There\u2019s a story I tell when people ask me who my favorite band is.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I begin, \u201cthere was a time in the early \u201980s where I couldn\u2019t get enough of INXS.\u201d Shabooh Shoobah<\/em> was one of my favorite albums and I would play it over and over again, and for a good month that was all I listened to. I thought I found the one, my band of choice. But then I went into the record store where my friend Rich worked, and what came out of the speakers from every wall was a glorious sound.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is this?\u201d I asked Rich.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is \u2018Radio Free Europe\u2019 from R.E.M. It\u2019s off this album called Murmur<\/em>, it\u2019s really great.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah it really was.<\/p>\n From that day R.E.M. has never disappointed (OK, Around the Sun<\/em> wasn\u2019t the best of times, but \u201cLeaving New York\u201d is a great, great song), and my love affair with the band has lasted nearly 30 years. I always tell people INXS was the girl before I me the girl in my musical relationships.<\/p>\n Well now the relationship has ended, as Peter, Mike and Michael announced on their website today the band is calling it quits.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that was always so great about being in R.E.M. was the fact that the records and the songs we wrote meant as much to our fans as they did to us,\u201d Peter wrote on the site. \u201cIt was, and still is, important to us to do right by you. Being a part of your lives has been an unbelievable gift. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA wise man once said \u2014 \u2018the skill in attending a party is knowing when it\u2019s time to leave.\u2019 We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we\u2019re going to walk away from it,\u201d Michael wrote. \u201cI hope our fans realize this wasn\u2019t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way. We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It\u2019s been amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ve written plenty about this band, so I won\u2019t go into all of that now, but I will say this: There was never a time in this band\u2019s career where it didn\u2019t create music that wasn\u2019t pertinent or meaningful or excellent in every way. Sure, there are R.E.M. albums I treasure more than others, but comparing an R.E.M. album to a non-R.E.M. album is patently unfair to non-R.E.M. albums because R.E.M. wins every time.<\/p>\n So Mike, Michael, Peter and Bill, I say this: Who I am today has a lot to do with the music you\u2019ve made, because it has affected me in a powerful and personal way. I can\u2019t begin to thank you enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a story I tell when people ask me who my favorite band is. \u201cWell,\u201d I begin, \u201cthere was a time in the early \u201980s where I couldn\u2019t get enough of INXS.\u201d Shabooh Shoobah was one of my favorite albums and I would play it over and over again, and for a good month that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-r-e-m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","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=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}