Yes, I’m back. I thought about posting the last few days, but figured today would be a better time to kick off 2008 with these two pieces of great news. Michael Stipe turns 48 today. I generally don’t do hero […]
Well, the news has started to surface about R.E.M.’s upcoming album. Michael Stipe – who declared the release a “great fucking album” – said recently that the band’s 14th studio release will come out on April 1. That’s probably no […]
R.E.M. didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. The four members of the band owe much of their inspiration to the thriving music scene in Athens, Ga., where they all lived in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The quartet […]
I read the “Today in History” column in my local paper pretty much every day. My favorite part are the celebrity birthdays. I always had a rule that once a musician turned 50, the could not be listed as a […]
I can officially get excited. R.E.M. has announced its first concert for 2008. We don’t know when they will release their next album. We don’t even know what it might be called. But we know they will play in Florida […]
Last week marked three years since I have seen R.E.M. play live. On the “Around the Sun” tour, I headed up to New Jersey and caught them at The Borgata because the D.C. date two days later just wasn’t that […]
Less than a week ago, the Athens Historical Society hosted a program called “R.E.M. in Perspective: An Athens History.” The event featured panelists with all kinds of connections, including Kathleen O’Brien Layson, the woman who threw herself a birthday party […]
I didn’t intend on rushing out to buy the new live R.E.M. CD/DVD. I wasn’t impressed by the track listing and really didn’t know when I would sit down and watch the DVD. That’s why I bought it the day […]
The new live CD/DVD from R.E.M. comes out next week, but that’s not the big news coming out of Athens. The band lent a song from its planned 2008 release to a CNN special on global warming. I have no […]
Fifteen years ago tomorrow, the history of R.E.M. took a major turn. “Automatic for the People” was released. The band’s eighth album and the followup to the hugely successful “Out of Time,” Automatic is probably one of the most acclaimed […]