{"id":1061,"date":"2010-04-05T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T18:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2026-06-28T18:52:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T18:52:48","slug":"30-years-from-chronic-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=1061","title":{"rendered":"30 years from Chronic Town"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A good part of it is the music: R.E.M. is an important part of my life because the songs run the gamut of emotions and genres. What you find on <\/span>Murmur<\/em> you won\u2019t on <\/span>Automatic<\/em> or <\/span>Accelerate<\/em>, though a twinge of what makes R.E.M. music R.E.M. music is always there. And I\u2019m in, I have been from the start: It\u2019s hard to explain what makes me enjoy the music so much, I just do. Do you know why your musical taste is what it is?<\/span><\/p>\n

But the reason I love R.E.M. goes beyond what\u2019s put on vinyl. I love this band because they care about others, they are genuine to who they are, and they continue to stick together as a unit of people who care for one another. How many other bands share songwriting rights as one? Until Bill left the band, the credits were shared by Stipe\/Mills\/Buck\/Berry and now it\u2019s Stipe\/Mills\/Buck. By sharing all the credit, they all get the same amount. Democracy.<\/p>\n

They give to charity and causes, all the time. I live in Athens, and oftentimes events, races and benefits will have R.E.M. as a sponsor. The band offers up signed memorabilia, but sends the money for anything purchased to charities all over town. For the listening party of their Live at Olympia<\/em> release in October, a live auction of certain items was held. One of the items was a signed Rickenbacker guitar (the kind Peter plays, and one especially made by Rickenbacker for this event), and the winning bid brought in $11,000. The money went to Community Connection \u2014 and they can use every bit of it.<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t know any of the guys personally, I know several people who do. And every one of them says the same thing about them \u2014 they\u2019re just regular, nice guys who happen to be famous around the world. It\u2019s interesting to see them around Athens, they go to the same places they\u2019ve been going for years, and no one thinks much of it. People leave them alone, though part of it is the people already know them personally, and have for a while, so it\u2019s not R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills they see, it\u2019s Mike \u2014 the guy they used to go to house parties with.<\/p>\n

Can you say that with other bands as famous as R.E.M.? I\u2019m a big fan of U2, but Bono doesn\u2019t head down to his hometown beer pub on a Friday night, something Michael Stipe does quite often.<\/p>\n

If they play a show in Atlanta, they set aside good tickets for the Athens folks so they too can get to the show (and we don\u2019t have to pay the Ticketbastard fee). They think about where they\u2019re from.<\/p>\n

R.E.M. matters a lot to me because people matter a lot to them. And that\u2019s why we celebrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good part of it is the music: R.E.M. is an important part of my life because the songs run the gamut of emotions and genres. What you find on Murmur you won\u2019t on Automatic or Accelerate, though a twinge of what makes R.E.M. music R.E.M. music is always there. And I\u2019m in, I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[206,41],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-chronic-town","tag-r-e-m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}