For me, R.E.M. is synonymous with rock 'n' roll, and tonight that seminal band that started out with a few chords and a few more beers is gaining entrance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. While this is surprising to few (the real controversy swirls around class of 2007 members Van Halen and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five — does metal belong in the Hall? Does hip-hop? And come on, is Van Halen truly metal?!), that doesn't make it meaningless, particularly to me. The documentary short subject version of my life could easily have an all-R.E.M. soundtrack.

 

The first deliberate decision I made to make a band my own (after getting burned by Milli Vanilli and deciding New Kids on the Block was SO middle school) was when I walked into a record store in Cape Cod and picked up Out of Time. Then, a couple years later, my first concert — R.E.M.'s Monster tour, where we sat in the nosebleed seats of the now-defunct Capital Centre and sang our hearts out. Not long thereafter it was time to head to college, where my decision literally came down to, "Well, if it's good enough for R.E.M., it's good enough for me," and I headed to Athens, Georgia.
Athens is still an incredible music town, and from 1996-2001 the band members were still regular members of the community, sitting on the couches at Blue Sky Coffee conducting business, stopping into Planet Smoothie for a weekly dose of blended fruits, preserving historic sites, owning a local business (R.I.P., Guaranteed ... I still mourn the loss of your fakin' BLT, quesadillas, and spinach salad), and even playing the (very) occasional secret show ... and making new music all the while. The melancholy New Adventures in Hi-Fi coincided nicely with my freshman-in-college uncertainty and homesickness, Up's "Daysleeper" saw me through graveyard shifts at my college radio station, and by the time they released Reveal, it didn't matter that I didn't really identify with it, because five years of living in their town meant I had hundreds of new bands to get excited about, and a back catalogue of the recordings they made when I was too young to know them to get me through anything.
All this to say, what? Bravo, R.E.M. Twenty-five years of relevance makes you elder statesmen of sorts, but don't stop now ... radio, and I, still need you.