“You should just make me a playlist,” she said.
I’d been sending a favorite song or two every day to a woman I’d met. It was getting unwieldy.
“No problem.”
Seven and a half hours and over a hundred songs later, I was done. It used to be that all the time you got for a mix was your 90-minute TDK, but not so in the digital era. When I came of age musically in the mid-1980s, any more songs than that went on Volume II or beyond. The double tape deck was in for a workout. I missed this piece of technology and the young lust that used to accompany these clumsy efforts. Now it was all just clumsy efforts. Athens, Georgia was well-repped in my latest effort, the first in a long time: B-52’s, Pylon, Kilkenny Cats, Neutral Milk Hotel, Squalls, and of course, R.E.M.
The first time I ever heard R.E.M. was on a mixtape a fifth year gave me as a freshman in college. There remains some debate as to whether these songs first appeared on Stacey McMahon Got Engaged (a sprawling musical tale of unrequited love), Ah, There’s the Rub (had to have coincided with someone’s graduate-level English class), or Side A Is Extinct/Austin’s Not Costin’ (young twenties esoterica), but the songs were “Pale Blue Eyes” and “Crazy” from Dead Letter Office, along with songs from Pixies, Galaxie 500, Jesus and Mary Chain, Stone Roses, and Dinosaur Jr. This music would become the soundtrack of my life.
Last Thursday, something happened that no one ever thought could—except me. I’d been going to shows at Athens’ 40 Watt and other venues in the simple hope of seeing any of the members of R.E.M. onstage. My checklist was coming along nicely. I’d seen Peter Buck and Mike Mills at Chronic Town’s 40th anniversary; Buck and Mills again with The Baseball Project; Mills with the Big Star #1 Record tribute in LA; Bill Berry with The Bad Ends and in the crowd for The Baseball Project; and Eyelids (LA again), which Peter produced, but no Peter when I saw them. All of this I explained to the owner of the Metro in Chicago, where R.E.M. opened a show in 1981. He and his wife had squeezed in next to me at the bar at Athens’ South Kitchen for dinner, which was always my first stop for a meal before I headed down the street. “There might be some surprises,” he suggested. I’d seen Pixies at the Metro years earlier. This was clearly a man who could be trusted. I was sold. And yes, there were surprises.
That night, the four original members of R.E.M. appeared together on stage for the first time in 17 years during actor Michael Shannon’s tribute to Murmur, which saw its debut at Chicago’s Metro last year in celebration of the album’s 40th anniversary. The four didn’t play together—Buck, Berry, and Mills all took turns playing, including Buck and Berry on “Perfect Circle” (one of my favorite moments of the night) before Stipe joined his former bandmates onstage to express his gratitude. “On behalf of Bill and Mike and Peter, we are so fucking thrilled to be here tonight,” he said before quickly leaving the stage once more, but for fans it was enough of a reunion.
I’d spotted Stipe backstage before anyone else saw him. When he settled at the end of the small bar right of the stage (my favorite spot for the view it afforded), the group I’d joined begged me to please not bother him. They weren’t wrong in urging discretion, but I’d met 75 percent of the band, and I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity to say thank you for a lifetime of music.
So, I did.
I had a special move whenever I encountered a celebrity I admired. “You either look like Michael Stipe, or you are Michael Stipe,” is how it would’ve gone, but there was no feint required in this case. This was Athens and the 40 Watt. A band was celebrating Murmur. Who else would it have been? I wasn’t embarrassed by my fandom until the next day. I thought of my friend who was unabashed in his efforts to meet his idols. Some would have used the term “jock-sniffer,” but I understood. In the moment, I was vibrating, all energy and emotion.
“I’m sorry to bother you but thank you so much for everything you and the band have given us.”
R.E.M. circa 1984 / photo by Edward Colver
Which was met with a polite, “You’re welcome.” I think. I hope.
“Also, here’s a picture of my nephew. Oh, and one of my dogs.”
(OK, I didn’t really say that last part—that’s from an insurance commercial starring LL Cool J—but it was official. I was a Stipe Stalker.)
My new friends were none too impressed.
“Don’t judge. You’re just jealous.”
My ex didn’t care for R.E.M., which meant that I played them at full volume anytime she left the house. I should’ve known it was never going to work. Neither did High Five Jordan, for that matter, of whom I’ve written about for this magazine. Jordan was a Replacements guy, and I would go ’round and ’round with him about how almost all of the ’Mats catalog could’ve belonged to R.E.M. had the dice taken a different turn, how there are no Replacements without R.E.M. and so on. “Left of the Dial”’s “Sweet Georgia breezes, safe, cool, and warm.” We always ended up in the same place we began. I don’t think he saw the parallels, or the magic in this place.
I never got to see R.E.M. live. At first, I was too young. I missed it. After that, life got in the way. Somewhere in between, I made a pilgrimage (ahem) to Athens to see St. Mary’s Episcopal when the bricks were still in a pile at the base of the steeple and not yet funding Nuçi’s Space “Reconstruction of the Steeple” (I have brick #591). Visited the Murmur trestle while it was still there. Saw some kudzu. I saw some great shows in the two years I spent at the University of Kansas—Jonathan Richman and Guadalcanal Diary at the Bottleneck, just to name two. But had I realized there was such a place as Athens or that I could’ve been a part of this music, I would have made an about face and changed my path forever. Thanks to a journey that has lasted nearly 40 years and culminated last week, I am finally and forever a part of that experience.
Recently, I rediscovered New Adventures in Hi-Fi when the friend who gave me that first mix challenged me to name the 10 “best” R.E.M. songs. No easy task given the amount of material to choose from. “E-Bow the Letter” made my list (due in no small part to all-time goddess Patti Smith appearing on the record), as did “Be Mine” from the same LP, and “Oh My Heart” from Collapse Into Now—but it all still comes back to the beginning. Shannon, who has also performed records from The Modern Lovers, The Smiths, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young with band leader Jason Narducy, says “Murmur just feels like magic. It’s interesting, considering how young they were when they made it and it being their first record. But there’s a lot of desire to hear this music again.”
As the song says, right on target. Might be a good name for my next playlist. FL
