Looking back on this from eight years later, it’s actually really good. Of all the ways in which the advance buzz on it (i.e. that it would “rock”) mis-served it, I suspect the worst is that it drew attention away from (or encouraged misunderstanding of) Stipe’s most direct lyrics yet, a lot of which seem to me now like a declaration of sexuality clearer than any he had given in interviews at the time.

About a week ago, the day I heard that Elliott Smith had died, I came home and pulled out a few of his albums to listen to back to back. My roommate asked what I was doing just sitting and listening to music (usually I read or whatever) and I told him.

Last night, halfway through the second disc of R.E.M.’s “greatest hits” collection, he walked in and asked if someone else had died. “Because, you know, you’re listening to a lot of R.E.M. at once and it’s all kind of somber…”

Peter Buck’s direct liner notes make the “rarities” CD interesting despite it largely being alternate versions of album songs, including some totally unnecessary live recordings. It also has “Fretless” and “It’s A Free World, Baby”, which he admits should have been on Out Of Time, and which justify the second disc at least as well as new songs “Bad Day” and “Animal” justify the first one.

By now I guess everyone knows that “Bad Day” is an alternate working of the same proto-song that become “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”. The chords are the same for most of it and it has some rapid-fire lyrics, but it’s not uncomfortably familiar; I have more trouble with “Try Not To Breathe” intruding on “Daysleeper” than I do with wanting to sing “and I feel fine…” over the chorus of “Bad Day”.

I think when you only follow one band that plays stadiums it can be hard to really absorb compilations like this. This isn’t for me, not really, and I *tried* to listen to it with fresh ears but ultimately failed. Neither Up nor Reveal seems more interesting to me now, though their respective unrepresentative singles, “Daysleeper” and “Imitation Of Life” have switched places in my esteem, the former now seeming like an Automatic For The People rehash while the latter at least points to how recent R.E.M. could have been good.

I used to find this just generic, but now the “valley girl plus Mark E. Smith” vocals actually unsettle me.

With an ostentatiously meaningless album title (the song titles are worse) this had to be very, very good at establishing its own style for me to believe that the music really was beyond labelling (as ostentatious meaninglessness always seems to imply), and it does. “Cerebral” sampletronica made with the talent for jamming unlike things next to each other that Basement Jaxx and some of the mashup guys sometimes appeared to have a monopoly on. I would be delirious with happiness if more of the tracks featured someone singing, as only a few do, but I admit it’s not necessary.

I’ve read, since getting this, that of the two guys who made it, one is a guitarist and one a violinist. I briefly believed in high school that a violin always added a transcendent quality to a rock band. The idea is nearly unsupportable but I find myself thinking about it again…

I bought this blind five years ago, based solely on the band’s reputation. It was such a disappointment to me then that I put it away immediately, feeling like a wastrel and a sucker every time I even saw its spine. But now I’m finally checking out all the CDs I’ve put off decisions on for so long, which means playing it again…

If I’m remembering correctly, Robyn Hitchcock’s name was dropped as a point of reference. I still don’t get it. Not to say this isn’t nice, but Dagmar Krause’s vocal phrasing is awkward, as a lot of non-native English-singers’ tend to be, and the lyrics are at best serviceable.

So much more solid than the previous single that I wonder what’s up. Their website reveals that the drummer has left since this was recorded, except that he’s kept the domain name and can’t seem decide if he’s happy with his ex-bandmates or not. All this apparently happened after the as-yet-unreleased next album was recorded, though, according to Pitchfork.

I wonder if following bands’ activities at this level of detail has ever turned out to be fulfilling for anyone.

“I want to meet in 2003 / I want to see what the future can bring to me.” Jesus.

I have a pretty unreasonable prejudice against music that’s exclusively available as free downloads from the artist’s own site. Actually, the irrational part is that the more fans the site seems to have, the less I trust it, on the (shaky) grounds that both good and bad music can easily be obscure, but that Net phenoms are too often lame geek-culture adjuncts like the comic strip User Friendly or other forms of in-joke.

Mind you, I’ll try anything once, so this prejudice rarely keeps me from hearing anything I otherwise would have. This comp smelled like doom, though: its organizing principle is that all the songs were written around spam subject lines. And yet, I would recommend it pretty highly. The low points are the three or four songs which are *about* spam, a topic on which it’s hard to be funny. (MC Frontalot manages; I wish his beats were better.) My favorite track is probably Add’s “Do You Measure Up”, a little slice of the 1987 that I only know from digging through my old radio station’s library.

This turns out to be much like I always wished Versus were (and bought a few too many CDs in the process of learning that they weren’t). It’s from deep in the “where did I even get this?” section of my CD pile, but if I remember correctly, I picked it up my first-ever day in Manhattan, which would put it several years ago.

Normally, if I’m already lukewarm on a band and they spawn legions of imitators, that’s the last straw. And yet, in the four years this has spent kicking around piles of CDs I was just about to get rid of, I’ve become much more familiar with bad Flaming Lips-like music than I wanted to, and I have to admit that this isn’t it.