Four Decades Of R.E.M.’s Lifes Rich Pageant
Has it really been four decades since the release of R.E.M.’s 1986 classic “Lifes Rich Pageant”? The same year as the catastrophic Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl disaster, the liberating legislation of New York City’s gay rights revolution, and, of course, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, to name a few. But it also marked the band’s fourth studio album and second-to-last release on the highly influential I.R.S. (International Record Syndicate) label, which was nearing its first decade since its establishment in 1979 by Miles Copeland and Jay Boberg. After a much-needed break from ruling the southern underground college community in Athens, Georgia, and beyond, the band eagerly embraced the next creative chapter in their already culturally captivating careers as the tides were shifting sonically into a more positively pop and multi-instrumentally intimate identity than their previous works like “Murmur”, “Reckoning”, and “Fables Of The Reconstruction”. They tapped into the transcendental tones of the banjo, an instrument that not only solidifies them as a fundamental force outside the new wave phenomenon, but also skillfully showcases the band’s brilliant ballistics in their academic ability to speak through their instruments. After working with their previous producer Joe Boyd, yes, the same guy who was responsible for running sound at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan played one of his most mind-altering and iconic electric sets, the band decided to connect with John Mellencamp’s longtime friend and creative colleague Don Geham, who helped the veteran musician bring to life some of his most compelling works like “American Fool” and 1985’s “Scarecrow”, the group became thrilled by the prolific producer’s atmospheric approach, and tonal trickeries when realizing they were in good hands both artistically, and professionally. Captured at Mellencamp’s Belmont Mall Studio in Belmont, Indiana, in the spring and early summer of 1986, just four hours outside of his hometown in Seymour, members Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Bill Berry, and Peter Buck set out on a journey to carefully conjure a body of work that sincerely scratches the surface one of perhaps one of the most creatively captivating, and intimately idolized groups in American music.
“Inspector Clouseau opens a car door, falling into a fountain.
Maria: “You should get out of these clothes immediately. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia, you will.”
Clouseau: “Yes, I probably will. But it’s all part of life’s rich pageant, you know?”
While embracing a more standard studio setting with all the bells and whistles that has the poetic potential of scaring the pants off of any band who isn’t used to all of the fancy flashing lights and details of a board stretching across a room like an electronic eagles’ wingspan, the group leaned into the exciting ecosystem and its uncharted territories of digitized dynamics by not only trusting themselves, but also their abilities of bringing songs together so flawlessly under the umbrella, and tonal thumb of someone like Geham. Recorded over the course of two months or so, the band not only immersed themselves in the tonal tasks at hand, but also in the town and its local culture by attending shows and becoming one with their surroundings, which shows in the music in one form or another. Featuring tracks like “Cuyahoga”, which is one of the group’s earliest eco-friendly fables, “Swan Swan H”, a romantic rendition of Nico’s 1967 classic “These Days”, and of course the hyperbolic hit “Fall On Me”, R.E.M. without a dingle shred of doubt set a special mark way outside the poetic perimeters of music by defining a generation and liberating lust to move the costly chess pieces to the side, and get straight to the melodic marrow of what’s really important. Quickly becoming the group’s first commercially successful body of work, which would only set the tender tone for future titles, singles, and later works, “Lifes Rich Pageant” is a lush and graciously grand elixir of sound, poetry, and radioactive rhythm that has inspired bands across the world for several decades, and counting. Similar to Buddy Holly or The Beach Boys, R.E.M. were, and will also be, one of those artistic anomalies that come around every so often. A wise man once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
