Posted by Paul at March 4th, 2010

It was 1983 when good rock music stopped coming out. Then a strange album called Murmur, by a group called REM arrived, straight out of Athens, Georgia of all places. And by strange I mean the album cover, and the fact that I couldn’t understand a word of what the singer was singing. But Murmur pleased my ear. Was it mellow or edgy, art rock or alt/country, I couldn’t tell and I didn’t care. They were breaking new ground in the guitar-bass-drums thing, without the players being technically very skilled, a sublime trick. Not very skilled except for their bass player/harmony vocalist who held the whole thing together melodically and played occasional piano or organ. The guitarist and singer would grow more skilled and comprehensible, and their albums would grow by leaps in sonic power, eventually gaining some measure of commercial acceptance. But somehow, to me anyway, Murmur would always define REM, when the four of them first put it all together, and without trying to, left their mark on rock music.