Gray It Crawled Rem

by Out Of Print

Now in its second edition, It Crawled from the South is an encyclopedic, non-linear, mostly non-hagiographic book about those enigmatic guys from Athens, Georgia. Marcus Gray furnishes thumbnail sketches of each member, as well as chapters on the band's recording history, politics, album packaging, and regional accent. The author is also fearless enough to venture into the black hole of Michael Stipe's lyrics. He doesn't, to be sure, make sense of Stipe's associative rambles, and the singer himself lets Gray off the hook by confessing that "three-quarters of my lyrics probably come from overheard conversations. I steal a lot, basically. Someone will say something really interesting, and I'll write it down." Okay. But we'd still like to know what a moral kiosk is.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Collections, Biography Memoir, Autobiography, History

349 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less of a biography than an investigation into REM and REMness. It's not a simple chronology, rather a series of in-depth essays, just one of which deals with the story of how the band came to be. I found the essay contextualising the band in The South very interesting. I've always been interested in voices from the margins, and Athens, Georgia really was a small marginal city on the edges of mainstream American culture. That it produced the most exciting American band of the eighties proves that New York, LA, Paris London etc are not the centres of the world.

I have huge respect for a band that made like, 8 or 9 albums before they wrote a love song. I only wrote about 15 songs before my resistance crumbled.

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still sort of the ideal music biography for me: no attempt at being authoritative, and instead it has a fanzine level joy of pointless facts and different approaches to the records. I’ve just been revisiting the Berry era - the good era, if you like - so coming back to this much loved book of my teens and beyond felt very appropriate. A labour of love

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gets a fifth star for being as thorough and comprehensive as it is...

Couple of important disclaimers:
1) This "fully revised and updated" edition was last updated in... early 1996. (So it's thorough and comprehensive up to that point.)
2) As other reviewers have noted, this is not really a biography. There is no narrative beyond the opening chapter, which covers how the band came together. Thereafter, chapters are organized by themes, such as the influence of the South or the political content of lyrics, or lists, such as of music videos or television appearances.

That said, Gray's research for this book was clearly exhaustive, and there are an absurd number of amusing anecdotes tucked into this book that I had somehow managed to never hear, alongside all of the old, familiar ones. Gray's own point of view is liberally sprinkled throughout, somehow simultaneously holding his subjects in high regard and giving them more than their fair share of side-eye. Again, as noted elsewhere, it all balances out in the end, leaving an informative book that is neither fawning nor spiteful.

All of which is to say, this is about the best book you're ever going to find about R.E.M., even though it cuts out in the run up to the release of New Adventures In Hi-Fi. I expect I'm going to be referring back to it repeatedly in the years to come. A must!

[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truth be told, I didn't finish it this time. I've read it years ago, being a die-hard R.E.M. fan in my teenage years. I also wrote an extensive paper for my high school graduation on the band.
Gray did a remarkable job in acquiring so many details about the band and their work, but this is exactly what stopped me from finishing it this time. As much as it helped me with my research 20 years ago, it wasn't as interesting to me as it was then.

[Stuart McMillen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marcus Gray's It Crawled from the South is an exceptionally well-researched book that is, unfortunately, deeply in need of an editor.

The book is a logjam of facts, divided into categorical chapters ("the meaning of Michael's lyrics", "the political causes that R.E.M. has supported over the years"), and then presented in chronological order. It is as though Gray decided that all facts gathered during his research needed to be included in the finished book.

The result is a tiresome read, with the author often bogged down by the minutia of R.E.M.'s night-by-night setlists. Pages and pages are dedicated to describing the slight changes in setlist order that occurred on each night of their European tours, as well as which cover songs were attempted on particular nights, and chronological accounts of the band's media appearances on their tour legs. I found myself desperate to skip ahead and put myself out of my misery.

My edition of the book is from 1992, so perhaps this "factual overload" approach was corrected in later editions of the book, but I suspect not. I suggest readers try Tony Fletcher's Perfect Circle: The Story of R.E.M. instead of this biography.

[Andrew Horton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the author's boiling, barely restrained contempt for each member of the band. This balances it out from hagiography into straight objectivity with a little myth-busting for good measure.

[Rex McCulloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like so many, I was a huge fan of the band in the '80s, attracted to the enigma they created. This is the Rosetta Stone to all that purposeful eccentricity.

[Emily]

Didn't really thoroughly read this, as I'd just picked it up out of nostalgia (my best friend in high school had a copy and she still remembers a lot of R.E.M. fun facts. Hey, remember when loving a band meant you felt like you should know everything about them? Maybe in case some dude challenged you on your fan credentials?). The songwriting chapters really are fantastic - I could take or leave the R.E.M.opedia parts but the glimpse into Michael Stipe's brain is wonderful and weird as hell.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great resource for info about the band from their first 15 years (basically up through the release of Monster and the related tour), though not really something to read straight through as portions can be a little dry (by design, mind, the author even clearly explains this).

[Butch Lazorchak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm now officially on an early R.E.M. binge. This is scattershot, but well worth it for fans.

[Nicholas Doyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is really boring!

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book about a brilliant band

[Nathan Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Re-read.) In preparation of our pilgrimage to Athens in Jan.-Feb. 2022 (a long time coming -- 25+ years as a fan -- and we waited too long and missed the real railroad trestle), I reread the seminal text on their career up to '95. It's not a biography but a reference guide, delving into a different aspect of the band's output and periphery in each chapter. Gray, a British rock journalist, is a brilliant and tough-minded writer and the book had a huge influence on me, especially in its lyrical analysis, its ghostly depictions of the South and how it informed R.E.M.'s early work, and its often hilarious descriptions of TV appearances and music videos. This second edition was published just before Bill Berry left the band and I almost wore it thin from how much I read and consulted it during the peak of my fandom as a teenager. I admit there's a sense in which I played it up a bit in my mind all these years; its segmented nature, while ideal for setting it apart from more conventional rock books, does leave it without a heart, and some of its chapters now seem completely unnecessary (like one in which Gray describes all the sitcoms and movies that made even passing reference to R.E.M.). Some of it is clearly the kind of thing that would be better off as a text file on a '90s-vintage fansite. And the fact that it's missing the latter half of the band's history does hurt, even if virtually everyone would agree their best years are covered. (I don't know how Gray felt about the post-Berry material; to my knowledge, he's never commented, and I did check. All his later books are about the Clash or are more general.) But when Gray has the opportunity to really write, he's really the star of this thing, and his prose and insights are strong enough to make you want more, or to make you wish there were a lot more books like this.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best history of R.E.M. available on the market, even if it's not really up to date. R.E.M.: Fiction may be more complete up to this point, but nothing else written about the band comes close to this book.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

learned lots. an important teenage source.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

this came on Saturday. more research! (this is HUGE, though.... probably will read less of it -- the Inside Out book is much more too the point)

[Daniel]

A thorough study of the band. It felt more like a R.E.M. manual than a biography. Now that R.E.M. is over, I'd love to see an updated and final version of the book (maybe 2 volumes?)

[Michael Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential for R.E.M. fans. Truly unique book.

[✨ Anna ✨ | ReadAllNight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I need the updated version?

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My friend John, an R.E.M. fanatic, used to refer to this as "the Bible".

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

very informative