R.E.M. - Murmur

 This has just celebrated the 40th anniversary since its release, so I'll re-post this. The first thing I ever wrote on here. 

Murmur was the first album that I discovered that was all mine. It's still mine. I'll always be fiercely grateful to it and never say a bad word about it. It helped me discover my identity.

I wasn't a pretty sight in secondary school. I was spotty and unkempt. I had grotty Woody Allen NHS specs. I'll spare you the gruesome details. But I had a very good friend (of whom more later at some point on this blog) and a wonderful family and was growing up in the best part of London. South West - Richmond, Kew Gardens,Twickenham, St Margarets, Petersham, Teddington, Hampton and Hampton Court. I recommend it if you have a cool million to spare.

Things improved at tertiary college. I ditched the Woody Allen specs and got a John Lennon/Trotsky pair. I still have them. Might wear them again. I became presentable. I also began to discover who I was. I constructed a self which I was happy with. Politics. Left-wing which I've been ever since and always will be. Literature. Starting to read decent stuff; the Brontes, Carson McCullers, Fitzgerald, Greene, Sartre and Camus. And music.

My family moved from a cramped house in Richmond to a spacious three storey house in Teddington as my three older siblings had left home.I had the top storey to myself. I was seventeen. I got myself a horrid Saturday job in Tesco Home & Wear Department which paid me 15 quid for a dayshift and started building a record collection.

I think I first became aware of R.E.M when I caught them by chance on The Tube on Channel 4 on a Friday night towards the end of 1983. Jools Holland announced them as hailing from Atlanta when actually they were from Athens. Typical of him. Murmur had just been released in the UK and they were on tour, playing in tiny venues. I don't think it sunk in what I was hearing. I had no idea who they were and they were only there because of the hipness of the pluggers who booked them. See how oblivious the audience appears to them.

I started to catch on that there was something there for me when I heard them on the David 'Kid' Jensen Show in the evening shift on Radio 1. He played this, which had just been released as a 12 Inch EP. He asked John Peel if he was playing their stuff and Peel gave a sniffy response. He never cared for the band.

It was enough for me however. I went and bought Murmur from the record store which became Out Price in Richmond (I'd be grateful if anyone could let me know what it was previously), and over the next year or so I must have played it pretty much every day. I'll listen to it again now and see if it's up to scratch.