r.e.m.
R.E.M.’s Bill Berry Is Back Behind the Kit in New Band
R.E.M. is a hard act to follow, which explains why drummer Bill Berry has never been in another full-time band since his 1997 departure — until now. Berry has teamed with Five Eight’s Mike Mantione in The Bad Ends, whose debut album, The Power and the Glory, will be released Jan. 20 on New West Records. The Bad Ends are rounded out by bassist Dave Domizi, keyboardist Geoff Melkonian and guitarist/mandolinist Christian Lopez. The project was initially a means to work on songs for a potential Mantione solo album, but a run-in with Berry in their shared home base of Athens, Ga., led to a series of jam sessions and a pivot to a group project. “In very early 2017, a chance pedestrian encounter in downtown Athens found me face to face with one Mike Mantione,” Berry recalls. “At that point it had...
Hector Tellez Jr: The Cuban Shaking Up America’s Rock Scene
Four years ago, Cuban-born musician Hector Tellez Jr. was living in Havana: playing local clubs several nights a week, delivering passionate performances of well-oiled melodic blues rock. His style, merging the grit of Muddy Waters wailing on electric guitars with the tender-hearted yet mysterious air of Jeff Buckley, was not always welcomed by the locals, however. “In Cuba, it’s a Spanish language country, so I struggled a bit singing rock songs in English,” Tellez Jr. tells SPIN on a recent FaceTime video call from a friend’s backyard, looking every bit the brooding rocker, save for some frequent smiles. He’s wearing a cut-off muscle tee that shows off a few tattoos and a pair of round-rimmed sunglasses that look straight out of the John Lennon playbook. “There were a lot of naysayers, p...
Every R.E.M. Album, Ranked
Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in an Athens, Georgia record store in January 1980, and that fortuitous moment spawned one of the defining ‘80s bands. Joined by the rhythm section of Bill Berry and Mike Mills, R.E.M. worked up a jangly yet esoteric sound – equal parts Velvet Underground and The Byrds — that quickly became their signature. Their ascent was remarkable: Each of the quartet’s first nine albums sold as much or more than the one before, turning them into household names in the ’90s. Berry’s retirement in 1997 marked the end of R.E.M.’s classic era, but the remaining trio carried on, recording five more albums that earned mixed reviews. But when the band finally disbanded in 2011, they left behind one of alternative rock’s most important catalogs, including 15 restlessly a...
Peter Buck and Kim Thayil Joined the Black Crowes to Cover R.E.M. and Velvet Underground
R.E.M.‘s Peter Buck and Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil joined the reunited The Black Crowes at their show in suburban Seattle at Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery Amphitheatre on Tuesday. Buck joined the band for a cover of “The One I Love,” and was joined by Thayil for a cover of The Velvet Underground‘s “Rock & Roll.” The show was the latest stop on the reunited Robinson’s tour. They’re playing their biggest hits and songs from their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker. Future dates include stops in Santa Barbara, Denver and London. The Crowes also just announced that they’ll be playing in Japan in November You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful peo...
R.E.M. Plot First Standalone CD Release of Debut EP Chronic Town
R.E.M. will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its classic, five-song debut EP, Chronic Town, by releasing it as a standalone CD for the first time in the U.S. on Aug. 19 via I.R.S./UMe. Augmented by extensive new liner notes from original producer Mitch Easter, the project will also be available on picture disc vinyl and cassette and can be pre-ordered here. Chronic Town was recorded in October 1981 at Easter’s Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, N.C., a few months after the release of R.E.M.’s debut single, “Radio Free Europe.” The EP introduced R.E.M.’s distinctive early sound to the wider world on staples such as “Gardening at Night,” “Wolves, Lower” and “1,000,000,” setting the stage for the band’s debut full-length, Murmur, in April 1983. “There is a certain spare, almost live quality ...
R.E.M. Members Working With Producer Mitch Easter for First Time in 30+ Years
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills are in the studio with producer Mitch Easter for the first time in more than 30 years, according to a Twitter post. The musicians are recording a new album at Easter’s Fidelitorium Recording studio in Kernersville, N.C., with The Baseball Project, their long-running group featuring former R.E.M. sideman Scott McCaughey, The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn and drummer Linda Pitmon. Easter produced R.E.M.’s 1981 single “Radio Free Europe” and its 1982 debut EP, Chronic Town, at his Drive-In studio in Winston-Salem, N.C., and went on to produce the group at other area studios for its 1983 full-length debut Murmur and its 1984 follow-up, Reckoning. Easter has been working out of Fidelitorium since the mid-1990s and has consulted on anniversary reissue editions o...
