I finally got my hands on a copy of the deluxe reissue of Murmur, which also features a 1983 concert on the second CD of the set. I asked for it for Christmas, but didn’t get it so I used some of the gift card money I got to order it. I listened to the […]

I didn’t expect R.E.M. to head the list of Grammy nominees this week. I gave up expecting the awards to truly reflect what’s good in music a long time ago. But nothing? Not a single mention for Accelerate? Not one middling crumb of recognition for an album that spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Top […]

R.E.M. has unabashedly supported Barack Obama from very early on. When I saw them in June less than an hour from D.C., Michael Stipe very openly talked about how much he wanted Obama to win. That pissed off some people in the crowd, but, as he said, the great thing about the country is that […]

R.E.M. gets back on the road tonight with a show I would love to see. The Old 97s are opening for the band which will make for a hell of a fun evening. I really wonder what kind of set list the band will pull out. They have had several months to work through their […]

Twenty-five years, seven months and two weeks after R.E.M. released Murmur, its first full-length studio album, an anniversary special edition will come out. The release is scheduled for Nov. 25. As an R.E.M. geek, I can’t wait for this. The two-CD set will include a re-mastered version of the album as well as a CD […]

Because I have been a bad blogger lately, I will only have one post dedicated to Peter Buck’s 360 JetGlo Rickenbacker guitar. In the time since my last R.E.M. post, someone stole and then returned this iconic symbol of the band. Peter has had the guitar since the early 1980s. He looks almost strange playing […]

I had read a while back that Peter Buck said R.E.M. would tour through November. Since their European tour only goes through October 4, I hoped they would come back through the U.S. When they added dates in Mexico City, then New Orleans, and then Dallas, I thought I would get a chance to see […]

My hopes to catch R.E.M. again this year seem to be looking up. They have announced two North American shows and hint at more coming. The band will play the New Orleans Voodoo Music Festival on October 26th after wrapping up their European/World Tour in Istanbul on October 4th. Here at HQ we wouldn’t be […]

So I bitched enough about the set list in my most recent post, I think. I’ll now share one of those moments that only get you jazzed if you are a total geek for a band. Two-thirds of the way through the set, R.E.M. busts into “These Days.” I love this song. I probably wouldn’t […]