← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Deadbeat Club Edition, Part One
01:00:28
The story of how two very different bands came to define the boundaries of New Wave rock from the college town of Athens, Georgia
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Podcast Host Intro
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Chris Melanthe
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanthe, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. In early 1980, a single materialized on the charts that was so unusual it would inspire a former Beatle.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Rock Lobster.
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Chris Melanthe
More on that former Beatle in a moment. As for the song, which dated back to 1978, it was called Rock Lobster, and it was by a five person band who named themselves after a collection of letters and numbers designating both a 1950s military bomber and, more to the point, a 1960s bouffant hairdo. The B52s. On first listen, the B52's rock lobster was a cavalcade of kitsch, but it also had the edge of punk, and its quirky surf guitar and primitive keyboards connected it to early rock and roll. It was old and new at the same time, the leading edge of rock's new wa. A little over three years after Rock Lobster peaked on Billboard's Hot 100, well shy of the top 40, another band that emerged in the aftermath of punk made its Hot 100 debut. By now, new wave pop was all over the charts, but nothing on the radio in 1983 sounded much like this band either. It was by four men who also named themselves, with a string of letters, the abbreviation for rapid eye movement, the dream phase of a deep night's sleep. Remember radio free Europe? REM's first pop hit peaked even lower on the charts than Rock Lobster had, but its rustic, chiming sound would influence a generation of rock bands. What did the B52s and REM have in common, other than band names that resembled coats and hits that weren't setting the charts on fire, at least not yet. They both hailed from a college town about 60 miles from Atlanta, the city and county of Athens, Georgia, and both groups were pivotal to the development of what would later be called alternative rock. Go Living in your own private Idaho Living in your own private Idaho on.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
The ground like a wild potato.
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Chris Melanthe
As the B52s and REM grew up alongside each other, they served as twin ambassadors for Athens as a Southern hotbed of new wave rock and outsider art. They would, even, by the 90s, appear on each other's records.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Let me know what it's new and to me.
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Chris Melanthe
Yet they sounded utterly distinct from each other and marked not only Athens music but all of new wave as more an attitude and a musical ethic than a genre. One group was signed to a major label right from its debut album. The other one spent five albums on an independent before graduating to the majors. One group were avatars of kitsch, accessible tour guides to post John Waters junk culture. The other were mysterious, elliptical, often indecipherable, but with a hard edged backbone that enabled them to compete with the top rock acts on the radio.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
And the train conductor says take a break driver, take a break.
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Chris Melanthe
Also notable in this pride month of June, front people in both REM and the B52 presented unapologetic Sui generis, sexual identity and even a sense of camp in entirely different packages. Long before these performers came out publicly, they were living gender fluidity in a rock context. Decades before terms like non, binary or transgender were commonly understood in popular American culture. Others like youe, much as there Is now, no one way to present one's identity, these two bands from the same southern city showed that there was no one way to be alternative. By the end of the 1980s they became platinum sellers without compromising their sense of musical adventure. Each arrived at chart dominance via different routes. REM's was a steady climb from album to album as American rock gradually moved in their direction while the B52s underwent a mid decade crisis that nearly ended their existence as a band. In this two part episode of Hit Parade, we will explore the rise of these two bands from Athens, Georgia, the B52s and R.E.M. how they helped to invent swathes of what was first called New Wave and how they sowed the seeds for what by the 90s was called alternative rock. In the early 80s when they broke Billboard had fewer charts to track, different flavors of rock and no modern or alternative rock chart at all. And what the B52s and REM were doing was so new, radio programmers didn't entirely know what to make of it. Which helps explain why their early singles charted so modestly on America's primary hit barometer, the Hot 100. And that in this first part of our episode is where your Hit Parade marches today, the week ending July 23rd, 1983, when R.E.M. quietly debuted on the Hot 100 all the way down at number 90 with their first ever single, Radio Free Europe, Just seven spots below the B52s who were peaking in the chart's low 80s. With their seventh single and only third minor hit overall, Legal Tender. This episode of our show will be something new for us on Hit Parade. It's not only going to be our first multi part episode it's also our first show where we're focusing closely on alternative rock again. Alt rock didn't even have its own chart in Billboard, the music industry bible, until the late 1980s. Of course, by then, this left of the dial music, sometimes called post punk, sometimes college rock, most often new wave, had been influencing popular culture for about a decade and a half. But before it could reach that level of radio ubiquity and platinum sales, the industry, the bands and the fans had to agree upon what to call it, because consensus was not what alternative music was ever about.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
But now.
