REM - 23rd February 2005

Have you ever tried standing up, loosening the ol' vocal cords and
letting out a huge, uncontrollable, Michael Stipe style yell? I suggest
you do it now. Think about the contradictions, the hate, the love, the
beauty, the despair, the disease, the purity, and you find it
comes.

For their last two records R.E.M. have been the sound of growing old
gracefully. They can't compete in terms of energy with the new wave of
NYC rock bands, and international superstardom is some way behind them,
so they now make calm but glitchy electronic rock songs. They could be
accused of falling into a groove, or of trying to rewrite Automatic For
The People with synths. Essentially, they're all now comfortable and
happy, and that's never a combination conducive to great music.

Tonight though, Stipe is in crowd-pleasing mode and is taking us
through a back catalogue of madness collated throughout the last 22
years. Stipe wears too much eye makeup (combined with a casual suit, he
looks like Zorro's brother in the media industry); Stipe wriggles like
Elvis with a snake in his jacket; Stipe yells into a megaphone for
Orange Crush; all that's missing is the mad arm-flinging for Losing My
Religion. This is playing up to the crowd. The crowd don't give a
shit.

The NEC is a venue for middle aged women to clap along to Chris de
Burgh. The old women are here, they've paid ?35 for a ticket, but
they'll be damned if they're gonna get excited. Rhythmic clapping
proves beyond them for the scuzz-rock of I Took Your Name or the
feedback drones of High Speed Train. This is the pitfall of universal
genius - fame doesn't increase your street cred, but it does increase
your knitting club appeal. I send out mental messages of respect to the
shaven-headed, football-shirted men a few rows down who have stood up
to belt out the classics, while all around me polite nodding and
applause threatens to overwhelm my awful attempts at Stipe
dancing.

R.E.M. are unbelievable. The set leans heavily on more recent albums,
something I was dreading, but the sheer emotional pull of their simple
formula is irresistible, with each crashing chorus begging me to sing
it louder. Simple chants like "you are alive" from Electrolite, or
"it's easier to leave than to be left behind", things that are in
essence nothing more than ephemeral vibrations of air, become
heart-breaking in their combined sense of melancholy and hope, and I'm
suddenly glad that it's dark in here because it hides the tears in my
eyes, and I wonder again how everyone around me can seem so apathetic,
and why we haven't dissolved into a mass of movement.

We live in a world where people will nod and smile at the crushing
immensity of Everybody Hurts when they should be paralysed by the
moment, unable to do anything but sing in assent (notably, an attempt
by a friend and I to start an impromptu a capella version of It's The
End Of The World As We Know It on the way to the train station would
have fallen flat had we not continued it alone). The world we live in
is not a very beautiful place - at best it's an ugly lump of
frustration, fear, hate and anger with the ability to be beautiful on
occasions, the ability to transcend reality and create, for just a few
moments, the appearance of unity and perfection. This was one of those
moments for me, attempting Elvis impersonations ("are we losing
touch?") and shouting epiphanies to the stars beyond the metallic
ceiling, everything just being right. And in these painful things
called lives that we lead we should be grabbing at these split-seconds
of community, of feeling at one with something or someone else, because
that's all there is really. Money is nothing, nations are nothing,
property is nothing; the only thing that matters is you're not
alone.

We take the train back to Brum, grinning like bastards, talking about
cute girls, watching the poll tax riots on the Central Trains TV set,
discussing what neglected R.E.M. classic our fellow passengers should
be subjected to next, comparing awful car adverts, moaning about the
NEC's extortionate prices (?8 for a programme!), knowing that we're OK,
it's the others who are mad. For their last two records R.E.M have been
the sound of growing old gracefully. For tonight, they were R.E.M. And
that means a lot to me.