I didn’t intend to go a whole week between posts. Really. I have lots of stuff to write about, but just never took the time. I finished a book this week and can opine on many other topics, but this is Friday so I feel obligated to post about the latest R.E.M. news which has obsessed me, this time in video form.

Before that, some thoughts on the tribute show. I hope sometime this weekend to track down a recording of the Carnegie Hall show. I know it is out there, but it is only on DIME and you pretty much have to dedicate your life to waiting for an opening on there if you want to get any unreleased material.

I remember the days when bootleggers actually wanted people to hear the things they taped instead of hiding behind hard-to-join sharing services and whining if you wanted to turn them into MP3s for your own use. That’s a different blog for a different day.

I can’t wait until I can finally join and download the show. The set list looked awesome, but I wonder if Peter wanted to smack Kimya Dawson upside the head for her performance.

And in what may have been the strangest set Carnegie has seen in its storied lifetime, Kimya Dawson took on “World Leader Pretend” with a glockenspiel player and team of performance artists behind her dressed as dragons, cops and furballs, all of whom appeared like characters from a Maurice Sendak storybook stumbling into a Rockette’s number. Dawson’s piece ended with all seven troupe members crowded together to cycle through the song’s fitting refrain: “I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit.”

Now to the videos prior to the tribute. True to the band’s style, the selections go from the ridiculous

to the sublime.

Michael also provides a rare funny moment on the Jimmy Fallon show. Rare for Jimmy, not Michael.