HALF A WORLD AWAY
It must be said that we have personally not heard all the songs included in this booklet, and we have relied on others contributing to this collection. There is not much accurate information on what songs R.E.M. (Twisted Kites) performed at Kathleen O'Brien's birthday party at the St. Mary's Episcopal Church. As far as we know, they performed 18 songs, out of which 12 were originals. The first tape known to us is the practise session at the Wuxtry Record shop on June 6, 1980.
The most difficult part has been finding setlists from Messrs. Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe's live appearances with other bands, partly due to people's lack of interest in such setlists, and partly due to people spending too much time in the bar, ending up too drunk to R.E.M.ember setlists. During the last few years people have started paying more attention to the setlists.
Collaborations with other bands often lack the information on which specific track the guys are contributing or sometimes they are as specific as "Michael Stipe keyboarded wherever he heard keyboards and I couldn't do" (Vic Chesnutt's "West of Rome"). Vic is a nice guy and after a great gig in Oslo, Norway, on January 26, 1997, he gave us the information we wanted.
We also attended Matthew Sweet's gig in Oslo, Norway on August 18, 1997, and after the show he was so kind as to give us "6 Stock Answers for 74.000 Questions" about Community Trolls.
The Nikki Sudden album "The Jewel Thief" has contributions from Berry, Buck & Mills. There are 2 different versions of this album, one with Peter Buck playing mandolin on the song "The Bagman and the Twangman" and the other one with Anthony Thistletwaite playing mandolin on that same song. You can easily hear the difference in the ways of playing!
Nikki Sudden toured with Peter Buck and Kevn Kinney in 1990, promoting Kevn Kinney's album "MacDougal Blues". He has given us information on dates, venues, including record shop gigs and radio sessions, and a lot of setlists from this tour. Tim Nielsen, Jeff Sullivan and Buren Fowler also took part in some of the shows, but in our list only refered to as Buck/Kinney/Sudden. We have also included a jam-session, including Peter Buck, Brian Burke, Paul "Crumpy" Edwards, and taped by Nikki Sudden that took place at Peter Buck's house in Cobb Street on March 14, 1990, although this was not a public appearance.
Regarding live stuff, we would like to mention the Donovan song "Atlantis", which R.E.M. first time played live during the show at the Civic Center, Atlanta, GA, December 31, 1984. The concert started late that New Years Eve. Close to midnight, you can hear people getting excited and you can notice the moment of midnight on the tape from this show. The first song R.E.M. played after midnight was "Atlantis", and therefore the first song played in 1985! (And maybe the only time they played it?) So finding all the information has been quite a puzzle.