R.E.M.: Murmur

Status of copy at Case Memorial Library
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "Last night at the Waldorf-Astoria, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, who proved that hip-hop was more than party music with their 1982 hit 'The Message,' became the first hip-hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. … Joining the rappers as new members of the Hall of Fame were the poet-turned-punk-rock-pioneer Patti Smith, the three-member girl group the Ronettes, the hard-rock band Van Halen and the Georgia college-town rockers R.E.M. … Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam paid tribute to R.E.M., saying he had, by his calculations, listened to their album 'Murmur' 1,260 times in the summer of 1984. Referring to R.E.M.’s hard-to-understand singer, Michael Stipe, he said, 'One of the reasons I was listening so incessantly was I had to know what he was saying,' Mr. Vedder said. 'He can hit an emotion with pinpoint accuracy or he can be completely oblique, and it all resonates.' R.E.M. performed with its original drummer, Bill Berry, who had retired after suffering a brain aneurysm in 1997" ("Hip Hop Is Rock 'n' Roll," 3/13/07).