JOHNNY REB WHAT'S THE PRICE OF FANS...

Guilty pleasure.

Superman—R.E.M.

This is the story of a love gone wrong…

My first cassette copy of Murmur had bum mechanics, so I could only listen to the first side, and I lived with that for months. It was enough.

Murmur was lovely, warm, and gauzy and oblique. I cried sometimes, without knowing quite why.

Reckoning was more direct in spots, and I made the journey with the band as they began to look the outside world in the eye.

It seems strange to me now, but for some reason I have never in my life owned a copy of Fables. I liked the songs well enough, but I suppose competition from The Replacements, Husker Du, The Pogues, etc. kind of froze R.E.M. out.

And really, the more public they became, the more Stipe’s oddly shaped ego became a problem for me...

Fall on Me was enough to bring me back to the band for Lifes Rich Pageant, but I did not like what I found.

Stipe was now articulating, but it was apparent that he had lapsed into some kind of harebrained demagoguery. There were minions he was looking to lead, and I was not among their number.

If you really pressed an aesthetic argument, I’d probably cop to Flowers of Guatemala being the best thing on Lifes Rich Pageant. But out of principle, I’d name Superman…