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Chris Melanthe
That's proto punker's the New York Dolls, with Personality Crisis, the lead track on their now legendary 1973 self titled debut album. The Dolls, like Iggy and the Stooges before them, were punk. Before anybody knew what to call this music. Eventually the group would come to be called glam punk, not least because the Dolls performed in drag, complete with platform heels and bouffant wigs. Four years before the B52s would do the same. The New York Dolls were playing with gender presentation and identity ahead of generations of other rock and pop acts, even as they played what to modern ears sounds like a pretty classic form of tough minded punk rock. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about punk is how quickly it fused with other genres. Just in terms of nomenclature, a fairly select group of acts are only called punk. Sure, some first wave punk was simply that. For example, Queen's New York band the Ramones, whose two and three minute songs sometimes even had the word punk right in the title, To England's Scandalous the Sex Pistols, who were punk in attitude as well as in sound. But from the jump, punk, which simply stood for boiling down rock to its core elements and as few chords as possible, moving away from the bloat of early to mid-70s rock was getting hybridized, which helps explain how splinter movements like post punk and new wave came to be in the first place. Whether it was the economical, twitchy art punk of Talking Heads. Or the more pop derived punk of Blondie, like the Ramones and Talking Heads. Blondie, led by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, cut their teeth at New York club cbgb. But they gravitated toward a range of genres, including power pop songs like the Nerves Hanging on the Telephone. The B52 would take cues from all of these splinter movements. When they formed in 1977, their formation one night at a Chinese restaurant in Athens that served a potent rum cocktail happened far from the punk mecca of New York City. And to hear Kate Pearson tell it, Athens, home to the main campus of the University of Georgia, was not the likeliest place for a post punk movement to take root. In an interview with People magazine celebrating the B52's 40th anniversary as a band, Pearson said, it's funny. People think of Athens as music central, but it really had nothing happening. It was a farmer's town. The university was very separate and it didn't really have a studenty downtown. There were two feed stores, there was a farmer's hardware, unquote, added her bandmate Fred Schneider. Quote, we brought our own ideas. Schneider and Pearson were transplants to Georgia. Both were born and raised in different parts of New Jersey before moving to Athens, Fred to study at the university, and Kate, just after college, to live on a nearby farm with her friends. There they met Athens natives Keith Strickland and and siblings Ricky and Cindy Wilson. Cindy told rolling stone in 1980 that what made Athens exceptional politically and culturally was the university for a Georgia town. Quote, it's real liberal, mainly because of the college, Fred Schneider added. It's such a loose town, the wilder the better. I mean, I would dress crazier for work than I do on stage. To hear the locals tell it, from the start, there was no one Athens sound, which made it an ideal place to nurture a range of music, Pearson told People magazine. There really was barely a music scene, so we weren't influenced by local music. The band members were aware of punk, like the Sex Pistols. In fact, Kate later lamented in Rolling Stone magazine missing the Pistols only show in Atlanta because she had to work a night show at her crummy job at a local Athens newspaper. But the five Friends musical influences ranged even more widely than punk. They loved classic pop, but especially around 1976 when the Billboard charts were dominated by the likes of the Captain and Tenille and Barry Manilow, their tastes were too eclectic for the radio. We didn't really listen to the top 40 ever, Schneider said. We listened to the Velvet Underground, but also James Brown. I love Motown and my favorite band of all time is Martha and the Vandellas. This was the other side of the B52's equal equation. The 1970s were a good time for reevaluation of late 50s and early 60s music. Punk had brought back tight two minute rock and roll, and in mainstream culture, 50s and 60s influences were running rampant in the decade of Grease, American Graffiti and Happy days. But the B52s specifically gravitated