Thursday, October 14, 2010

Bands That Suck Balls: R.E.M.


There was once a time when if you were a rock band, you could only fall into a couple sub-classifications under the mass genre of Rock N' Roll. Maybe you threw a little slide guitar in your reportoire and called yourself a blues band. Maybe your band had a country twang in their sound and you fell under Southern Rock. Maybe your band just played fast and angry and called themselves a heavy metal band. And then of course sometimes you were just a band that played good old ass-shaking jukebox jams that could only be classified as simply Rock N' Roll. At some point however, when people that couldn't play good music decided there should be still be a market for their sound, a new genre was born. A genre known as "Alternative Rock" that was invented by This Weeks Band That Sucks Balls: R.E.M.

Fuck R.E.M. This untalented collection of cock-gobblers were formed in the original hipster rock mecca of Athens, GA in the early 1980s. Athens was kind of like the original Austin, Texas that prided themself on birthing all the hottest indie-rock bands that were adored by stoned art majors. Legend has it that the members of R.E.M. met at the local independent record shop and bonded over their similar taste in shitty music.

"Whoa dude is that a Velvet Underground Record??"

"Whoa bro are you picking up a little known Patti Smith LP??"

"Whoa man it seems we both listen to music that just sounds like noise recorded by friends of Andy Warhol after a heroin bender!! We should form a band!!"

Apparently R.E.M. slowly gained an underground following during the 1980s and gained critical praise with the recording of each of their first couple albums. If you were young and only knew about music on the radio however, you probably didn't know much about R.E.M. though. This is because in the 1980s if you wanted to be mainstream and get on the radio your band had to actually be...good. I know it sounds crazy. Then 1990 came around and people stopped being interested in listening to songs about sex, drugs and having a good time and alternative nation broke through to the mainstream, led by R.E.M. Sure you might say Nirvana were the forefathers of "alternative rock" but ask Nirvana and any shitty alternative band afterwards who inspired them and they are sure to name drop R.E.M. They were the first band to truly inspire anybody that didn't possess the ability to play a guitar solo.

The first time most people remember R.E.M. really emerging on the mainstream scene was with their song "Losing My Religion." The video featured lead singer Michael Stipe pacing around and doing a hippie dance singing some bullshit depressing lyrics while R.E.M.'s guitarist plays a mandolin. Led Zeppelin is pretty much the only band that can get away with playing a mandolin and look cool. Then they made that fucking song "Shiny Happy People." God what a piece of shit. You are supposedly a "rock" band. Nobody wants to hear your garbage sing-along flower power folk anthem you pussies. Oh and of course there is "Everybody Hurts." When real bands sing about daily hurt and sorrow they drink a bottle of Jack and play a badass blues jam about their personal misfortunes. See: Stevie Ray Vaughan. They don't record a 6 minute emo whine fest with one droning repetitive six note guitar riff that never builds into anything rocking.

R.E.M. as I just mentioned is fronted by Michael Stipe and he is a total jackoff. He's basically like Bono if Bono always had a sad, introspective facial expression. "Oh look at me I'm Michael Stipe, I'm so deep and insightful, I look like such a artist. Listen to me tell you about helping out the people of Burma." Fuck you Michael Stipe. Your music sucks and yet you have sold 30 million albums. You invented a genre that is basically an "alternative" option to playing real rock music. You have nothing to be sad about. If anything you should be walking around with a shit-eating grin 24/7 because you somehow convinced an entire generation of idiotic hipster college kids to not only embrace your music, but form shitty bands of their own. Also, real rock frontmen have long flowing manes of hair like greek gods. They don't look like leukemia patients. Fuck you, fuck your shitty band, and fuck your bullshit causes you bald asshole.

R.E.M. was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, further validating their undeserved "rock" legacy. Giving further hope to the up and coming "The Decemberists" of the world that they have a reason to pursue their Rock N' Roll dreams. Well they don't. Alternative rock blows dick. If you don't have the ability to play instruments, sing, or write catchy melodies and hooks you don't deserve a record deal. You deserve to forever languish away playing at coffee shops in your college town. Every time another shitbag alternative band makes it big I remember that this is all your fault R.E.M. In the world of rock music it is truly "the end of the world as we know it," and I certainly don't feel fine about it.

