http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g9IedgMOwc

Queen? Seriously?

Are your eardrums busted?

I’ve already admitted that I don’t get REM. I’ve proposed any number of hypotheses for why that may be the case. But this is one of those things that you’re not going to convince me on, Sam, no matter how hard you try, because I’ve tried to understand and appreciate and “get” REM three times already. When I’ve gone out of my way to subject myself to REM in hopes of hearing what others hear, and failed all three times, then there are essentially two possible conclusions – I’m biologically/psychologically incapable of understanding what the big deal about REM is, or everyone else is full of it.

Either way, I’m not going to vote for REM here, nor am I going to agree that they were as important as you, REM’s fans, and any number of other critics claim. To my perspective, everyone else is full of it. Alas, the majority is always sane, so even if I could prove that everyone else actually is full of it, practically speaking it won’t matter.

Queen: Ummm, it’s hard to imagine two bands that have LESS in common musically. Seriously – this comparison is bizarre. It’s almost like you’re messing with me intentionally. Same goes for Phil Collins/Genesis, Dire Straits, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Yes, and, well, just about everybody you name. In the absence off all this I could sort of see how you might hear something sort of in common with some early Elvis, maybe, but in general this list seems intended to prank.

I can probably go on if you’d like, but I think you get the idea. To my ear, REM’s sound was a repetition of what I hear in the bands listed above.

If they made college bands cool, then that’s worth something. Their longevity is worth something. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that I don’t hear “new” in their music and what I do hear doesn’t justify (to me) the acclaim.

Okay, let’s test this. Go back and show us what came before that they sounded like.

I’ve tried three times in my life to understand what it is fans and critics love about REM. For the life of me, I can’t figure it out. I tried when I listened to their music after buying and loving Out of Time. I tried again eight years ago when I met my first truly hard-core REM fan (he was a co-worker). I tried a third time 2-3 years ago, when I listened to every CD in the family collection, including all the REM. And I just don’t hear greatness from REM. Some good songs, some catchy tunes. And one good album.

Clearly it’s something innate to my ear as opposed to anything else. There are bands I love and think are great that don’t get any love at all (kind of like Sam and GP). And so I clearly hear something in those bands that most people don’t. Similarly, most people hear something in REM that, so far as my ear can tell, just doesn’t exist. Maybe I was just a year or two out of phase, maybe I was in the wrong part of the country, maybe my friends’ tastes in music altered my own at a formative point in my life, I don’t know. But it is what it is.

What makes REM so great is that they are a version of that truth about rock.

fikshun – “voice of Gen-X” – that resonates….

See, I get why fans and critics love the Beatles, the Stones, Floyd, The Cure, Bauhaus, and the vast majority of the other acts here in this tourny. I may not agree, but I at least understand it. That response toward REM is one that I simply don’t understand.

Rho, that makes a grand total of two of us now.

I’m an Xer who would agree that they are nothing special and that Joan Jet is definitely better but in this pod I can’t justify voting for anyone other than Jimi

Hendrix is the most influential guitarist ever, but REM is the more complete band. My vote goes to them.

I’ll probably go for Hendrix, but reluctantly – he’s the best of a disappointing pod. C’est la vie.