A decent band, I like some of the IRS stuff, specifically things like South Central Rain, Can't Get There From Here, Fall On Me, Driver 8, and Radio Free Europe. Always meant to pick up some of those albums, but have so far gotten by with just the Eponymous compilation.
I remember in the mid 80's, MTV did a special about "folk rock". REM was sort of presented as a group who had carried on in the tradition of The Byrds, Lovin' Spoonful, etc. They were shown at the end of this special doing several songs, one of which was a good cover of the Velvet Underground song Pale Blue Eyes (which I didn't know was a Velvet Underground cover until a few a years later, when I heard the original on college radio).
Don't care much for the later stuff, especially after Stipe turned into a conceited whiner. Yeah, I get it. It really stinks being famous and having people ask you questions about your personal life. That's such a awful thing to have to deal with it, isn't it?
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