{"id":130,"date":"2004-10-06T13:12:14","date_gmt":"2004-10-06T19:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/?p=130"},"modified":"2004-10-06T13:12:14","modified_gmt":"2004-10-06T19:12:14","slug":"lucky-for-some","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2004\/10\/06\/lucky-for-some\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucky for some"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Around the Sun<\/em> is REM&#8217;s 13th album, and the third (following <em>Up<\/em> and <em>Reveal<\/em>) without drummer Bill Berry. Who thought the drummer actually <em>mattered<\/em>? I mean, I was never that convinced that Led Zeppelin couldn&#8217;t have continued without John Bonham. After all, The Who went on without Keith Moon. A drummer, I always figured, was great, but he was just some guy whacking something really hard. Right? Right?<\/p>\n<p>Well, REM have conclusively proven, in the space of just 39 tracks, that the drummer matters, and is often the critical element in the architecture of a band and their sound. When Berry left he took discipline, melody and drive with him, and left behind an aural wash that tended to be a bit dark and a bit down, but not terribly interesting.  Sure there have been outstanding tracks along the way &#8211; &#8220;Daysleeper&#8221; for example &#8211; but there haven&#8217;t been any outstanding albums, and it doesn&#8217;t seem like there will be. Compare, if you want to see what I mean, <em>New Adventures in Hi Fi<\/em> with <em>Around the Sun<\/em>. It&#8217;s not pretty. The latest issue of <em>Mojo<\/em> reviews the album and asks if we can&#8217;t go back to Rockville, after all. I agree. Bill Berry come home. We need you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Around the Sun is REM&#8217;s 13th album, and the third (following Up and Reveal) without drummer Bill Berry. Who thought the drummer actually mattered? I mean, I was never that convinced that Led Zeppelin couldn&#8217;t have continued without John Bonham. After all, The Who went on without Keith Moon. A drummer, I always figured, was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2004\/10\/06\/lucky-for-some\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lucky for some<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imported-from-older-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}