On this day in 1986, something very special happened. I had no idea at the time.

R.E.M. released Life’s Rich Pageant 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.

Pageant came out right before I went to college, and it didn’t take long for me to discover “Superman,” 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 from Record and Tape Traders the following summer and begin my obsession with the band.

I don’t know if I would have had the same reaction if I hadn’t immersed myself in this album from the beginning. Reckoning may have done the same thing, but that’s about it at that point. I love Murmur and think Fables is underrated, but my favorite songs come from Pageant. 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.”

Yeah, I can be that guy at an R.E.M. show.

I went full-long into the band when I saw them play on the Green 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 Pageant with one of my favorite songs from the album.