Farewell to My Favorite Band

First off, as you may or may not know, I am a complete music geek. Or at least I was a complete music geek. These Days, I'm more of a book geek, or perhaps a father geek, but I'm still a pretty big music geek as well. So let the geekery commence...

Since I was 10 years old, I've purchased thousands of CDs, gone to hundreds of concerts, and sung along to countless rock bands, but no music has had a greater impact on my life than that of R.E.M., the college radio titans who announced this week that they are disbanding after 31 years. Murmur has long been a toss-up for my favorite album, and while I bounce between Murmur or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds for that title, no other music has had the same impact on me that R.E.M. albums have had over the years.

You may think it silly or overstated that a band could really impact your life, and perhaps you're right, but for me, R.E.M. has been the soundtrack of my life since I was 12 years old when my cousin passed along a worn out cassette copy of Lifes Rich Pageant. It literally changed my taste in music overnight. After that, I was THE die hard R.E.M. fan to people who knew me, and many of my memories from that point forward are tied to various R.E.M. related events.

* I remember the older kids in the Indianapolis Children's Choir wearing their Green tour shirts to choir practice after seeing R.E.M. kickoff a leg of their 1988 tour in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena.

* I remember sitting in the basement of a house at Myrtle Beach with my cousins listening to "Flowers of Guatemala" for the first time and thinking the bridge in that song was the best thing the Beach Boys never wrote.

* I remember buying Murmur, Reckoning, and Fables of the Reconstruction shortly after that trip and listening to them non-stop for a solid year.

* I remember having a cassette single of "Stand" that I nearly wore out.

* I remember being excited for the fan club Christmas package to arrive every year with its super cool 7" included.

* I remember running to Karma Records to pickup Out of Time the same night I went to see INXS with a bunch of friends my sophomore year of high school and listening to the CD on the way to the concert.

* I remember wearing my Reconstruction tour shirt virtually every day during my junior year of high school. (I still have it. It's yellowed.)

* I remember my friends telling me about seeing the "Drive" video on MTV prior to Automatic For the People arriving in October of my senior year.

* I remember sitting in a friend's backyard singing "Driver 8" while Chris played it on his guitar.

* I remember standing in line at midnight my freshman year at Purdue to buy Monster, and the store manager giving me a big R.E.M. poster. (He knew I was a fan because I'd stop in and buy R.E.M. bootlegs there all the time.)

* I remember driving to Milwaukee and back with my sister in a dying automobile to see the band live for the first time.

* I remember driving to Chicago to see the Monster tour with friends. Somehow some of my friends managed to meet Peter Buck after one of those shows. I was always jealous.

* I remember standing in the rain after roadtripping to Columbus, OH and Pittsburgh, PA for R.E.M. shows in college. I've never been wetter than we were in Pittsburgh.

* I remember standing in line, again at midnight, to buy New Adventures in Hi-Fi at Von's in West Lafayette.

* I remember driving to Athens, GA in the middle of the night on a business trip, just to check out some of the places associated with R.E.M. lore.

* I remember dragging my wife back to Athens several years later, just so we could eat at Weaver D's and see all the "places that used to be the 40 Watt."

* I remember my wife writing to Peter Buck about me being some kind of psycho fan, and him sending me back a very nice letter (it's framed.)

So while it may seem silly to have any emotional reaction at all to a bunch of guys in their 50's disbanding a rock group they formed as drinking buddies in college, it's more about reflecting on all the good times with great friends I've had in my life that have gone by with an R.E.M. album spinning in the background. Those are fond memories put to great songs and for that, I'm grateful to R.E.M.

(Checkout AllMusic's entry on R.E.M. for song clips. And click here and here for proof that I'm not the only crazy person who grew up loving R.E.M.)