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NEW PHOTOS FROM TODOS SANTOS (UPDATE 1/16)


Peter, Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Robyn Hitchcock, and Steve Wynn made an afternoon visit to the Palapa Society this weekend and sent us some great photos. Check it out!

This report in from Chloe Johnson:

It was a VERY special afternoon. About 25 of the Palapa Society students from the

SWEETNESS FOLLOWS AT NPR


All this winter, All Things Considered has been asking for winter songs —€ and the stories they evoke.

One tough winter in Rhode Island, NPR listener and novelist Thomas Mullen experienced financial ruin with his family. The song that got him through it was R.E.M.’s “Sweetness Follows.”

Click here to

R.E.M. AT THE BBC AIRS FRIDAY


“R.E.M. at the BBC” will air this Friday, January 13th, on BBC4 (digital channel) at 9.30pm. The program will run again on Saturday at 1:45AM and Monday at 12 Midnight.

The hour-long show will feature a selection of archive performances from throughout the band’s career, originally recorded for BBC

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PHOTO UPDATE FROM TODOS SANTOS


It was another amazing night at the Todos Santos Music Festival with a blistering set that lasted almost three hours long–a fitting finish to four incredible nights of music. It was as though the band had decided to never leave the stage again.

Some highlights from the final

WATCH MICHAEL SING “WICHITA LINEMAN” AT BOWERY IN NYC


Michael made a special guest appearance on New Year’s Eve at the Bowery Ballroom with Patti Smith and her band on the final night of their annual three-night residency at the NYC musical mecca. Smith announced that the 2011 residency would be her last at the Bowery.

Read more at

THE YEAR IN REVIEW: COLLAPSE INTO 2011


March 8, 2011, marked the release of R.E.M.’s 15th studio album, Collapse Into Now, easily one of the band’s most diverse offerings and undeniably one of their finest. The Independent, UK lauded the record for its “recurrent themes of conclusion, starting over and rebuilding [which] lend

THE YEAR IN REVIEW: COLLAPSE INTO 2011


March 8, 2011, marked the release of R.E.M.’s 15th studio album, Collapse Into Now, easily one of the band’s most diverse offerings, and undeniably one of their finest. The Independent, UK lauded the record for its “recurrent themes of conclusion, starting over and rebuilding [which] lend

R.E.M. AMONG OLOGY’S “MUSICIANS OF THE YEAR”


The band has been named one of Ology.com’s “Musicians of the Year” in the cultural website’s ongoing “Year in Review” rollout:

A lot of great bands called it quits in 2011, but none with the same level of accomplishment, integrity, and influence as Athens, GA’s original alternative rock heroes: R.E.M. Over

END-OF-YEAR POSTCARD FROM THE BREAK


Today, three days from the end of the year 2011, I am thinking a lot in threes: three decades of life with R.E.M., three guys at the end, three is a good number. Favorite things are sometimes hard to isolate–threes are easier at least for me:

So . . .three

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GQ.COM WEIGHS IN ON R.E.M.’S SPLIT IN “THE YEAR IN MUSIC”


Chris Heath takes a look at the implications of the band’s split in the following essay from GQ.com’s look back at the year in music:

And millions of Americans are surprised to find themselves suddenly remembering, as though awakening from a trance, how much they used to love R.E.M. How simultaneously