towards certain forms of 50s and especially 60s pop. Like the Ramones, they loved girl group Such as the Ronettes. They also liked kitschy pop like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, OR 3 chord garage pop like question Mark and the mysterious you're Always Laughing way down at Me. All of these influences, the girl group harmonies, the keening organs, the party vibe and the skeletal punk sound would not only make their way into the B52's music, it would later influence the sound of new wave itself. By the 80s, numerous new wave bands would mine 60s sounds, from the Go Gos to Software Cell. But back in 1977, the B52s were helping to invent this sound from whole cloth. Recorded in early 1978, their first single sounded like a blueprint for new wave. Motion in the ocean. That's the original version of Rock Lobster, issued in 1978 by the tiny independent label DB Records, based in Atlanta. By indie standards, this first B52 single was a sensation. The DB version of Rock Lobster sold roughly 20,000 copies, and its sound was truly original in more ways than one. Three vocalists all singing different parts, including a segment in the middle where they implore everyone dancing to drop down to the floor. Fred Schneider's vocals were recited in rhythm, more than sung in a kind of post punk sprechesein, as the Germans call it. Kate Pearson's and Cindy Wilson's masked vocals featured high girl group harmonies and imagine noises of sea creatures, some of which Schneider made up like the bikini Whale. The lyrics were a gender flipped reimagining of Annette Funicello style beach party culture, with lines about boys in bikinis and girls on surfboards. Pearson played Farfisa organ, emulating the 60s acts they loved. And finally the guitar, a guilelessly original kind of post punk surf music on a mose right electric played by Ricky Wilson. Despite his interest in surf guitar, Wilson was no virtuosic shredder like legendary guitarists Dick Dale or Link Ray. In fact, Wilson's guitar often had broken or missing strings. Bandmate Keith Strickland, a sometime guitarist and himself, claims he would break a string on Ricky's guitar and then not replace it. So both Strickland and Wilson would set up the mose rite with an open tuning, essentially allowing them to play both low, almost bass notes and the lead notes at the same time. In the B52's early years, Strickland was the band's drummer and Wilson essentially handled guitar duties by himself. When Ricky Wilson came up with the surf riff for Rock Lobster, he told his sister and Strickland quote, I've just written the most stupid guitar riff Ever. But that so called stupid riff was a kind of accidental genius and it powered the song. Playing in their small Bohemia of Athens, Georgia, the B52s were both out of time and ahead of the curve. The single was recorded around the same time that other new wave acts in both New York and London were exploring elements of this same sound. For example, New Yorker's Blondie, right around the same time put their own spin on girl group on their debut album with in the Flesh.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
This Boy Is Mine, I couldn't resist you, I'm Not Dead.
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Chris Melanthe
And the sound of Farfisa organ was spreading all over post punk music including including the first two albums by UK premier Angry Young Man Elvis Costello. Rock Lobster was all of these elements at once. It was a party record with Punk Krev. On the strength of the DB single of rock lobster, the B52s drew interest from other labels. After moving to New York City and befriending CBGB regulars the talking heads, the B52 signed with talking Heads manager. He got them contracts with two of the more adventurous major labels in the U.S. warner Brothers Records and in the UK and other territories, Island Records. Thanks in part to their affiliation with Island Records, the band recorded their debut album with island founder and producer Chris Blackwell, the legendary impresario who broke Bob Marley in the UK and the US and would later sign U2. Blackwell produced the B52's album at his Compass Point studio in the Bahamas. The band later admitted they were surprised it didn't sound fuller or more expensive. Keith Strickland told a UK journalist quote, we just thought you go into a studio and you think you'll sound bigger and better or whatever, you know. But Chris really wanted to keep it stripped down and very minimal.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Why don't you dance with me I'm not no love I.
