FUN FACT: Warren was kind of a dick about this collaboration. R.E.M. (they’re the backing band here) were just fans of the Excitable Boy, and they recorded the entire (better than it has a right to be) album in one night. Wasn’t even supposed to be released, but when it was and the first single, Raspberry Beret, did some business, Warren starting bugging the Georgians to do a full tour to the point where they stopped answering his phone calls.
FUNNER FACT: Despite their public persona of “Giant Pussies,” the members of R.E.M. were full-bore, speed-shooting, shit-starting, vomiting-on-stewardesses Rock Stars.
thoughts on r.e.m.?
I have never never intentionally listened to an R.E.M. album. Maybe I tried it by accident once in college, but the experience didn’t take.
I lived in Athens in ’86-87 when Warren was mucking about down there most regularly. (I moved there specifically because the Butthole Surfers had relocated there, but they left soon thereafter). There were Bad Warren stories aplenty about the scene. I also got rousted by the staff meat out of a booth that I’d nabbed early for an Adrian Belew/Bears show at Uptown Lounge when Stipe and Mills rolled in for the show at the last minute, and I got to tell Buck to fuck off and take my money after he insulted my album selections at Wuxtry (“You don’t really like that stuff, do you,” he asked about my Neubauten and Fad Gadget purchase, “You’re just buying it to be weird.”) while he was hanging out with his giggling record clerk buddies there, where he once worked. I still loved ’em though. I guess I was kinda sorta glad they were rock star dicks who still hung out around town.
The Bears..
They had this ability to get less famous as time went by.
I saw the raisins, I think before Adrian joined and, or something, actually I forget the timeline, but I think there was a band called the Raisins, and they became the bears, whatev.
But yeah, I loved the bears, also saw Adrian at the zoo in Cinci, and chatted with his kids, Audrey and Ernie ? They were very young, 85?
Bears were great live, for sure. Even from the back of the club, grrrr. Ade’s current power trio is also stellar in concert, though I could have done without the passive-aggressive ‘tween-song Fripp-bashing . . .
I thought the Hindu Love Gods album was a lot of fun.