GranolaBox

I used eat, sleep and breathe REM for a period of my life. Then after the Monster CD I kind of lost track of them. I like their hits, but nothing new really tripped my trigger until the “Reveal” cd came out. That reminded of the REM I used to know, love and rock out to.

At the height of my REM fandom I was teaching in a little town called Mt. Morris, NY. It was awful. One person that made the experience bearable was my friend Darcy. She knew the guys in REM from way back, and got us great seats and backstage passes for their “Green” tour. The problem was that it was open house night, so we ended up missing all of The 10,000 Maniacs, and all but three REM songs.

The backstage passes made the night though. This was the first time I ever had backstage passes to a rock concert. I was expecting drugs and groupies, but instead it was juice and snacks and a very laid back atmosphere. It took me a few minutes to gather my senses and realize that I was hanging out with REM.

What finally brought me down was bumping into Mike Mills, the bass player. He was the coolest guy in the band. I apologized and we struck up a conversation. I told him how Darcy and I booked out of Open House Night and he was all impressed that we were teachers. Then he started asking me all kinds of questions about being a teacher, and whether my kids listened to them. The whole time I’m almost shitting my pants with excitement because I’m talking to a fucking ROCK STAR and he’s all fascinated about me being a TEACHER. You don’t get many moments like that in education.

I didn’t talk to Peter Buck that much, he seemed tired. He looked every inch the rock star though. His hair was cool.

Michael Stipe was weird but intense. He said he was performing and experiment. He hadn’t brushed his teeth for two weeks, and was going to continue not brushing for a while just to see how absolutely cool it would be to finally brush. I could see where that would be kind of cool, but only the kind of thing a rock star could pursue and still get away with it.

Bill Berry, the drummer had a cold and went to bed so I didn’t get a chance to meet him.

Anyway, the Queen of My Universe sent me this video, and it brought me right back to hanging out with Mike Mills, whose acoustic bass work just kicks ass in this video. This is well on its way to becoming my favorite REM song. It’s great to have a new favorite song from a band you’ve been listening to for 20 years.

Viva REM

Filed under: Music, Yesterdaze on August 10th, 2008