Walk Unafraid
Up | 1998
Listen Original Listen Final Mix

Meditations On Up

Up is in my top 5 REM albums. This is despite my not liking it at the time. That and I think that its one of the worst sequenced albums of all time.

I never listened much to Up until my recent re-evaluation of their latet period in 2017. I’m not sure what led me back to REM, but what I found was several of my new all-time favorite REM songs. Up especially captured me. BUt it was so tough to get into. Each song feels like a jarring change from the last. And the last few songs always blend togetether for me to nothing. It was only until I was constantly going back to these as individual tracks that I realized how great most of these songs are. “Sad Professor”, “Hope”, “Walk Unafraid” and “At My Most Beautiful” would all be in my top 20 songs list if I ever made one. No other REM album is represented as much in this project.

Planning Out Up

I’m about to get a ton of time focused on this album. I’m supposed to go to my folks place for the last week of March. My plan was to save “Hope” and “At My Most Beautiful” for that weekend. “Hope” because I won’t have my guitar and bass with me and will need a song that plays into more software electric instruments. I will also have access to the piano I played while growing up. So I added “At My Most Beauutiful” to the initial list. The only reason it was not on the original list was because I don’t have a piano here.

This means I will suspend my usual one song a week plan to spend the next foutr weeks on these three songs. I’ll give myself until we leave for Michigan to finish “Walk Unafraid”, which is almost two weeks. For “Hope” and especially “At My Most Beautiful”, I’ll prepare the base tracks and garageband projects so I can focus on the piano parts while there.