Goodbye, R.E.M.

Like many guys my age, R.E.M. was the band that helped me through that awk­ward phase, i.e. my entire life in every aspect from the time I was 11 until my mid-twen­ties. Their lyrics described almost every feel­ing I could feel; that ambi­gu­i­ty, that dis­com­fort, that uncer­tain­ty of being myself.  It all began when my ele­men­tary school bud­dies start­ed mak­ing fun of “Stand,” and it did­n’t stop until grad school. I would bor­row a swim team­mate’s tape of “Green” and lis­ten non­stop on road trips and I kept lis­ten­ing until the after­noon I bought “Reveal” at Rocks in Your Head in SoHo.

My fan­dom crys­tal­lized in the fall of ’95, when I watched this per­for­mance of “Wake Up Bomb” at the MTV Europe Music Awards while I was on exchange in Denmark.

That to me was their apoth­e­o­sis of cool. This band not only sound­tracked that por­tion of my life I found most dif­fi­cult, but as Michael Stipe embraced the role of arche­typ­al front­man, so did I. Rather than with­hold opin­ions or judge­ment, I just let it blurt. But as much as I enjoyed Stipe’s trans­for­ma­tion to extro­vert, songs like this one still give me chills:

I still think “Coun­try Feed­back” is the quin­tes­sen­tial R.E.M. song, what with its false starts and long­ing, its mood and tone. Those sen­ti­ments hit me where I lived for most of my ado­les­cence and I imag­ine I’m not alone in think­ing that when peo­ple remem­ber R.E.M., their mem­o­ries will always be encum­bered by the gauzy wist­ful­ness that envelops that time of my life.

I’m in the camp that wish­es they called it quits on New Year’s Eve 1999. It would’ve been fit­ting. Even with a tod­dling Inter­net, that was news that I heard in the hin­ter­lands through pub­li­ca­tions and rumor and I was ready for them to walk away after wrap­ping the “Up” tour. That knowl­edge made it urgent that I see them once before they quit so I bought tick­ets and caught them in Cam­den (setlist here), where I watched peo­ple talk through “Pil­grim­age,” thus end­ing my belief that R.E.M. fans were inher­ent­ly cool. It was a crush­ing blow and my devo­tion to the band waned until Reveal, when what­ev­er pas­sion I felt for the band and their music van­ished altogether.

R.E.M. were a gate­way to inde­pen­dent music to me as I grew up in the sticks in a town where the Klan ral­lied at the main inter­sec­tion while the school bus drove me home. Put anoth­er way, I can remem­ber the “mod­ern rock” radio for­mat! It’s hard to believe there was a time when there weren’t infi­nite choic­es, but grow­ing up, bands like R.E.M., the Cure, the Smiths and even U2 kept me sane until the pop punk explo­sion hap­pened and geek cul­ture went a lit­tle more main­stream. Can you believe I was once asked if I was a hip-hop­per or a punk at school because I wore a 49ers beanie while wear­ing a used cardi­gan? That happened!

Lest it sound like I’m a dis­ap­point­ed fan, R.E.M. don’t owe me a thing. I can’t think of anoth­er band that so enriched my life. I dare­say their music pro­tect­ed me from more seri­ous hurts as I came of age in the ’90s. They did­n’t aban­don me as Nir­vana did when I was still a vul­ner­a­ble kid look­ing for mean­ing. They wrote songs that I found per­ti­nent to near­ly every sit­u­a­tion and their earnest­ness was per­fect for a kid who did­n’t need more sar­casm in his life. Thanks for so many amaz­ing songs includ­ing this one that gave me com­fort when I was lone­ly in Den­mark that dark, rainy autumn.