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Chris Melanthe
It was minimal in indeed. Released in the summer of 79, the B52's self titled debut album featured a lean nine songs, all some form of new wave party tracks including the strutting Dance this Mess around and the skeletal punky 52 girls.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
And Money and Me.
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Chris Melanthe
The self titled B52's album also featured a re recording of Rock Lobster that was longer and harder edged. Where the DB Records version was speedy and only 4 1/2 minutes long, the Warner Bros version was nearly 7 minutes long. At a time in the late 70s when FM radio and album oriented rock dominated, longer tracks were no longer commercial suicide. The Warner version of Lobster closed with a Gale Force rave up egged on by screams from Fred and Cindy Ricky tears into a slamming version of the guitar solo. Released as a Warner Brothers single In the summer of 79, rock lobster was either a massive success or a pop underperformer, depending on your expectations. In the United Kingdom, it scraped the top 40, reaching number 37 in August of 1979. In America, lobster took considerably longer to break, not even making the Hot 100 until the spring of 1980 and only reaching a peak of number 56 in May of that year. Not bad for such a cutting edge single by a brand new band. Of course, by the end of the 70s, bands that had cut their teeth at CBGB were starting to score more serious hits. The Talking Heads and Patti Smith scored their first top 40 pop hits in 1978, and by 1979, the B52's peers in Blondie were landing chart toppers that sounded like this. Even newer, more commercial new wave bands were topping the charts like the Knack. Still, Warner Bros. Had to be happy with the B52s. Their album was both a critical and commercial success. On the Village Voices, Paz and Jop poll at the end of 1979, the album the B52s placed seventh ranked alongside such classics as Elvis Costello's Armed Forces, Donna Summer's Bad Girls, and the American version of the Clash's self titled debut. In fact, not counting that reissued US Clash album, the B52s was the only album by a new band in the top 10 of that critics poll. It also sold exceptionally for a debut album, the LP Road Billboard's album chart for more than a year. And by the fall of 1980, the B52s had gone gold for sales of a half million copies on its way to platinum. Earlier in 1980, the band were even invited to perform on Saturday Night Live. Ladies and gentlemen, the B52. We were at a party.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Fell in.
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Chris Melanthe
The deep, lover reached in and granted, This is probably around the time a former Beatle first came across Rock Lobster and he was wowed. In one of the final interviews before his murder in 1980, John Lennon told Rolling Stone, I was at a dance club one night in Bermuda. Upstairs they were playing disco, and downstairs I suddenly heard Rock lobster by the B52s for the first time, it sounds just like Yoko's music. Lennon was not only biased toward his wife, he was correct. Kate Pearson and Cindy Wilson were major fans of Yoko Ono, And on Rock Lobster, their sea creature sounds were direct homages to Ono's vocal style. When Lennon came back from Bermuda, he listened more closely to the B52s in his own words, not only the freshness of their sound but also their gender parody as a band inspired him to both record again and work with his wife as a peer on an album for the first time.
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John Lennon
I dug out the old records we'd made. I dug out the B52s and I talked to my assistant who tried to turn me on to them 18 months before, but I said, no, I'm not into the music now. I didn't want to hear anything. He was trying to play me Pretenders and madness and all that stuff, and I didn't want to listen to it. And I said, give me some more of this. What's going on out there? He brought all this, you know, cookie, whatever you want to call it, stuff in and we looked at each other and we said, haha. They found finally caught up to where what we were trying to do all the time, which is another form of expression.
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Chris Melanthe
Yeah, I held her in the chair.
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John Lennon
And said, listen to this, Rock Lobster. Listen to this stuff. But I wouldn't have done it if we hadn't done it together. That was the point which, which your insecurity makes you say that. But the fact is, if I couldn't have worked with her, I wouldn't have bothered.
