Tag: Michael Stipe

Michael Stipe’s Tribute to David Bowie

Stipe Bowie

This week, Michael Stipe appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to pay tribute to the late David Bowie. It was a rare recent public performance by the former lead singer of R.E.M. and a moving way to honor Bowie with a performance of “The Man Who Sold the World.”

Accompanied only by piano, a bearded Stipe sang a haunting version of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World.” Check it out. [2018 Update: The video of the performance is no longer available, but the video below contains the audio of Stipe’s appearance.]

Stipe is also taking part in two New York City David Bowie tribute concerts this week. One will be at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, March 31 and the other will be at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, April 1. You may watch a live stream of the April 1 tribute concert at musicofdavidbowie.com with a small donation that goes to the Melodic Caring Project, a non-profit that helps bring streaming music performances to kids in hospitals.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Watch One of R.E.M.’s First Shows

    REM 688 Club 1981

    Wuxtry Records    , where R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe met record store clerk Peter Buck in Athens, Georgia, is posting videos of early R.E.M. shows. The video below is from an R.E.M. show at The 688 Club opening for Joe “King” Carrasco in February 1981, which is eighteen months before the band released its first collection of songs on vinyl and two years before Murmur was released.

    The video begins in the middle of R.E.M. covering Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” and ends with what later would be the band’s debut single, “Radio Free Europe.” Check it out. [2015 Update: The video from the 688 Club is no longer available, so below is the audio of “Radio Free Europe” from another 1981 show at Fridays’s in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 31, 1981.]

    For more information on this 40-minute set and other videos, check out the Slicing Up Eyeballs website.

    What do you think of the early R.E.M. performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Buy from Amazon

    R.E.M. Calls It a Day

    R.E.M. announced today on their website that they are breaking up the band:

    R.E.M.

    “To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.” R.E.M.

    The website also has short messages from each of the surviving band members Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills. Peter Buck notes, “Mike, Michael, Bill, Bertis, and I walk away as great friends. I know I will be seeing them in the future.”

    I’m going to be obvious and post one of the band’s biggest hits rather than be cool and go for something more obscure. But one is hard to find a better song than “Losing My Religion,” a perfect pop song about obsession and being on the verge of losing control of oneself, all wrapped up in a memorable mandolin riff. The official video is close to perfect too, but here is a live performance from MTV. Au revoir R.E.M.

    “Losing My Religion” is from their album Out of Time (1991). Was the song really released twenty years ago? Check out Past Magazine’s ranking of the top twenty R.E.M. songs.

    What is your favorite R.E.M. song or memory? Leave a comment.

  • New Jayhawks Album: “Paging Mr. Proust”
  • Watch One of R.E.M.’s First Shows
  • Michael Stipe’s Tribute to David Bowie
  • Micky Dolenz Covers R.E.M. Song That Was Partly Inspired By the Monkees: “Shiny Happy People”
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