Confessions of a Fanboy

It’s still not my favorite song on the record, but for some reason it’s what I woke up singing this morning.
Comparisons are only helpful to a point, but this one really does have the feel of songs from Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, particularly the fuzzed, distorted rhythm guitar of Peter Buck. The […]

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31 albums made their Billboard 200 chart debut, and George Strait came out on top. There are at least 166,000 people not depressed by that fact. I am not one of them. Troubador, or True Bore, as I like to call it, is his fourth #1 album
R.E.M. came in second place […]

Filed under: Billboard Beatdown, Counting Crows, R.E.M., Rolling Stones | 5 Comments »

I had to trim my Accelerate review for BC. Some people, when forced to prune their work, would find the excised parts to be of little value (hence the reason it was cut in the first place). Today I’m feeling just arrogant enough to think the stuff that landed on the cutting room […]

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I woke up this morning with R.E.M.’s “Life and How to Live It” in my head. A few weeks back I wrote a column about some of my favorite song titles. I wish I’d thought of this one then. That’s a great song title and a terrific song from an underappreciated R.E.M. […]

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One of the pitfalls of liveblogging is that the beginning stuff gets pushed further down the page and you have to read everything in reverse. There might be some of you who didn’t know what the hell I was doing because you saw the end before you saw the beginning, so here’s a chronological […]

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I didn’t like the live version of this on the double live set they just released. I forgot they put this one on the record.
Meh. Let’s give the studio version a listen.
I like it a little better so far than I did on the live album.
As we reach the end of […]

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Am I ready to hear a drum intro on an R.E.M. song, knowing that Bill Berry is on a tractor somewhere?
Michael might have kept his mouth shut and his head down? That will be the day.
Not loving the lead vocal. Not even loving the Stipe/Mills harmony because of the way the vocals are […]

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Finally some jangle! We’ve had more Peter Buck on this record but it was all Monster distortion and no Murmur jangle. This is the closest thing to that so far on the record and we’re almost done here.
I can’t really tell what he’s singing about; that’s welcome. Something that’s not so singular […]

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Hey! I like this! Stipe is singing at the same time Peter is playing big guitars!
Harmony and nice bass support from Mills.
The lyrics are a bit on the preachy again, but the music and the vocal performance are saving it/elevating it. You see! This is what a couple of those earlier […]

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S.Rod likes this one; she says it’s one of her favorites on the record.
This sounds like something from Automatic for the People, musically. Actually, this is “Ignoreland” with better music. They should take “Ignoreland” from AFTP and put it on this record where it belongs.
The electric guitars are gone on this […]

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