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Chris Melanthe
The result was Lennon's first album in five years, his final recording and his only album length collaboration with Yoko. Double Fantasy. Ono's tracks from Double Fantasy even sounded like New Wave responses to the B52's sound. The B52s were honored to have inspired both Land Lennon and Ono, even though they only read Lennon's comments after the former Beatle was killed in December 1980. As for the band, by late 1980 they were already onto their second album, Wild Planet, which, like its predecessor, was executive produced by Chris Blackwell and would ride the charts for about half a year before going gold in 1981. Pressure's getting bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Now you're playing.
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Chris Melanthe
Like its predecessor, however, Wild Planet generated only one charting single, and it was a fairly minor hit. Private Idaho, a shimmying party track which a decade later would inspire the title of the Gus Van Sant River Phoenix movie, My Own Private Idaho managed to get only as high on the Hot 100 as number 74 in late 1980. The catalyst for New Wave's commercial renaissance in the United States would not arrive until late 1981. That catalyst was the launch of MTV, which we talked about in last month's episode of Hit Parade. Oddly, as visually striking and colorful as they were, the B52s had not done much with the music video art form. None of the tracks on either of their first two albums had formal music videos, even as other New Wave acts of the period like Devoid were prophetically making videos in 1979 and 1980, even before MTV existed. Now Whip it as the video age kicked off, 1981 and 82 should have been an age of of conquest for the B52s. But this was when the band's run of good luck began to turn. The B52's management had gotten the band's friend David Byrne of Talking Heads to agree to produce their third album, 1982's Mesopotamia. Rather than being a triumph, the album was a mess, done in by label pressure and Byrne's own attempts to move the band toward a heavily overdubbed, percussion driven sound better suited to Talking Heads and his own work with Brian Eno on albums like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. What was intended to be a full length B52's album was aborted midway through the sessions and ultimately turned into an EP of just six tracks. And amazingly for a new wave album in 1982, none of the Mesopotamia songs spawned music videos, denying the B52s a chance to capitalize on the MTV explosion. In fact, the B52s would not release their first official MTV video until 1983's Whammy. Their full length album, Comeback Whammy was a decent seller. It reached the top 30, and while it would not be certified for years, it ultimately went gold. Still, even with a glossy music video for the song Legal Tender, which was built around catchy synthesizers echoing the sound of current pop, the single could only manage a hot 100 peak of number 81. This in the year that Eurythmics and Culture Club were breaking big on the US Charts at a time when androgyny was doing better than ever on the hit parade, the B52's campy and queer friendly music should have been a better fit. That's when the B52s went on a long hiatus for reasons that would not be revealed for another two years. Coincidentally, 1983 is when another band hailing from the same southern town and just a few years younger than the B52s, began breaking on the charts. And like their big brothers and sisters, this band started on a tiny regional label and at first sounded much closer to punk. That's Radio Free Europe, the debut single on Hib tone Records by R.E.M. perhaps the most famous foursome ever to emerge from Athens, Georgia, introduce the members.
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Podcast Host Intro
Of the Band Mike Mills, he's the bass player, Bill Barry, the drummer Bill, Michael Stipe the singer Michael and me, Peter Bug.
