Thats what I was remembering - I saw REM in the fall of '84 as a freshman in college, and I thought it was the tour for their first album.
It was just about the only concert I can point back to and say, “look! I was cool, 'cause I saw this awesome band back when they were playing in tiny venues!”
The two missed opportunities to have another couple stories are:
a) The Landing in St. Louis in about 1987 or 88; “Soundgarden? Thats a stupid name for a band. Lets find a place with cheaper beer,” and
b) Some club in Palo Alto, California where I remember seeing posters for Nirvana, maybe 6 months to a year before the release of Nevermind. I don’t even have as good of an excuse as “cheap beer” for not going to that one.
The first time I heard R.E.M. was on Saturday Night Live when they performed ‘‘Losing My Religion’’ and ‘‘Shiny Happy People.’’ I was pretty young. I thought they were weird, and I was right. They were awesomely weird. Their music reminds me of my schizophrenic uncle. In a good way.
I was surprised when I heard about it, although with most people agreeing they lost steam a long time ago, some of that was ‘why now?’ But it’s a good excuse for me to dig into their older stuff- I happened to stumble across the Dead Letter Office compilation at a store a few weeks ago and later I downloaded Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Document, and Green. I’ve had Automatic for the People and Lifes Rich Pageant for a long time and Murmur for a couple of years, and I had Monster on tape way back when. I re-bought that one, too. So it’ll take a while to go through all of that.
You quit on them kind of early- that’s from the first full album. But yeah, that’s a bewildering lyrics and it’s a great example of how music can carry a lot of meaning even if the words don’t mean anything.
One of the new tracks is available for download as a single (also available on iTunes). Pretty textbook late-period R.E.M., though the AM Gold-style horns are a nice touch.
bump this thread to share a link to an NPR/All Things Considered interview with Stipe and Mills on the band, the retirement and life going forward. Well done.
But yeah, that’s a bewildering lyrics and it’s a great example of how music can carry a lot of meaning even if the words don’t mean anything.