Music

So R.E.M. has a new record. And it's getting good reviews. I just clicked on their site and gave a quick listen to the tracks, and it sounds good, like early 1980's filtered through the debris of a natural disaster, a little rough, but glad to be alive.

I have good memories of R.E.M. After yesterday's post about the old photo, I found another from 1984 when we went to see them play at Daytona Beach (I should post it because it shows the.effing.librarian shirtless, woo-hoo!). It was cool because they were performing on the second stage, not on the beach, so the crowd was much smaller. The main stage had The Fixx, I think. I wish I could find a list of tour dates for 1983-1985 because I know we saw them at University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University around the same time, but I can't remember exactly when.

Another reason to like them was that they recorded in the area and you could sometimes see them around town like the times I saw Peter Buck in the North Miami Borders store. Wait, is that what made me want to be a librarian? That I wanted to be prepared for the next time I saw a celebrity or musician in a book store? So I could step up and help them find what they needed? All this time I thought it was because a witch foretold that I would become a librarian (okay, maybe not a witch, but a really, really, really, really, really old woman). Damn you Peter Buck! I wanted to be a male model. I just never had the cheekbones for it. You stole my dreams!

Or maybe I have this renewed interest in R.E.M. because I saw a recent photo of Michael Stipe and I'm starting to look just like him. Yeah, that's sad. Especially since I'm only ten years old.

Oh, and thanks for nothing, Wikipedia, for this link:
R.E.M. tours, The following is a comprehensive listing of R.E.M. tours and itineraries.

1995
Monster Tour
* May 15 - Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheater
* October 10 - Richmond, VA - Richmond Coliseum

Someone want to beef that up a little? You could add one concert date and increase Wikipedia's usefulness by 33 per cent! How could you create a page called a "comprehensive" list and give up after two items? That's not even a half-ass list. Is two items even enough to be called a list? If you go to the store for two items and you need to write them down so you don't forget, shouldn't you also put down, "make appointment with doctor about memory loss"? Can you have just two items on your "bucket list"?

1. kiss Valerie Bertinelli on the lips
2. release a red balloon from the top of the Eiffel Tower
   

Is that a list? How many things did Morgan Freeman have on his list? I'm disappointed in you, Wikipedia. Now, where the hell can I go to meet Valerie Bertinelli? Yeah, I know she's almost 50; it's an old list. Are you arguing with the list? No, I didn't think so.