R.E.M. announces they're breaking up

I saw them twice in 1989. Once with the Indigo Girls opening and once with Drivin and Cryin opening.

 

I love Drivin' and Cryin'.

 

I saw them in a small bar about a decade ago. Still liked Build a Fire and Fly Me Courageous.

 

Abe Vigoda outlives another one!

 

I was a huge huge R.E.M. fan from the mid-late 1980s until when Berry left the band. IMO they never really recovered.

Saw them in concert in 1995 and was hugely disappointed -- the show was disjointed, sluggish and Stipe seemed totally caught up in a diva star trip.

Then in 2004 I saw them on stage as part of the Vote for Change tour along with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and John Fogerty, and they snapped to life -- I think Stipe realized he was playing in the big leagues now and couldn't indulge his more "abstract" urges. They did a terrific version of "Man on the Moon" with Bruce as guest vocalist. Awesome.

Their run of work from about 1982-1994, however, holds up with just about anybody's.


I guess I can't really figure out at this point why they would break up; they're not in a position they have to make records or tour or really do anything if they don't want to. They could follow the Rolling Stones' model: stay together technically as a band, the various members can do solo stuff whenever they feel like, then once every 4-5 years if they feel like it, do an album and maybe a tour, and if you don't feel like it, just sit at home and count the money. Hell, if they really don't even like each other very much, no reason they have to be in the same room more than a couple times a year (if even that).

There has to be some other reason they decided at this point they should quit.

 

What will the De-Stipe-les think? Athens weeps. Athens should also apologize for the fucking B-52's, but that's another story.

 

Couldn't you have been a little more original with the thread title and called it "It's the end of the band as we know it..." <g>

I witnessed this great REM-Springsteen moment in person:

I saw them play this together in Philly & Orlando, but not in DC, where this performance is from:

 

More money/interest if they do a reunion tour a few years later?

 

It's the end of the world as we know it.

 

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
And I decline

It's the end of this band as I know it,
And I don't feel fine.

 

Didn't they break up about a decade ago?

 

Problem is, if they do get back together now, that's what it will look like.

Why not just remain technically "together," but "on hiatus?"

Hell, Boston went like 20 years between albums. Not to mention Guns N' Roses.