Every R.E.M. album, ranked: 'Lifes Rich Pageant'

Despite the delays in posts in this series, I’ve really been looking forward to this one. “Lifes Rich Pageant” (no apostrophe) is probably my favorite R.E.M. album. Well, this or “Murmur.” Those are certainly the two I listen to the most.

I love every song on this record, and “Fall on Me” is my second or third-favorite song ever by the band. Peter Buck’s guitar solo on “The Flowers of Guatemala” is also a favorite. It’s not flashy, it may not even be particularly good. But it fits, perfectly, and somehow manages to be an emotional highlight.

“Swan Swan H” sounds like a Civil War history lesson, “Begin the Begin” (yes, it’s a play on Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” made famous by Artie Shaw, though it doesn’t sound anything like it) is a powerful leadoff and “Superman,” the closer, is a nod to the goofy covers bands like R.E.M. and Let’s Active often played as encores. (If you’ve never heard Mitch Easter nailing “Back in Black,” you just haven’t lived.)

But beyond how great the music is — the band would never sound this good again, for my money — I also love the record for how evocative of a particular time it is for me. I don’t believe this is a requirement of art — it should stand on its own (and I believe “Lifes Rich Pageant” does). But man, this is one record that really takes me back.

Back to 23 W. Devonshire St. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to be precise. That’s where I lived, in a duplex that looked rather miserable but was actually a ton of fun, with Jon Healey, now an editor with the Los Angeles Times. As I’ve mentioned here before, in the spirit of the day Jon was both the federal courts reporter and the music critic. (Actually, that’s the spirit of the current day, as well.) This meant he got albums in advance of their release for review, which was to me astounding. (I’ve spent the last 25 years as a critic of one kind or another so I’ve become used to the practice, but I still find it thrilling.) How much music did we listen to? We had a TV that had no screen — we used it to store our records. If that wasn’t enough, Jon's band, Thrift Bakery, recorded an album in our living room, “Freshness Test.” Give it a listen.

Jon got a lot of records. And eventually he had to have them shipped to our house, because albums tended to disappear off of his desk at work. But it was more quantity than quality. Most of what he got was junk. One of my favorites ever was an album by Ludichrist called “Immaculate Deception,” mostly because of the sticker on the cover that read, “With the hit single ‘Most People Are Dicks.’” That is a memorable song title. I don’t know how big a hit it really was, but to its credit, it sounds exactly like you would think it does.

This was a fantastic time to live in Winston-Salem if you were a music fan. Mitch Easter was recording bands at his Drive-In Studio. You could see great shows for cheap every night. It seemed like everybody was writing or playing or acting in something.

I was the night-cop reporter, which meant awful hours — 3 to midnight. Jon worked a regular shift. BUT, the mail came while I was still home, which meant I saw records before Jon did. (I didn’t steal them, though.) And one day, after a steady stream of dreck, “Lifes Rich Pageant” showed up on the front porch.

Mitch was no longer producing R.E.M., but everyone in town was well aware of the connection. Plus, I mean, they were great. A new record by them was a huge deal.

It was also a great record. I have written before about how memories are tricky things. Somehow in my mind this was a fall album. In fact it was released in late July of 1986. Maybe after decades of living in Arizona I just like remembering when there was a chill in the air. Because I listened to that record for months.

On the music front, again, I think it’s either R.E.M.’s best or right up there. I also think it was their last truly great album (more on that in ensuing newsletters). Of course I didn’t know this at the time. I figured every release would be better than the last. There is just an energy to it, from start to finish. I am no R.E.M. apologist (as you’ll soon learn) who is going to try to convince you that “Underneath the Bunker” is some sort of classic. It’s not. But it fits. This was still a time when we listened to entire albums as a piece, not a collection of could-be singles. With Michael Stipe’s elliptical lyrics (though now you could at least make out the words) it’s always a reach to say the band was going for a theme, but just as a buy-beer-invite-friends-listen-to-new-album experience, it really works.

It was a fun time. It was a great album. They’d never make a better one.