The 90 Greatest Albums of the ’90s
This article originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of SPIN. “You must be high.” We heard that a lot during the time we spent preparing this issue. Which is understandable. Pronouncing the 90 greatest albums of the ’90s is a somewhat presumptuous thing to do. When you’re measuring the music this decade is offering to history—the sounds we partied with, copulated to, fought about, and wept over—everyone has an opinion. That ours should be more valid than yours is debatable. But hey—it’s our magazine. What, then, you ask, constitutes “greatest”? Don’t even start. Suffice it to say that, after much heated discussion and countless veiled insults, it came down to the factors of both remarkable artistry and cultural shock value. Sometimes a record’s knock-you-off-your-Skechers impa...
R.E.M. Release Newly Restored Version of ‘Electrolite’ Video
In further celebration of R.E.M.‘s recently released New Adventures in Hi-Fi 25h Anniversary Edition, the iconic rockers just released a newly HD-restored video for “Electrolite.” [embedded content][embedded content] “Electrolite” is the closing track of the band’s September 1996 release, the 14-track New Adventures in Hi-Fi. The record’s 25th anniversary edition was released on October 29 this year, via Craft Recordings. “‘Electrolite,’ I didn’t want to put it on the album, I didn’t think it was good enough,” frontman Michael Stipe said in NAIHF‘s liner notes. “I thought it was simplistic and obvious, and I didn’t see the beauty or the poetry in it. And of course later I realized what an astonishing song it is. But it took me a while to come around to that.” The band previously ...
The Reissue Section: Fall 2021
Vinyl sales have gone up 94% this year, according to a report by the RIAA. That helps the massive flux of reissues that dotted the fall. But that’s not the good news. What really makes this column hum remains the variety of choice titles that are released on CD, and sales of that sturdy little plastic silver disc went up 44% in the first half of 2021 as well. And with the slew of choice archival titles that dropped like so many acorns across the autumn landscape, both formats will certainly be seeing a significant bump in those numbers as the holiday season closes in. Now let’s get into it. Here are the best reissues of Fall 2021. Violent FemmesWhy Do Birds Sing? Expanded Edition (Craft Recordings) For a lot of kids who came of age in the 1980s, the first real taste of college rock came co...
The 10 Best Indie and Alternative Leonard Cohen Covers
Leonard Cohen is the definition of a songwriter’s songwriter, the kind of artist you’d seldom hear on the radio, but was revered by countless musicians as one of the greatest lyricists in the world. An accomplished poet and novelist before he ever recorded an album, Cohen’s songs were vivid and literary, full of politics, dark humor, and frank sexuality. Though classic rock icons like Billy Joel and James Taylor have covered him, and Pentatonix has moronically attempted to make “Hallelujah” into a Christmas standard, Leonard Cohen’s legacy has grown more when he’s been covered by artists who share Cohen’s subversive edge or name-checked in songs like Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea.” November 7 marks the 5th anniversary of the Canadian legend’s death in 2016, so here’s a look back at 10 of the b...
R.E.M. Announces Exclusive 25th Anniversary Reissue of New Adventures in Hi-Fi
It’s been 25 years since alt-rock legends R.E.M. released their tenth album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi. To celebrate, the band is reissuing the album, featuring b-sides, rarities, previously unreleased video footage, archival photos and more via Craft Recordings. New Adventures is the tenth studio record by R.E.M. and is widely accepted by fans and the band as one of its greatest records. One of the best-selling albums of 1996 includes “E-Bow the Letter” (featuring Patti Smith), “Bittersweet Me,” and “Electrolite.” A group whose fans consist of dad rockers and grunge teens alike, the hardcore listeners can also enjoy an alternative version of “Leave.” Lead singer Michael Stipe said in a statement that “I actually might prefer this version to the one that’s on the record… Well, I wouldn’...
The 40 Greatest Music Video Artists
Music videos are the perfect bastard child of art and commerce, even more than pop music itself. A promotional visual accompaniment to a popular song doesn’t need a coherent narrative (although on rare occasions, they do). It just needs to suit the song, sell the record, and possibly make the artist look cool. But since the launch of MTV 40 years ago this week, a select few recording artists have helped raise music videos to an art form — sometimes by accident, and sometimes by carefully curating the work of brilliant directors like Mark Romanek, Hype Williams, and Spike Jonze. Here are 40 artists from the last four decades that helped video kill the radio star. 40. Lil Kim [embedded content] Although earlier female MCs like Salt-N-Pepa and Queen Latifah used music videos to help launch th...
