Konzertbericht auf 'ThatRockBlog.com'
Oh please, like I really need to introduce R.E.M. seeing as how even men on the moon have heard “The One I Love”. I mean, they’ve been around since 1980! But following the less-than-awesome release of Around the Sun back in 2004, the band knew that they needed to come back with something stronger and more cock-rockin’ or they’d be lost forever with all the other 90’s rock acts that are all washed up. (INXS makes me want to bomb a daycare.) But then, on April 1st, 2008, Accelerate hit North American store shelves as R.E.M.’s fourteenth studio album and shortly after that, they announced a tour. A throwback to classic ‘highway rock’ (the kind of music that, when you’re driving, suddenly renders all stop signs and pedestrians invisible), Accelerate’s an album that plunges immediately into the depths of booze-soaked college party memories and doesn’t come up for air until everybody’s pregnant just over half an hour later. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that most of that album was recorded here in Vancouver, BC.
Thanks to Live Nation chucking an extra photo pass at Discorder (despite us never actually requesting one), I suddenly found myself in the R.E.M. photo pit with the likes of Steve Bosch and Rebecca Blissett Friday night. With about ten other photographers in the pit, not to mention an entire video crew complete with HD cameras and a long stretch of dolly track, Michael Stipe was all smiles. A true performer and a seasoned frontman, you could tell that he loved the cameras and that he loved his audience even more. Greeting the crowd with a mic stand salute, the forty-foot-high screens behind him lit up like The Matrix, Peter Buck started noodling away and with a crash, Stipe rocketed forth into the opening track from Accelerate, “Living Well is the Best Revenge”. As the song closed, before the cheers from the crowd had even begun to die down, Stipe was already into “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” with all the swagger of a gay Frank Sinatra. While Stipe mimed the removal of several rings from his left hand (which was probably greeted by numerous displays of public flashing), we watched Peter Buck and Mike Mills play off each other with a tightness that only a band that’s been together for three decades can pull off. There was no stealing the show from Stipe though, especially not with his ironic cries for more “defense, defense, defense…” in the political hit “Ignoreland”.
R.E.M.’s younger fans were all at the front, crowding in, jumping up and down and singing along to “The One I Love” and “Supernatural Superserious”, but as a testament to R.E.M.’s far-reaching musical stylings, all their present middle-aged fans (one of which was Douglas Coupland) were moving to the beat too; just away from the throng of kids and more towards the towels and blankets laid out on Deer Lake Park’s expansive green field. Having only gone to small indie shows recently, I had forgotten what it was like to be in an atmosphere of thousands of adoring fans, with stadium lighting and pot being freely smoked between strangers. It made me wish that I’d been a bigger fan of R.E.M. before and that I’d never wasted my time with Green Day in my early teens. (Idiot Club, indeed.) As R.E.M. closed on “Man on the Moon”, I then found myself realizing that anyone who’s ever seen how charismatic Michael Stipe can be onstage doesn’t really have an option of loving them and wanting to see them again. Simply put, it’s automatic for the people.
Special thanks to Brock Thiessen of Discorder and Jessica Dunn at Live Nation.
Posted by Benjamin Luk at 3:48 PM
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R.E.M.
R.E.M. rockt Würzburger Weltkulturerbe!
US-Kultgruppe jetzt Open Air vor der Residenz
Wegen großer Nachfrage verlegt
Die amerikanische Kultgruppe R.E.M. hat ihr Würzburger Konzert am 22. August jetzt auf den Platz vor der Residenz verlegt. Das zum Weltkulturerbe zählende Bauwerk bietet den prächtigen Rahmen für eine der herausragenden Open Air-Veranstaltungen des Sommers. Die immense Ticketnachfrage machte die Verlegung von der Festung Marienberg erforderlich, da rund 15.000 Besucher erwartet werden.
Bereits im Vorverkauf erworbene Tickets für die Feste Marienberg behalten selbstverständlich ihre Gültigkeit. Zusätzliche R.E.M.-Karten für die Residenz sind ab sofort an allen bekannten Vorverkaufsstellen erhältlich, in Würzburg bei Mainticket in der Theaterstraße 10 und telefonisch unter 01805/607070 (0,14 €/Min. Mobilfunkpreise können abweichen) sowie im Internet unter www.argo-konzerte.de.