30 comments:

  1. your convictions have no merit. I would imagine as you might be able to distinguish "rock", you certainly are unable to distinguish "art".

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dude, nice rant. I love it. You hit the nail on the head about Michael Stipe. Great blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You suck major ass and your reasons causing all the hate (Michael's physical appearance, his emotions, lack of solos, etc...) are pretty much pathetic. Also, you pick some of REM's bad career moments to serve as a background for your bullcrap essay here. Try writing something bad about their early albums like Murmur, Reckoning and Lifes Rich Pageant you ignorant idiot. Your blog sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  5. great site...I totally agree. I was going to start my own curmudgeon blog but now I don't have to. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Since like maybe their first record and a few tracks off of "Automatic for the People" I don't believe any legitimate listener of music in general could possibly put up with their bullshit-boring music. Everybody hurts literally killed an entire album for me and otherwise I don't even recall anything of theirs that was even influential.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was going to write a similar rant after having to hear that shit on the radio for so fucking long, then googled REM sucks and ended up here. Thanks for the heavy lifting pal, regardless of what anyone else thinks REM sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Totally agree, REM sucks so bad and there songs are among the most irritating crap in the world. "man on the moon" "shiny happy people" and that song from ID4 are HORRRRIBLEEEE IRRITATING GARBAGE!!! how can anyone listen to that junk and not want to smash the radio with a sledge hammer???

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thank God I'm not the only one that hates them. Jesus, I cant even legally drink and have seen many of the greatest rock acts in history [Stones, GNR, Aerosmith, Robert Plant, Metallica, Van Halen, Eagles, Roger Waters, McCartney, AC/DC, etc.], and yet when some of these shitty indi bands come to town every one of my college peers gets their panties in a bunch.
    I'd rather see the greatest frontmen in the world instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a Pixies, U2, Coldplay, REM concert. They're boring as hell.

    ReplyDelete
  10. r.e.m. super fu&#ing sucks . .

    ReplyDelete
  11. omg . . . apparently that mother fuvker MS got tied to a tree . . back in the day . . before he was so sorry in the rem game . . & still fu/*king sorry . .

    ReplyDelete
  12. I am glad I'm not alone , REM constantly reminded me of shitty art critic. College Rock , indie, wtfuckever, people called it. Should have died in its infancy. Now we are stuck with One Direction. Skrillex, Etc ..😞😞

    ReplyDelete
  13. I am glad I'm not alone , REM constantly reminded me of shitty art critic. College Rock , indie, wtfuckever, people called it. Should have died in its infancy. Now we are stuck with One Direction. Skrillex, Etc ..😞😞

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wrong. This guy needs humor instead of a string of childish Youtube insults

    REM's first two albums are filled with uptempo, spiky sounding power pop music, and the later 80's albums (Life's Rich Pageant) have lyrical power, some of the tracks actually do rock and ditto for Document, loud drum tracks, distorted guitar etc.

    The truth is the band didn't make any money in the 80's so the early albums sounded pretty bad in some ways, the remastered versions sound better to my ears.

    MOST 80's rock and pop was shallow, filled with hideous programmed drums and even worse Simmons electric drum kits, bad midi synth and airbrushed, over-reverbed vocals, much of which were just old Beatles or Broadway "love song" lyrics but overproduced and more white and faceless sounding. Foreigner and all that crap are the most faceless payola-programmed idiot's corporate media ever sponsored. The REM sound avoided those horrible 80's cliches and actually wrote some good lyrics then too, which is why reviewers liked them.

    Like most rock bands, you don't need the later albums, but nonetheless, I wonder what this blogger thinks "essential" 80's music was? Casey Kasem contemporary hit radio? Journey????

