November 1985, James L. Knight Center, Miami, Fla.
I figure by the time I’m done with this experiment I will have written 50,000 words (which seems like a lot), and yet I’ve written at least double that about R.E.M. It is no secret this is my truest of all band loves, and is a key reason why I live in Athens now. This is not so much because I’m a fan-boy chasing around Peter Buck (who doesn’t live here anymore, something a fan-boy would know) but because the feeling the band gave Athens through its music. No album did this better than Fables of the Reconstruction.
There are better R.E.M. albums — depending on your age you might consider Murmur (correct) or Automatic (great, but not the best) as the band’s premier releases — but Fables is my favorite, and it’s not even close. Fables hit me at the right time and was the first R.E.M. album I fully embraced — while “S. Central Rain” was the song that hooked me, Fables kept me entranced. I didn’t have Murmur until late 1985, when the woman at Spec’s Music accidentally sold me the album for $1.99 (the deal of the century, of course all music is free now, so take that for what it’s worth).
I grew up in a city where the main college radio station — WVUM at the University of Miami — proved to be a lasting influence on me and many of my friends. While the world was spoon-fed Wham, Billy Ocean, Whitney Houston and DeBarge, WVUM limited range gave us the Housemartins, Cocteau Twins, The Smiths and R.E.M. — lots of R.E.M. By the time the Fables tour announced it was coming to Miami, there was a small but steady frenzy among my group of high school friends.
I would go to this show with two of my best friends — Karl and Sarah — but a good chunk of my high school was there that night. We didn’t know much about The Minutemen — part of the reason R.E.M. took the band out on tour with them was to introduce them to a bigger audience — but quickly swapped tapes and learned what would could about the California trio. We liked their catchy, short (sometimes just a minute) songs, figuring any band R.E.M. liked we would like too.
I’ll never forget my friend Jay coming up to us between sets to show off his Converse shoe he just had signed by Minutemen guitarist/vocalist D. Boon. Less than a month later D. Boon died in a van accident. I’ll always be grateful I was able to see this band before his tragic death.
I’ve seen R.E.M. at least 10 times, and one thing of note that’s changed throughout the years is Michael Stipe’s control of the stage. Years later he would be front and center, the one everyone would see, but during this tour he seemed to be the one in the corner, never fully looking up while pondering his place on stage. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a dynamic performance because it was, but by the time I saw him for the Pageant tour, he was a different frontman.
The show opened up with “Gravitys,” as it should, an elegant piece of romantic strings and haunting guitars. The room was covered in a warm darkness and the Knight Center, which was scene to plenty operatic performances, captured the sound quite well. Many songs from Fables were on tap that night — “Maps and Legends,” “Driver 8,” “Can’t Get There from Here,” “Green Grow the Rushes”. One moment of friction came before “Old Man Kensey,” when Stipe, trying to tell a story before the song’s start, became irritated with the constant din of the crowd. He proclaimed he would not tell the story, then told the band to start the song amid an awkward silence.
No, the band did not play “Radio Free Europe,” a song it played sparingly during that tour (not that I cared). But there was “Pretty Persuasion,” and “Pilgrimage” and “Rockville,” and in true R.E.M. form songs that would appear on Pageant — such as “Cuyahoga” and “Hyena”. It was as good as any show I would see, though later R.E.M. shows would stick out more in my mind (third row for the Green tour in Richmond, Va. when they played “Perfect Circle,” I might write about that later).
It was a life-changing concert — I have them every so often — that follows me even years later.