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Chris Melanthe
REM's ties to the Athens scene were even stronger than the B52s. All four members had moved either to Athens or to nearby Macon, Georgia in their teenage years, and they were serious appreciators of an eclectic range of music. In many ways, the sound of REM scarcely resembled that of the B52s, reinforcing Kate Pearson's and Fred Schneider's point that Athens had no. 1 sound. What the two bands had in common, however, was their fearlessness and an utterly original synthesis of numerous influences. And make no mistake, when it came to rem, the influences ran deep. The Velvet Underground are forebears for a slew of bands. As I noted earlier, the B52s themselves cited the Velvets as a key influence. And Brian Eno's famous quote about how all 30,000 people who bought the Velvets debut album formed a band is so oft repeated, it's become a cliche to many musicians and music appreciators. Even before the Stooges and and the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, especially in its years fronted by Lou Reed, are the true inventors of punk and alternative music. By the way, late 70s, the Velvets LPs, which had never sold all that well in the first place, had largely gone out of print. REM guitarist Peter Buck reminds fans of this often in interviews. In Buck's early 20s, the Velvet Underground was music for crate diggers and hardcore music nerds. And that's how Buck and future singer Michael stipe met in 1979, when Buck was a clerk at an Athens music shop called Wuxtree Records. It actually started as mild annoyance. All the deep cut albums that Buck would set aside for himself at the shop Stipe would dig out and buy. Eventually the two bonded over their shared love of the Velvets and CBGB rock legends. Telling. More than a quarter century later, when Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder inducted them into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, Vedder complimented the band by saying, quote, peter Buck plays guitar like a guy who worked in a record store store. Buck's signature guitar chimes, marked by broken arpeggiated chords, would later be called jangle, a rock critic term that dated to the 70s. Among the places Buck had picked up the jangle sound was such 70s power pop acts as the Alex Chilton fronted Memphis band Big Star. Buck's sound would also be compared by some critics to 60s hitmakers the Birds specifically Rick Player Roger McGinn. But Buck himself disputed this, claiming he was more influenced by the version of the Birds that was led by country rock legend Graham Parsons. Buck particularly loved Parsons later solo work with country rock legend Emmylou Harris. The band's early producers were themselves fans and players of jangly guitar. Mitch Easter played with North Carolina band let's Active, and Don Dixon was a singer, songwriter and producer from South Carolina. In a 1998 VH1 interview, Dixon said Buck's guitar playing and Mike Mills's bass playing were intuitive, almost naive. Mike played bass parts that were not traditional bass parts, and Peter used what he knew about guitar, which was kind of limited to really great effect, unquote. In other words, like Ricky Wilson and his unusual mose right guitar tunings for the B52s, Buck & Mills were using their relative inexperience to create something novel. As for Michael Stipe, he, along with Buck, was a student of punk and post punk, with particular admiration for the minimal, catchy British art punk band Wide. And as a lyricist. Stipes impressionistic images drew heavily if indirectly from his favorite album of all time, horses, the 1975 debut from androgynous punk priestess Patti Smith stars because when he looked up they started to.
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John Lennon
Slip. Then he put his head in.
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Chris Melanthe
The crooks of his arms and he.
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Mike Mills
Started.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
To drift, drift.
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Chris Melanthe
To. When they began playing Athens clubs, the fourth 40 watt in 1980 and Tyrone's in 1981, they were already drawing hundreds of people a night. REM issued its first single in 1981 on the short lived Athens label, hip tone at a speed so jittery it could almost be termed punk. When Radio Free Europe later appeared on REM's full length debut album in 1983, the track would be considerably slower. But what fans also noticed right away was that Stipe, who did not publish his lyrics, sang phrases that were almost incomprehensible. Raving station calling on in Transit. The single's B side, a song called Sitting still, would also wind up on the 83 album, but it was even harder to parse. Its pre chorus seemed to be about a woman named Katie buying, or maybe barring a kitchen, up to five Katie Boxer kisses. For rem Stipes open to interpretation. Lyrics were a feature, not a bug, and they continued on the band's first non single release, a 1982 episode called Elliptically enough, Chronic Town. Chronic town was also REM's first release on IRS Records, a quasi independent label founded by Miles Copeland. And as Mike Mills told VH1 signing to a label with more limited resources was more or less by.
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Mike Mills
Design. We wanted two things. Once we started approaching the business or the business started approaching us. We wanted to never be in debt and we wanted to have total control over everything we did. IRS was the perfect company for that because they wouldn't spend any money on anybody.
