When I was thirteen years old, I lived in Brooklyn (Sheep’s Head Bay – to be exact) and my step-step said that we were going to go to someplace called Madison Square Garden to see some (dumb) band that some of his (dumb) friends were in … I couldn’t have been any more underwhelmed or unexcited.
However – as often happens with thirteen year olds … I was a bit off the mark and totally wrong about what was in store.
It was my very first concert (that I have in my memory) and the band turned out to be R.E.M. and it was tremendous. It was loud and I didn’t know the music and there were a lot of people it was a *cough* magic night … Yes – I said ‘a magic night.’ Afterwards, we got to stick around and hang out with the band. It turned out that the step-step had grown up with Mike Mills and Bill Barry – and the fact that they tortuously made fun of him to his face made their stature all that much higher in my eyes. While I never held the step-step in any high regard – I will always begrudgingly acknowledge his part in setting this experience up. We were even given a cursory – polite – but short mumble from Michael Stipe. I think that I was star-struck/dumfounded that these guys were just on stage in front of an astronomical number of people a half hour before they were just normal guys in a giant empty room talking to/near me.
At some point after the show, we packed up and headed back down to Georgia (yes – I know that is a leap of a non sequitur) and I started hearing “The one I love” and “It’s the end of the world as we know it” on the radio – and – being the genius that I am – I realized that it was the same band that I had seen and met. For a kid that age … whatever age that was … it was kind of mind blowing. What had started off as a trip to a place to see a band that I didn’t know turned into a certifiable cultural touchstone in my life. R.E.M. was my little band – who were (at least partially) from the same crummy town that I had been born in – that was making music that I genuinely enjoyed – that I had an actual (amplified in my head) personal connection with – and I loved it.
Read the rest of Natty’s magical memory here.
Sounds like a great experience. REM at the top of its game was a truly extraordinary band. Unfortunately the latter part of their career was thoroughly eclipsed by Michael Stipes painstakingly contrived bizareness. I got so sick and tired of seeing him come out with a painted forehead and all the other horse*it he resorted to it to attract attention. And in interviews he came off as a pompous jerk who couldn’t conceivably have been any more full of himself. Sad, because the other guys in the band always seemed so down to earth and genuine. A great band but could have been more.
For 12 years or so I don’t think a band put any better than REM from Murmur to Monster. I saw them for the first time in ’84 at the Capitol with a huge lineup that included Roger McGuinn , John Sebastian and Richie Havens then a few months later with the db’s. As much as I love them I never thought they were very good live. I heard they broke up the other day but to be honest it ended for with them with me in ’96 with the release of New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I’ll put their first 10 albums high on my all-time list (this includes Dead Letter Office). Stipes routine got wore thin after a while.
They worked with Warren Zevon in a group The Hindu Love Gods, great cd and awesome cover version of Raspberry Beret.
I love REM. I still remember seeing Mike Mills sing “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” by himself on Regis and Kathy Lee. But they will always be the background music for a lonely drive I took from LA to Vegas, and back. “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” still haunts me.
(This piece made me feel like I should write some corresponding thought in a parenthetical…)(Just to do it.)(You know?)
(“But I feel better having screamed. Don’t you?”)