R.E.M. was one of the bands I listened to a lot as a kid in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They were one of the first concerts that I attended as well. This iconic band from Georgia helped shape and enhance the alternative and indie music scene in America for over a decade, with their music helping influence countless other alternative bands in the 1990’s and beyond.
Peter Ames Carlin’s The Name of This Band Is R.E.M. is a chronicle of the band’s development in Athens, GA in 1980 and their subsequent rise to stardom in the years that followed. As Carlin tells the band’s history, each of its members is also woven in with biographical background and stories of their evolution. R.E.M. arguably reached its peak in the early and mid 1990’s before Bill Berry’s departure in 1997. While the remaining members continued on for nearly 15 more years, the subsequent records the band put out failed to reach the heights of Automatic for the People and Green.
Carlin’s book is well-researched and entertaining. For fans of today’s indie rock scene, R.E.M. can be considered in many ways the forefather of helping indie break out of the college radio and underground scene and into mainstream rock. Whether or not fans of the band felt R.E.M. “sold out” to corporate music or not, their influence on rock music is still felt to this day.
MY RATING: 4.5