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Chris Melanthe
Anyway. During the 1980s, IRS was the little label that could. It had distribution via major labels including A and M Records and mca, but it was indie minded and scrappy, generating hits from a spate of new wave acts from the Go Go's to fine Young Cannibals. And Miles Copeland was part of a music business family. Brother Ian Copeland was a music promoter and booking agent for many of the day's top new wave acts. And oh yeah, his other brother Stuart Copeland was drummer for the Police. Of course, by 1982 a version of new wave had finally broken on the US charts, fueled by MTV and led by UK synthesizer bands like the Human League and A Flock of Seagulls. However, REM issued this form of new wave. In his earliest interviews, the opinionated Peter Buck openly scoffed at bands like the Seagulls. The sound REM was building was a completely different branch of the post punk new wave family tree, rooted in Americana and foregrounded by the interplay of Buck's guitar, Bill Berry's cracking drums, Mike Mills's loping bass lines and keening harmonies, and Michael Stipes unconventional voice and cryptic lyrics. This slower version of Radio Free Europe was track one on Murmur, REM's full length 1983 debut album. Produced by the team of Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. The album's cover depicted kudzu, the rapacious weed common to much of the southeastern United States. While Stipe's lyrics remained difficult to decipher, when he wanted to, he could offer a clear romantic lyric, as on the album's centerpiece ballad, talk about the Passion. The arrival of Murmur in The spring of 1983 also heralded the the arrival of Athens rock and jangle pop. In general, REM were the most popular avatars of a sound that was associated with the American south, even when it wasn't from Athens specifically. For a While in the mid-1980s, the sound of American indie rock was the sound of chiming arpeggiated chords and a kind of doom dance rhythm, whether from acclaimed actors Jonathan's Band Pylon, Mitch Easter's own band from Winston Salem, North Carolina, let's Active, Or a group led by Michael Sticher sister Linda Stipe and featuring guitar from A young Matthew Sweet. The Athens band O O K. As for Murmur itself, it charted surprisingly well. Debut. Debuting on the Billboard album chart in mid May of 83, Murmur managed to scrape the top 40 by the summer. In mid August, Murmur peaked at number 36 on the album chart. The same week, the Radio Free Europe single reached number 78 on the Hot 100. All this for an album and single that sounded atypical for 1983 and were issued by an independent label. And with a shy singer who was hard to decipher in live performances, Michael Stipe would all but hide behind his hair a halo of curly tresses that covered his forehead and sometimes half his face. When R.E.M played NBC's Late Night with David Letterman. Stipe actually hid behind Peter Buck when Letterman approached the band to say hi. But the performance was indelible the night of the band's TV debut, October 6, 1983, Murmur had been riding the Billboard album chart for nearly half the.
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David Letterman
Year. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I mentioned earlier, the Los Angeles Times just named this album one of the five best released so far in 1983. It's called Murmur. It's by a group of gentlemen from Athens, Georgia called rem. And we're happy to have them making their national television debut with us tonight. Please welcome.
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Chris Melanthe
Rem. That wasn't the only way REM exceeded expectations in 1983. At the end of the year, the critics in Rolling stone named Murmur 1983's Album of the Year, a giant killer. The magazine's critics placed REM's full length debut above Michael Jackson's Thriller, The Police's Synchronicity, And U2's war. While they were on the Letterman show in the fall of 83, REM performed a new song that didn't even have a formal title.
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David Letterman
Yet. Now, the song you're gonna do now is a. I understand is a brand new song. You want to explain the name of it or anything about.
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Mike Mills
It? It doesn't have.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
One. It's too.
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David Letterman
New. Too new to be named. All right, are you gentlemen ready? Thank you very much for being here, folks. Nice meeting you guys. Ladies and gentlemen.
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Chris Melanthe
Rem. That new track would eventually wind up with the arch title South Central Rail, a phrase Stipe never actually sings in the song. It could just as easily have been called.
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Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Sorry, Sorry.
