Live Music Fridays Presents Old School R.E.M...

Methinks I shall begin a blog series on live music. Basically, I love live music. Pretty much any live music. And since I'm in need of some blog inspiration today, I thought that maybe I should pump some live music vibes into your auditory and visual cortexes... corticies. whatever.

Hmmm, who should I start with. Let's go with a little old school R.E.M. Yes, that should work quite nicely.

This Athens, GA quartet helped me to properly calibrate my musical compass in the mid 80's. If first saw them live at The Fox theater in Atlanta. When they dimmed the lights for the show I was physically shaking with excitement, and standing in a puddle of my own urine. I was thirteen. The show included goodies from Murmur, Reckoning, Fables..., and even a little Chronic Town. P.S. Let's Active opened. Aaah, the days of early alternative music.

Over the years I've managed to see R.E.M. live in support of several of their albums, but as time has passed, they still haven't been able to capture the brilliance of those first few albums. They will always be a personal favorite.

So here's a few clips of R.E.M. performing back in the day when they were still a group of 4, Michael Stipe still had hair, and your music was either delivered to you in vinyl or cassette tape form. Go forth and take in the goodness...

I like how Stipe says "this is a new song." REALLY old...






I could go on and on. Good times. Come back next Friday for more live music.


What music have you seen live that was particularly amazing?