To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks [...]
Posted tagged ‘R.E.M.’
R.E.M.: April 5, 1980 – September 21, 2011
September 21, 2011Time Warp After Time Warp (franknFurter)
April 26, 2010Here’s a clip from St. Louis local TV circa ’78 or so. Things take a turn for the bizarre, embarrassing, and prophetic at the 1:25 mark. Yup – it’s him. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, it’s really not too much of a stretch. Anyway, here’s a not entirely inappropriate clip of ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn [...]
Steady Repetition Is A Compulsion Mutually Reinforced: Happy 30th Birthday, R.E.M.!
April 5, 2010Thirty years ago tonight, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe made their stage debut together at friend Kathleen O’Brien’s birthday party in an abandoned church in Athens, GA. The band billed themselves as the Twisted Kites (a name which narrowly beat out Slut Bank, Cans Of Piss and Negro Eyes) and played [...]
Time Is An Abstract: Happy 50th, Michael Stipe
January 4, 2010Michael Stipe is 50. Fifty. 5-0. Half a century. Shit. Over the years, we’ve seen ol’ Acorn Head in a variety of incarnations – painfully shy art student, mustard-haired medicine man, agitprop provocateur, owner of the single-worst haircut ever sported by man, GAP-attired shiny happy person, Captain Scrummy, Elvis impersonator, Star-Bellied Sneetch, “equal-opportunity letch”, bald [...]
It’s A Major Award! The BTRNR Top 50 Coolest Christmas Songs
December 18, 2009OK, here we go. No other subgenre of modern music is so incessantly annoying yet unfairly maligned as the whole Xmas thing – but like all good things, you’ve just gotta know where to look. And look no further – here is, in our humble opinion, the cream of the holiday crop. So light the [...]
Look Who’s Back: PiL and BiLL
December 16, 2009After a 17 year hiatus that saw multiple Sex Pistols reunions and several forays into mass media and butter, John Lydon has reassembled Public Image, Ltd., who kicked off their UK tour last night at the Birmingham O2 Academy. No final word on the full setlist yet, but it seems that it consisted mostly of [...]
