Trump? Other than Bernie Sanders, a handful of lesser politicians, and a couple of judges, nobody else seems to standing in DJT’s way as he turns a once-great country into a dangerous laughing stock.
I don’t suppose the members of R.E.M. have anything to lose by criticising the orange bufoon as, frankly, I doubt they need to worry about topping up their pensions. Not that Peter Buck ever seems to stop working.
Not to be repetitive, but – the outrage is the point.
Sucking the oxygen of of the current news cycle while doing something reprehensible elsewhere.
I saw 2 members of R.E.M. playing in the Minus 5 a few years ago (Buck and Mills), 3 if you count Scott McGaughey who was effectively the 4th member after Bill Berry quit. Berry has also played with them a few times
They just love playing live, yes they have lots of money, but they wouldn’t have earned much on that or any other tours they do under other names.