- [51:51]
Chris Melanthe
Sorry. More important, South Central Rain served as a preview of REM's quickly recorded sophomore album, Reckoning. Released in in April 1984, Reckoning became an even bigger hit, reaching number 27 by June. And riding the album chart for just over a year. Unfortunately, IRS's efforts to get REM to the next level didn't bear much fruit. South Central Rain could only manage a no. 85 peak on the Hot 100 in the summer of 84, and the follow up, Don't Go Back to Rockville, didn't make the pop chart at all. REM were ready for a shakeup. Like its predecessor, Murmur, Reckoning had been produced by the team of Don Dixon and Mitch Easter. For album number three, R.E.M. would travel to London to record with British producer Joe Boyd. A titan in the UK folk scene, Boyd had discovered, mentored and produced Fairport Convention and Nick Drake I Could have.
- [53:15]
Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Been. But what Are these things.
- [53:22]
Chris Melanthe
From REM's third album was recorded during a cold London winter that tried the band's patience and almost led to their breakup. It was the first and last album the foursome would record overseas. Ironically enough, the album R.E.M. recorded with Boyd in 1985 would be their most American sounding to date, a meditation on rustic Southern folk and rock that was was more ruminative than anything they'd done before. As dark and insular as much of Fables of the Reconstruction sounded, it also featured REM's strongest attempts yet to produce bright, commercial sounding radio hits. The album was led by an up tempo, festive single about driving the back roads of America. Can't Get There From Here. IRS Records was so intent on improving the band's profile, the video for Can't Get There even featured subtitles. MTV viewers could finally sing along with Michael Stipe's abstruse lyrics. Lines like Bad to swallow you whole and Philomath they know the lowdown. For a second single, the band went with Driver 8, an infectious classic rock song with an evocative, unusually straightforward lyric from Stipe about a workman laboring on a southern railroad line and a Peter Buck guitar hook reminiscent of vintage Neil Young. Each REM album on IRS Records was doing a little bit better than the last. Fables of the Reconstruction virtually matched the peak position of reckoning, hitting number 28 in the summer of 85 on Billboard's album rock chart. Can't Get There from here reached number 14 and driver eight hit number 22, the biggest radio hits the band had scored to date. But on Top 40 radio, still then dominated by synth pop, REM were nowhere to be found. So IRS sought other avenues to promote the band, including a TV show the label itself itself produced for mtv. Called IRS Presents the Cutting Edge, the show featured a range of independent and college friendly rock bands, some of which were not on IRS itself, including a very young Red Hot Chili Peppers. But REM Were given a prominent.
- [56:32]
Podcast Host Intro
Showcase. You can't really expect to be inspired or hit the right thing all the time. Rather than force it and really push something to try to make it a right song, you do it and if it doesn't come out right in about 20 minutes, really it doesn't work. I read something that Sky Saxon, the guy that was in the Seeds, said, and he said any song that takes more than 20 minutes to write is not worth.
- [56:55]
Chris Melanthe
Writing. During most of 1983 and all of 1984 and 85, REM were the face of Athens rock and their older siblings. The B52s were off the radar almost entirely. From 1979-83, the B52s had been very prolific, releasing three studio albums, a remix album and an EP. But after 1983's Whammy, the B52s went more than three years without releasing any new music. Late in 1980 1985, the band finally revealed why. In Part two of our Deadbeat Club Edition. We'll talk about how the B52s faced tragedy and came came back. We'll reveal what finally made them and REM hit.
- [58:00]
Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Makers. This one goes out to the one I.
- [58:04]
Chris Melanthe
Love. This one goes out to the one I've left behind. And we'll talk about how the launch of a new Billboard chart helped fuel the their success just before the 90s version of alternative rock took over the Hit Parade. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Special thanks to critic and reporter Annie Zaleski, whose research on both REM and the B52s were invaluable to me. Papers by her and by Grace Elizabeth Hale at this year's Pop Conference in Seattle provided major inspiration for this episode. My Hit Parade producer is Chris Baruba and we had helped this episode from Danielle Hewitt and Dan Berugo. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas. Our senior producer is TJ Raphael, and Steve Lichti is the executive producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris.
- [59:57]
Song Lyric or Chorus Singer
Melanchthon. Roam around the world Roam if you want to without wings, without wheels Roam if you want to Roam around the.