Posts Tagged ‘R.E.M.’
R.E.M.: Life And How To Live It
I’m pretty sure I’d never seen a man wearing eyeliner, let alone one stabbing, sweating and strutting his way shirtless across a stage back lit by 16mm film of fish swimming in slow-motion. I was in the second row. Standing on my seat for two hours straight. Singing every word. Indeed, R.E.M.’s 1988 Philadelphia Spectrum…
Read MoreI Heart Pop Candy Because Pop Candy Hearts Mister Rogers (And R.E.M.!)
In December, I travelled to Washington, D.C., to cover President Obama’s Inauguration for MTV News. I was managing the operation, for the most part, but broke ranks one afternoon to interview one of my artistic heroes, Shepard Fairey. USA Today’s Pop Candy Blog linked to the resulting article. So I sent its editor, Whitney Matheson,…
Read MoreThirty-Eight Songs
Sometime after midnight thirty-eight years ago today in a sterile-white, fluorescent-lit University of Iowa hospital room, my parents welcomed me into the world just a few weeks shy of my due date. My mother was studying classical guitar that summer. Moreover, the acoustic balladeer — James Taylor, Carol King, Jim Croce, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown,…
Read MoreUnderground
Dear Ben, In just a few weeks, you’ll be laying in a hospital bed with a broken jaw. You’ll look in the mirror but — what with those wired teeth and that Elephant Man swelling — fail to recognize yourself. It’s a whole lotta’ trauma on account of a girl, and a knuckleheaded football player,…
Read MoreMusic Could Provide The Light You Cannot Resist
It was spring. Everything was in bloom. The pavement was slick from an overnight rain. The bus stop on the corner of Spencer and Fairfield Roads was crowded with middle schoolers. Including me: a tall, bespectacled and braced ninth grader in a blue Land’s End oxford button-down, Levis 501s, and purple Converse All-Star high tops.…
Read MoreR.E.M. Accelerate: A First Listen
The day job affords me the occasional perk: random Paramount Picture DVDs, semi-annual trips to Park City, access to Lollapalooza’s scrappy craft services tent. In general, though, mine’s a desk job. I write email all day. Today, though, provided a brief respite from the usual. For fifteen minutes this afternoon, I was fifteen-years-old again. Record…
Read MoreHide & Seek: A Consideration Of REM & U2
In the fall of 1987, two scrappy rock bands stood poised for world domination. REM’s fifth release, “Document,” catapulted the band from college rock staples to mainstream mainstays. The band’s Top 10 hit, “The One I Love,” cracked the top ten. The album went platinum, paving the way for a five-album, $80M Warner Bros. deal.…
Read MoreThe Place Where You Live
I have the best ringtone ever. I was a senior in high school when R.E.M. released its first Warner Bros. record, “Green,” on November 8, 1988. The band had (of course) crawled from The South, releasing five sonically and lyrically unique pop albums on IRS Records and setting the bar for what would become “alternative…
Read MoreI needed a shot in the arm. I got Michael Stipe. And I feel fine. I got a phone call around four o’clock. “If you’re fanatical enough to see REM two nights in a row, I just came across a pair of tickets for tonight.” Ends up, I am fanatical enough. So I hitched a…
Read MoreMichael Stipe: Man On The Moon
Listening to R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe discuss the comedian Andy Kaufman, one can’t help imagining that the singer is, at least in part, also describing himself. “I copped a lot of his moves,” Stipe concedes. Coming from a man who has been saddled since early in his career with the quasi-complimentary “eccentric” tag, that’s no…
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