On this day in 1986, something very special happened. I had no idea at the time.<\/p>\n
R.E.M. released\u00a0Life’s Rich Pageant<\/em><\/a> on this day 28 years ago, the band’s fourth album. I had yet to discover the Athens (Ga.) quartet at the time even though I saw them open for The Police a few years earlier. I paid no attention to them.<\/p>\n Pageant<\/em> came out right before I went to college, and it didn’t take long for me to discover “Superman<\/a>,” the hidden 12th track on the album. The song – a cover of the 1960s group The Clique – was a popular party song during my freshman year at college. I didn’t need long to find a used cassette of Pageant<\/i> from Record and Tape Traders the following summer and begin my obsession with the band.<\/p>\n I don’t know if I would have had the same reaction if I hadn’t immersed myself in this album from the beginning.\u00a0Reckoning<\/em><\/a> may have done the same thing, but that’s about it at that point. I love\u00a0Murmur<\/em><\/a> and think\u00a0Fables<\/em><\/a> is underrated, but my favorite songs come from Pageant.\u00a0<\/em>I remember the moment at the final R.E.M. show I saw in 2008 when the guy in front of me turned around and high fived me because I knew every word to the “I had a hat …” segment of “These Days.”<\/p>\n Yeah, I can be that guy at an R.E.M. show.<\/p>\n I went full-long into the band when I saw them play on the Green<\/i><\/a> tour in 1989, the first album I bought right after it came out. I don’t recall a ton from that show in Cleveland, but I remember how mesmerized I was at their performance of “I Believe.” They always took it up a notch live. So, I’m celebrating the birthday of\u00a0Pageant<\/em> with one of my favorite songs from the album.<\/p>\n