    ReplyDelete
  15. It didn't help that their drummer made a stupid remark saying The Beatles were no good. Every Beatle fan in the world hated them after that. And their music is just plain boring, too mellow, dude. A great big yawn. But they hate Trump, that's a plus in their favor. As boring as U2 and The Eagles!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Pixies is about 100 million times better than this non-rock dreck! In the Hall of Fame? Yeah, like Laura Nyro, because the industry fat cats have boring rotten taste! Don't let these industry idiots vote on bands any more, those invert foreign billionaires from Turkey and Sri Lanka suck! Rich boy goons, I hope the Internet pirates make you tasteless racketeers into homeless people, and I hope Ahmet Ertegun's Tomb becomes a real home to Rock Music some day, not Disco, not Rap, not R.E.M. Syrup Pop!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Cock rock? Never bothered me all that much. *Nearly* even tolerable if something like Aerosmith or even AC/DC must occasionally be endured as a teenage right of passage.

    Nonetheless, I always detested KISS, if they represented cock rock at its worst.

    But suck-a-cock rock? - it's just FAR too much. Like "anything REM," wouldn't wish it on anybody.

    Embarrassingly self conscious, nerdy geeks, gleefully disguised as psuedo-wimpy wannabees, with a incredibly drastic dose of over-exaggerated sense of (juvenile) self importance: REM in a nutshell.

    Nothing but pompous asses - utterly pretentious glorified bullshit - REM not only (blatantly and habitually) sucks a gargantuan dork, but then goes past even that, musically speaking, and sucks the most insipid, bathetic canal water (posing as art form) that's possibly imaginable. Geek-informed banality at it's absolute worst. Anybody that swills that shit down *deserves* the unique brand of intolerable self-loathing promoted, endorsed and encouraged by this type of musical "entertainment."

    Worse, this chemo-riddled-reject, Stipe, CONSTANTLY reminds anybody and everybody who will listen that "Mainly my sexuality informs my unusual [so-called alternative] music." So he gives even queers a bad rap. Whatever the alternative to the alternative happens to be, has got to be better than this REM art-school-dropout dogshit excuse for sonic drivel, frequently touted as "art."

    Had only he STAYED in his "corner" (and out of the "spotlight") the world would be a better place - permanently bereft of his contemptible, confessional self adulation masking as loathing.

    Assholes like Stipe have only ENCOURAGED every queen-sized asshole that's come after. You thought it couldn't get any worse than Judas Priest. Then it actually got far, far worse, as a warped sense of identity - particularly sexual identity - amplified by umpteen layers of woefull (deserved) insecurity - rarely informs much more than a turd in the pot. And so, REM literally stinks to high heaven nearly as bad as the shit-covered dork dick Stipe habitually sucks on.

    Stipe is tripe, and Dork Rock never worked on any level, except for the untold legions of Dork Rock dickheads that made it commercially viable. Shit-soaked dork suckers like Stipe are the bottom feeders of the musical universe, and nothing could be more obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  18. BTW, if anybody needs something like REM to validate himself, then maybe the shit-soaked dick sucks "doled out like candy bars on Halloween" will go a little ways in explaining a low sense of self esteem? Ever wonder? Seriously. I mean, there's "the loser," in the "corner," and then there's the "dick-suck of a loser." REM literally personifies all that.

    It's DISGUSTING.
    And if the "music" itself weren't enough to put just about anybody off food - there's the so-called "personality" behind it - to make matters worse. That's HARDLY possible! ... hard to even fathom?

    ReplyDelete
  19. "Know why I make such good music? I suck on shit sticks. That's the main thing that informs my 'alternative' viewpoint: sucking shit sticks. It should be obvious, that's what makes me such a genius." -Michael Stipe"

    ReplyDelete
  20. Thanks, I appreciate this. Shiny Happy People - my god shoot me in the head.

    ReplyDelete
  21. You nailed it. Bravo Sir. R.E.M. can fuck off.

    ReplyDelete
  22. REM Root Canal or nails on a chalkboard

    ReplyDelete
  23. REM suck, but not as much as pearl jam.

    ReplyDelete
  24. thanks bud , REM just played on the radio while at work and thought to myshelf did anyone really like this monkey ball of a groupe... I remeber getting A REM cd by a family member for christmas when i was younger and i would get a sick feeling to my stomach evertime i tryed to lisen to it ,no joke...im just glad im not the only one with strong hate feelings for this band

    ReplyDelete
  25. REM is a musical definition for narcolepsy, fuck em.

    ReplyDelete
  26. REM is a musical definition for narcolepsy, fuck em.

    ReplyDelete