“Are You Michael Stipe’s Da?”
Ah, yes … it was July 17, 2003—the only time I ever saw, or will see, R.E.M. perform live. Though I felt like I’d already seen them: the concert documentary, Road Movie, collapses three nights of performances at The Omni in Atlanta in November 1995, and I’d made a pretty obsessive study of that VHS (and later, DVD).
That tour was perhaps the most unrelenting R.E.M. ever made: following on the release of their U-turn album, Monster, and working out in performance songs that would appear the next year on New Adventures in Hi Fi, the show was hardly a rollicking good time. In fact, it was something of a downer: more like a graduate seminar on the construction of gender than a pop concert. I loved it.
When we saw them in Dublin, on the other hand, it was unabashedly a pop concert, and a joyous one. I was in Ireland to give a lecture at the James Joyce Summer School, and we used the occasion as a high-school graduation trip for my daughter Audrey and her friend, Jenny. And Audrey was watching eBay for concert tickets—and stumbled upon the R.E.M. show. What none of us knew at the time was just how much R.E.M. loved playing to Dublin audiences; they did two nights that July in Marlay Park, a big open-air venue outside the city proper. (And in Dublin, they do know how to do these things: dedicated city buses at bargain prices would deliver one from and back to the city centre, without parking headaches or DUI drama.)
In retrospect, the show we saw wasn’t the one for me to see. The previous night, R.E.M. had been a bit more challenging: guaranteed crowd-pleasers like “Orange Crush” and “Everybody Hurts” were accompanied by much darker musings: “How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us,” “New Test Lepper,” “So Fast, So Numb.” That was the material that had first won me to the band; that’s the material that dominates Road Movie. (Indeed, on Road Movie, even some of the seeming pop fodder is toxic, like the song “Revolution,” with its know-nothing refrain, “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, Revolution”: “Your revolution is a silly idea, yeah….”)
But their last night in Dublin was a party: and there’s no room at the party for “you’re drinking raw adrenal baby, / and dosey dosey doe / you’re eating cartilage, shark-eyes, shark-heart / all present tense / boy, your blood is running cold.” On the 17th they opened with “Finest Worksong” and closed with the almost obligatory “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” And in between, we shuttled between exuberance and poignancy: not all “Up” (in the title of their forgettable 1998 album), but all passionate and engaged and thrilling. Seeing Michael Stipe sing and dance those songs—especially dance—is something I’ll never forget.
I’ll also never forget an encounter with one tweener Irish girl in the crowd. Audrey, Jenny & I got there plenty early, and took advantage of the festival seating to get quite close to the stage: “seating” is a misnomer, but we were standing in some prime real estate, and had a great view of the stage and the band. A small group of 12-13-14-year-old girls was standing behind us, but not content to stay behind: they kept trying to push past and move in front of us. We were getting rather peeved, and started pushing back a bit harder than was absolutely necessary.
After perhaps 30 minutes of this, I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around, and it was one of the girls, jet-black hair and freckles. And she asked me, artless as you please: “Are you Michael Stipe’s da?”
Dear Reader, she wasn’t kidding. Michael Stipe is one year and ten days younger than I am—but who’s counting. Certainly I’m not old enough to be his da. We’re both balding middle-aged white guys, and on my best days, I’m skinny enough to seem skinny-ish (even if I haven’t seen those days in some time): but honestly, I’m never confused for a Stipe. And there was nothing snarky in the comment: she was absolutely serious. If I’d said “yes” she would have believed me, and I would have instantly become a local celebrity. (Although that celebrity would certainly have been short-lived: why would Michael Stipe’s father be down in the mosh pit?) But it did have the effect of suggesting that I was a bit old for that crowd—which could only suggest that R.E.M., too, was a bit old for that crowd. It’s hard to grow old gracefully in rock & roll.
Can I get an “Amen”?
Ya know, now that you mention it, there is a bit of resemblance. But I would have never taken you for his Da.
Someone thought I was Gilda Radner once. That’s all I got.
I think you look kind of like Morrissey in this video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ORkQxBawKM&feature=related
But thats just me.
Oops, I mean “that’s,” not “thats.”
Oh, let’s not quibble: I’m Every Rock Star.
I got to see R.E.M. twice in concert, once during their Monster tour in Kansas City and a second time almost exactly six years later during their Reveal tour in Toronto. I remember the former concert seeming to consist of every single R.E.M. song I’d ever liked up to that point, while the Toronto one being packed full of Reveal songs I didn’t know and, it turned out, didn’t particularly like. But! The Toronto concert was free, played downtown on Yonge Street just south of Dundas (basically the very heart of downtown Toronto) in a light rain. I decided the concert was pretty much the coolest thing ever conceived even if I could barely see the band and didn’t care much for a lot of the setlist.
I don’t really have a point here, but I just checked the blog for the first time in months and wanted to say this: you could, you know, let a dude know when you’re blogging again, eh?
Cheers, Blake. I can’t really tell whether the blog is still alive or not: I just don’t seem to have the time, but I hate officially, formally giving it up.