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Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Way back when, the big story about REM was that the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, wanted “It’s the end of the world” for his advertising blitz for windows 95. REM, they said, told him to take a hike so he had to settle for the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” instead. Windows 95 was culturally pretty big.

Turning down a very large sum of money suggests you believe something in a way that simply lecturing others doesn’t.

I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.

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That was plausibly a commercial decision as much as anything else. I mean, Tom Petty famously refused to license his music, too. You can read in this article a good description of why a band might not want to dilute themselves that way: once you hear a band playing in the background at a department store, you can't un-hear that.

Plausibly, sure. Almost any decision is given people sometimes make terrible commercial decisions. We should acknowledge that the Windows 95 international saturation marketing blitz to the sound of "Start Me Up" failed to end the Stones. Sometime after that they did a concert film directed by Martin Scorsese, a movie featuring hanging out with Bill & Hillary Clinton and they also still seem to sell out 80,000 seat arenas playing their octogenarian loud blues. It seems slightly more plausible to me that the Stones made a commercial decision but again, maybe it was purely artistic or ethical because people also sometimes make terrible decisions on the basis of those motivations.

In the end we can't prove we exist and we deal in probabilities given evidence.

The Stones are also cultural giants in a way REM isn't and never will be.

And REM seem to have been determined not to be. Commercial decisions not to play stadiums and not stoke exaggerated tales of excess that would make Hunter Thompson blush?

It's kind of cool how longevity has worked for the Stones while they've been so consistently second rate. Starting not remotely in the same class as the Beatles but rebels. But by 1970 they weren't in the Beatles class of rebelliousness either. Songwriting improved but it needed to and not to Lennon-McCartney levels. Does anyone much rate them above Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin Wolf, Hendrix or even Bert Jansch? Still they persisted. Their solo projects consistently sucked no matter what talent they brought in so the Stones continued and their cultural relevance grew.

Somehow I doubt anyone will care any more about Stones songs than Jagger or Richards solo songs 50 years hence. REM may fare no better. Could be wrong, only time will tell. Jagger's lips and tongue logo was another seemingly purely commercial decision that has greatly boosted their cultural relevance. In 1995 they were deemed by Microsoft to be second choice to REM on what we might assume to be a cultural basis.

REM played stadiums. I saw REM at a huge stadium. I am chuckling a bit at trying to weigh the Rolling Stones against Bert Jansch. There's not enough Pentangle in modern pop culture.

Really? Shows how far I am out of it. That must have been Ghastly. Back in '95 or so they seemed to play smaller capacity venues than sports stadiums (mostly with roofs?) The talk was that this was deliberate. I found it believable.

"Angie" seems more folk influenced than blues, for mine. Compare it to whatever you think is a good example of its genre and I'm sure you get the point. It's fine. Is it great?

Anyway The Stones remain an inspiring example to us all of sticking at it.

1995. World Music Center (capacity: 28,000), Radiohead opening, Patti Smith guest appearance. :)

https://archive.org/details/REM_1995-09-24

The Stones were giants to the Boomers, sure, but I'm pretty old Gen-Xer myself at 54 and I hardly know them -- I mostly know them because of stories of Mick Jagger being a jerk. And I suspect younger people like Millennials and Zoomers care even less about them. To my generation REM and U2 were the big bands (and I'm sure younger people probably care as little about those bands as I do the Stones).

If REM and U2 are your big bands, we're in the same generation, and my high school classmates today are sending pictures from Rolling Stones concerts they're going to on Insta. I'm not saying I like the Rolling Stones more (though: I probably like them more than U2).

I listen to Murmur like every other week. I listen to a Rolling Stones album every other decade. I listen to The Stone Roses more than the Stones. I'm not advocating for Mick Jagger, I'm just saying, he's more relevant to the culture than Michael Stipe.

Other than comparing the sales records of two bands, concert attendance, or other numerical measures, it's hard to imagine your comment makes any sense. The Stones and REM weren't contemporaries.

This to me is like saying "other than comparing all the available evidence about a rock music act, it's hard to imagine your comment makes any sense".

Yep, once you do a Pizza Hut commercial you know there is no going back.

> Bill Gates, wanted “It’s the end of the world” for his advertising blitz...he had to settle for the Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” instead

Whether the humor was intentional or not, both songs would have been great choices.

> I don’t know what the members of REM believe, probably not all the same thing. But whatever it is, maybe they do really believe it. That counts for something. Contrast Mick Jagger & Keith Richards.

Who were probably like "better say yes before they listen to the rest of the song!"

Stipe is close friends with Ian of Minor Threat, so you could say Stipe is familiar with the ethos of punk.

> Windows 95 was culturally pretty big.

When you didn't have to deal wirh it, yes. /s

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