Hannahmight: a few R.E.M. memories
My parents met and fell in love in Athens, GA in the early 80s and R.E.M. was the soundtrack to their courtship. I was home a few months ago and joked with my parents about how, while we were never religious, they did raise us to believe in a few indisputable truths: Christmas is awesome, New York is the ultimate place to live, and R.E.M. is the best band. It’s really no exaggeration to say that Michael Stipe’s voice is as familiar to me as any family member’s. R.E.M. is so essentially bound into my family’s self-mythology that I don’t even know where to begin. My mom went to an R.E.M concert the night before I was born and she always maintained that it was the dancing she did that jump started her going into labor.
I was in 3rd grade when “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” came out and my parents took me and my brother to this album release party in a parking lot on Sunset Blvd. We won free t-shirts that my brother and I slept in for years. I think this might have been the first time I realized my parents were cooler than a lot of other parents.
My mom loves telling the story of the time she saw Pete Buck at a Prince concert way before R.E.M. got really famous. She yelled out “R.E.M.!” and he smiled at her. She hates when my brother and I tell the story of the time R.E.M. came on the car radio and my brother asked her to change it and she said “oh, blow me.”
When I was ten I remember flipping through a magazine and coming across some quip about how Michael Stipe might have AIDS. I spent a week anxious and preoccupied about what would happen if he died.
For YEARS I thought the line “Hey Andy are you goofing on Elvis?” was about my dad, whose name is also Andy.
The summer I was 11 my parents took me and my brother to an R.E.M. concert at the Greek. I wore what I believed to be my coolest outfit: this plaid Roxy dress over cargo pants. I got so embarrassed when they danced through one song and I still feel guilty about that. It was my first rock concert and we walked home afterward.
We moved to LA when I was very little but for years my parents assumed that the move was only temporary, that we’d be back in New York eventually. I watched my parents fall in love with LA very reluctantly and very gradually. “Electrolite” was the first thing about LA that ever seemed to really matter. It’s a perfect LA song and the whole album is right up there with “Chinatown” and Day of the Locust and Francesca Lia Block in terms of Los Angeles canon if you ask me.
