R.E.M. R.I.P.
"To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening." R.E.M.
This isn't really surprising; thirty years is a long time. But, it does turn them into band that only exists in memory. Which is kindof sad. Though, as far as records go, they've been primarily a historical band for me since "Out Of Time", I have always wanted to see them play live again.
I suppose there's an inevitable reunion tour to look forward to, in five or ten years.
I’m really into Monster at the moment and I prefer it now to when it was first released, Saw them once, in 1995, and they were supported by Sleeper, The Cranberries and, oh yeh, Radiohead.
Going to listen to New Adventures In Hi-Fi next and then start working back to the 80s stuff.
i saw them in 89, Syracuse. a still-relatively unknown Indigo Girls opened.
oh look, here’s the set list!
Pop Song 89 / Exhuming McCarthy / Welcome To The Occupation / Pilgrimage / Turn You Inside-Out / Driver 8 / Orange Crush / Sitting Still / Feeling Gravitys Pull / Cuyahoga / World Leader Pretend / Begin The Begin / Pretty Persuasion / Low / Stony River / Tired Of Singing Trouble / I Believe / Get Up / Auctioneer (Another Engine) / It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
encore 1: Stand / With A Girl Like You / Dark Globe / You Are The Everything
encore 2: Finest Worksong / King Of Birds / See No Evil
encore 3: Harpers / Summertime / Crazy / Perfect Circle / After Hours
don’t remember much of it
I first saw them at Graham Chapel at Wash U on the Reckoning tour with the dB’s opening. For the encore the dB’s came out and Holsapple taught Buck Television’s See No Evil on the spot.
I lived in Memphis when they recorded Green at Ardent. They’d show up at the Antenna and ask who ever was playing if they could do a set, but you never knew when they’d show up. I had a friend who was in a local band called the Penetrators who had REM and the ‘Mats both ask to borrow the stage in the same summer.
I had started hanging out at the Antenna because I had interviewed another band, and they put my 16 yr self on the list. They used to cover Radio Free Europe, and I’d guess that was my first exposure to REM. (The singer of that band went on the engineer SY’s Washing Machine and a bunch of other stuff.
I also saw 3/4s of them at the 40w the year of the first Lollapalooza. My friends and I drove to Atlanta for the show, I demanded the side trip pilgrimage to Athens, and we got lucky. Vic Chesnutt was opening for Robyn Hitchcock. Both acts started their sets as solos, both had the REM boys join them. I was close enough I could have ripped the prismatic skull sticker off Peter Buck’s black Ric. Lollapalooza was good, but was sort of an anticlimax for me.
There were other stadium shows sprinkled in there, and while they were fun, they weren’t the same as the little shows. REM will always be one of my faves. The band and their music are associated with pretty much every part of my life from teenhood on.
good stuff.
Great story.
I’ve been listening to Green and Document today and both are bloody good. I also dug out Monster the other day and it sounds much better than I remember at the time (distorted guitars? yes please!). It was much less of a commercial sound than ‘Automatic For The People’ in my opinion which probably explains why so many copies of Monster ended up in bargain bins – for many people it was their 2nd R.E.M. purchase and they probably found those guitars offensive. :)
It’s funny, REM was always a band that was in the background for me, a band that I could like the music of without having to be a fan. My first real exposure to them was my freshman year of college (86-87 I think, but maybe I am getting mixed up and it was actually 87-88) when “The One I Love” was a big hit, and one other song was getting a lot of airplay on the college station, possibly it was “The End of the World as We Know It” — I was looking up to and trying unsuccessfully to imitate this hardcore punk rocker named Andy who continually expressed disdain for “The One I Love”, which made me file away REM for the next couple of years as insufficiently hard core. I met Ellen not long after that and she was listening to Document and Automatic for the People so I listened to the records with her, but still as background music. I like their music a lot when I hear it, even have tried covering it once or twice (with John, who is totally into them), but still have not found an entry point for fandom.
First saw them in 84 and was blown away by them. I’ve got the whole catalog but keep going back to the murmur-fables stuff. I also love dead letter office which really gives a nice intro to their roots and influences. The cover of Pale Blue Eyes is amazing.
Hm, maybe the breakup will give me my occasion to become a fan. I’m listening to “FotR” now and liking it a lot.
i did LRP earlier today, and am doing Reckoning (still my fav) right now.