Anyone who’s read their share of REM interviews knows the tale in which a young Michael Stipe buys Patti Smith’s Horses, plays it over and over while eating a bowl of cherries and decides “hey, I think I’ll find a record store clerk with a guitar and mumble over his arpeggios” before vomiting. It’s one of those anecdotes that helped establish the lineage of underground cool, along with the immortal adage “everyone who heard the Velvet Underground started a band.” Now Stipe has given a self-professed “exclusive” to Death and Taxes magazine, admitting that Horses wasn’t the only album he bought that day. “One of them was Hall & Oates, one of them was Foghat, Fool For the City.” Have a field day, popists!
Another day, another festival lineup announcement; this time the Voodoo Music Experience, scheduled for October 24-26 in New Orleans. No real surprises though, with Sasquatch’s R.E.M. joining Bumbershoot’s Stone Temple Pilots and Pemberton/Lollapalooza/Virgin Festival’s Nine Inch Nails. More »
Another day, another festival lineup announcement; this time the Voodoo Music Experience, scheduled for October 24-26 in New Orleans. No real surprises though, with Sasquatch’s R.E.M. joining Bumbershoot’s Stone Temple Pilots and Pemberton/Lollapalooza/Virgin Festival’s Nine Inch Nails. More »
Another day, another festival lineup announcement; this time the Voodoo Music Experience, scheduled for October 24-26 in New Orleans. No real surprises though, with Sasquatch’s R.E.M. joining Bumbershoot’s Stone Temple Pilots and Pemberton/Lollapalooza/Virgin Festival’s Nine Inch Nails. More »
George Strait seems lined up for the top on next week’s album sales chart, but it seems like depressing me with an appearance on Today earlier this week paid off for R.E.M.–Accelerate will likely grab the No. 2 spot, according to the occasionally reliable projections over at HITS. The Matt Lauer-introduced clip, as well as more chart wonkery, below the cut.
From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Under consideration today is the latest album by R.E.M., Accelerate, which hits stores tomorrow:
Dear everyone getting all excited about the “Michael Stipe comes out” story: Um, this is news? Sure, he apparently told Spin that he’d “just never felt strongly enough about a particular relationship to say, ‘Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, that is what it is,'” but that claim would seem to be at least… More »
ARTIST: R.E.M.
TITLE: Accelerate
RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2008
WEB DEBUT: March 15, 2008
The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has determined that, for their purposes, R.E.M. can now be considered an Irish band. This might be somewhat surprising to, say, Americans who have assumed for sometime that considering the band was formed in Athens, Georgia they would be one of our own. More »
Brangelina makes its perhaps-inevitable SXSW appearance, and yet even the combined starpower of its two members can’t get an entourage into Wednesday night’s R.E.M. show at Stubb’s. More »