{"id":699,"date":"2020-02-22T20:06:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T20:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=699"},"modified":"2026-06-23T20:10:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T20:10:24","slug":"r-e-m-the-minutemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=699","title":{"rendered":"R.E.M., The Minutemen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

November 1985, James L. Knight Center, Miami, Fla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I figure by the time I\u2019m done with this experiment I will have written 50,000 words (which seems like a lot), and yet I\u2019ve 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\u2019m a fan-boy chasing around Peter Buck (who doesn\u2019t 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are better R.E.M. albums \u2014 depending on your age you might consider Murmur<\/em> (correct) or Automatic<\/em> (great, but not the best) as the band\u2019s premier releases \u2014 but Fables<\/em> is my favorite, and it\u2019s not even close. Fables<\/em> hit me at the right time and was the first R.E.M. album I fully embraced \u2014 while \u201cS. Central Rain\u201d was the song that hooked me, Fables<\/em> kept me entranced. I didn\u2019t have Murmur<\/em> until late 1985, when the woman at Spec\u2019s 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\u2019s worth).<\/p>\n

I grew up in a city where the main college radio station \u2014 WVUM at the University of Miami \u2014 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. \u2014 lots of R.E.M. By the time the Fables<\/em> tour announced it was coming to Miami, there was a small but steady frenzy among my group of high school friends.<\/p>\n

I would go to this show with two of my best friends \u2014 Karl and Sarah \u2014 but a good chunk of my high school was there that night. We didn\u2019t know much about The Minutemen \u2014 part of the reason R.E.M. took the band out on tour with them was to introduce them to a bigger audience \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll 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\u2019ll always be grateful I was able to see this band before his tragic death.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen R.E.M. at least 10 times, and one thing of note that\u2019s changed throughout the years is Michael Stipe\u2019s 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\u2019t mean it wasn\u2019t a dynamic performance because it was, but by the time I saw him for the Pageant tour, he was a different frontman.<\/p>\n

The show opened up with \u201cGravitys,\u201d 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<\/em> were on tap that night \u2014 \u201cMaps and Legends,\u201d \u201cDriver 8,\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t Get There from Here,\u201d \u201cGreen Grow the Rushes\u201d. One moment of friction came before \u201cOld Man Kensey,\u201d when Stipe, trying to tell a story before the song\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

No, the band did not play \u201cRadio Free Europe,\u201d a song it played sparingly during that tour (not that I cared). But there was \u201cPretty Persuasion,\u201d and \u201cPilgrimage\u201d and \u201cRockville,\u201d and in true R.E.M. form songs that would appear on Pageant<\/em> \u2014 such as \u201cCuyahoga\u201d and \u201cHyena\u201d. 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<\/em> tour in Richmond, Va. when they played \u201cPerfect Circle,\u201d I might write about that later).<\/p>\n

It was a life-changing concert \u2014 I have them every so often \u2014 that follows me even years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

November 1985, James L. Knight Center, Miami, Fla. I figure by the time I\u2019m done with this experiment I will have written 50,000 words (which seems like a lot), and yet I\u2019ve 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[42,41],"class_list":["post-699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-minutemen","tag-r-e-m"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699","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=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":701,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions\/701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}