I've loved R.E.M. since the moment I heard "Wolves, Lower" on a Trouser Press flexi-disc in 1982, and I'll remain a fan until the day I die.

Hee. I'm now almost hoping that everybody else hates it but @avclub-f20009df133551a813e70d50bc24e15f:disqus

VANISHING POINT.  The original with Barry Newman, Cleavon Little and the naked girl on the motorcycle.

I love how Tom Waits is able to do the same thing over and over again, but it never gets old. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then the definition of genius is doing the same thing over and over again and actually getting different results.

It was in the headline, of course. It served a dual purpose.

Where was the SPOILER ALERT?
I was going to read that study tomorrow, but you totally ruined it.

Trouser Press stopped publishing as a magazine in 1984, so they wouldn't have had any way of reviewing it when it came out.

Kirby,

#6 on the Village Voice's 1986 Pazz & Jop critics poll:

Dead Wrong about Licensed to Ill
I mean, seriously. That album was a fucking landmark. Punk rock snotty attitude and seriously hard slamming rap beats? 1n 1986, it had never been done.

I think that Lifes Rich Pageant is their most open and friendly album. Maybe because of the big drum sound, maybe because of the nearly-understandable vocals, and maybe because of the big silly cover tune that ended it.

"Disturbance at the Heron House" is also pretty great on the MTV Unplugged.

Murmur
Automatic For The People
Reckoning
Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables
Chronic Town
Document
Life's Rich Pageant
Live at the Olympia

I had the advance 12" of "So. Central Rain" with "Voice of Harold" on the b-side, so when RECKONING came out, it was weird to hear "7 Chinese Bros," even though we'd read all about what the deal was with each songs.

There's a version of "Country Feedback" recorded in 1998 in Germany where Peter Buck pretty much channels Neil Young on the guitar solo while Michael Stipe chants and moans like mid-1970s Van Morrison.

Picard is NOT a terrible lover!
You take that back!! YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!!

I'm assuming that you would have pulled it out of your ears, then.

Husker Du
Absolutely pass the 5-album test: ZEN ARCADE, NEW DAY RISING, FLIP YOUR WIG, CANDY APPLE GREY, WAREHOUSE: SONGS & STORIES are all absolutely stellar.

Just a Theory
But I feel like River is going to somehow sacrifice herself to save The Doctor at the end of the season, as we watch the sequence at the beginning of "The Impossible Astronaut" play out differently.

We were the same way with S5: watched it with so much grief in our hearts that we never bothered to watch it again, even as the first four seasons got obsessive rewatches every few years.