Fables, Automatic, and Hi-Fi are my top three R.E.M. albums. The second tier consists of what could be classified as "most of the rest of their work."
They <were> <so> good when I saw them. Maybe they weren't <that> good, as I was a teenager back then, naive to a lot of stuff. Must have been 1990 or so - that <was> the time I lived at Great Woods, during the summers..... In High school, as a senior in 1987, no one knew REM, excelpt the 'emo' 'new wave' kids - where I fit in. I dont know if it was Document or Green that was their breakthru, and then everyone was going back to the older albums.... College Rock. Alternative. New Wave... It just was.
My dad saw them at one of their first shows in Madison, WI right around when Chronic Town came out and Michael Stipe pulled him up to dance onstage lol
Finally got to see the R.E.M. by MTV doc. I really enjoyed it, although as a career retrospective it suffers a lot from trying to cram thirty years into two hours. And of course it's R.E.M. by MTV, so the early and latter-day records kind of get shafted. I think they talk more about "Shiny Happy People" than they do Reckoning. Still, pretty cool overall.
Heard Reckoning for the first time today and it may be my favorite of the 5 albums I've heard from them.
1. Automatic for the People 2. Reckoning 3. Murmur 4. Lifes Rich Pageant 5. Fables of the Reconstruction imo
Green, New Adventures in Hi Fi, Document, and a few others are the big ones for me and ones I would recommend for sure
p much all of their albums are good to great (particularly the Murmur - New Adventures in Hi-Fi run) those 5 I listed are on another level for me tho