You Won’t Hurt the Horse: A Very Late Thanks to R.E.M.’s Kind and Undeserved Invitation

Great job.

I actually just discovered R.E.M. fairly recently (hey, you started UGA before my parents met each other), so I can’t relate to a lot of it, but. . . they do good stuff, and definitely will be missed

I do like some new stuff, but it’s just so easy to fall back on the stuff I liked when I was in high school (late 80s) and college (early 90s). There’s a LOT of variety in that period.

Did you know Nirvana’s Nevermind just turned 20? Damn, that makes me feel old.

Everybody hurts.

(ducks, runs)

(which makes me now ask, if authors compliment our fellow authors, does that get into some realm of butt kissing?)

…was the first R.E.M. song I ever heard, listening on a friend’s Walkman (remember those?) on a school bus hauling the Westover Junior Classical League to Atlanta for Fall Forum. While Poison and the rest of the hair bands were providing the soundtrack for most of my friends’ coming of age, I quickly worked my way backwards through the catalog. One of the first things I noticed was that I didn’t know half of what Stipe was singing, but Mike Mills’ bass lines (to this day) remain some of the most interesting melodies I’ve ever heard. Many a “country coolin’” dirt road cruisin’ trip with my buddies had Buck’s jingle-jangle along for the ride. My first attempt at journalism was my review for my high school paper of R.E.M.’s Green tour show in Macon, the first time my parents let me leave town to go to a concert. I still celebrate the first cool, crisp day of autumn with brown likker and a couple of tracks off “Murmur” and “Reckoning”.

“Driver 8” was the first song I learned to play all the way through on the guitar.

The 1972 orange Toyota Land Cruiser I drove in high school was nicknamed the “Orange Crush”.

I am still proud of the fact that Mike Mills is a great Dawg fan, as proved that Thursday night in the mid-90’s when he debated Darius Rucker on that weekend’s GA/SC game on ESPN. Rucker gave the usual pollyannish Gamecock rah-rah-we’re-going-to-kick-Georgia’s-behind…only to be stunned into submission by Mill’s detailed breakdown of Georgia’s strengths and probable gameplan. When Mills won the AJC’s NCAA Men’s basketball Bracket Challenge a couple of years later, that only strengthened my devotion to R.E.M. as local boys done good.

When I was at UGA, Weaver D of “Automatic for the People” fame catered my fraternity’s dinners that year. He was so excited when he was leaving for the Grammys…he was going to get up on stage with the band if they won album of the year. Sadly, they didn’t, but Weaver didn’t care. He loved those guys and was so honored to be a part of their success. “Automatic!”

One of my fondest memories is seeing the boys at Chastain Park in 1999. They put on a great show, and dug deep into the well to pull out “Gardening At Night” in the second set. It was comical to see everyone 30-something and older going ape over the selection, while all the kids who were introduced to the band with “Losing My Religion” looked around and said, “What the hell is this song?” Ah, kids.

A real treat: At the night before New Year’s Panic show at Philips Arena a couple years’ back, Mike Mills joined the band onstage for a rendition of “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville”. Same reaction as the kids at that Chastain show. Funny.

My favorite concert moment came recently, when they played Lakewood. Of course, they played some of their current album’s tunes, but again they went back into the vault and played a song near and dear to me, “Time After Time (Ann Elise)”. That song is special because my oldest daughter will always be associated with it, as we named her Annalise. I wish I could say it was because of the song, but I must not have been a good enough fan. It turned out to be a happy coincidence. (I kid my wife that we were going to name her Azalea Merlot Dawglicious, but them’s just jokes, ma’am.)

NCT, I cannot improve on what you wrote up above. I can only hope that I added to it. I’ve been bummed all day knowing that a small part of my growing up has come to an end. Other people should be so lucky to have their favorite band last as long as R.E.M.

Now, if Panic can just hold on another 20-30 years for me….

“Looking at your watch a third time, waiting at the station for the bus…”

although i’m clearly a few years younger. living in the cultural wasteland of north louisiana in the 80s offered few options once you figured out pink floyd’s the wall wasn’t the greatest album evar. but then two things happened.

the first was night tracks. you see, not that many folks had cable back then so MTV might have been something you went over to a friends house to watch. night tracks was on late friday nights and you might be able to convince some girl whose parents were out to watch it with you. (romantic progress was always a challenge due to the proliferation of douche commercials they ran on WTBS late at night.)

funny thing about night tracks though. they played a lot of great stuff. as much as we think this was the golden era of MTV the truth is you got a lot of pat benatar and glen frey and very little of the good stuff. watching 12 crap videos in a row to get to the great one was common. and one night they showed this quirky video for R.E.M. and i was straight hooked.

it somehow filled that musical curiosity within me we all have in our teenage years for something completely different but was still so strangely recognizable. the musical template came from the AOR 70s radio i grew up on and many of the images from the video were pretty much right out of my life in louisiana. but then they threw in all this other stuff i wanted to hear more of.

then came epiphany no. 2 – college radio. there was a great station at the local university and by the end of my junior year of high school i was working there. r.e.m. became a key participant in my life because that was when they were just cranking out this era-defining stuff NCT describes so well above.

but, buck was right in noting the band was “the acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff” and suddenly i had this gigantic library of the latter to start exploring with vigor. in a lot of ways, r.e.m. became my guide through this sea of “alternative” music. because while we hold all certain albums from that era up as landmarks today, the fact is those were few and far between – there was a hell of a lot of crap you had to listen to to find them. if buck or mills name dropped someone in an interview, it was always worth it to dig that vinyl out of the stack and give it a listen. and, usually, when you listened to it and went back to that r.e.m. album, you could figure out how they were using it themselves.

so, yeah, there’s a ton of nostalgic melancholy wrapped up in r.e.m. calling it quits. and i’m probably going to let myself succumb to it a little bit like everyone else my age. but the fact is this band is a hell of a lot more than just some guys that played a song or two that reminds me of way back when. buck, mills, stipe and berry gave me something incredibly important all those years ago that has made my life all the more richer and more satisfying for it. and for that, i have to say “thank you.”

I can honestly saw these guys when they were just starting to create the local buzz, having attended my first real “after party” where these guys were playing. It felt so totally underground since I was barely out of high-school, but began to blend in as I was just part of a pretty large crowd and an even larger vibe. I drank quite a bit and may have eaten a funny tasting brownie or two, but that was really one of my first real “coming of age” experiences and R.E.M. just happened to be a part of it. How cool is that? I saw them play quite a few times after that until they went supersonic. I don’t think I ever saw them play live again after 1983 which was an impromptu gig at the old Stitchcraft Mill off of Oconee Street.

Anyway, I’m really proud of R.E.M. for doing what they did for so long. And am thankful for being able to see a little bit of history in the making.