Confessions of a Fanboy

Wow, what an awful way to open a show.  “Bad Day” to open?  “Bad Day” = Bad Song.  Yuck.
I love that “It’s The End of The World As We Know It” closed the main set.  I know they’ve played it 10,000,000 times since Document, but that’s a perfect encore or main set closer.  Why fight [...]

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Two words:  “Circus Envy.”  I’d have been happy by the time we got to #4.  That’s power, right there.  That’s just fantastic.  “Rockville” makes the encore huge.  I’ll tell you something… if they’d have gone “house in order” somewhere in this set I might have nominated it for best of the tour.  Okay, I’m getting [...]

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I’m not sure if this was a festival show, but it does come in a few songs lighter than what comes after it.  “Welcome to the Occupation” hasn’t been played enough so I’m glad to see that in here.  “Fall On Me” in the cleanup spot is surprising.  It’s been held for later most of [...]

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Since we’re doing this backwards, I’m only now noticing that after getting played a lot earlier in the tour “These Days” seems to have been played a little less frequently.  It’s sad, but smart.  “These Days” is a great song, but it was getting played a little heavily.  It’s good to bench it every now [...]

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Wow, look at that!  They go obscure quickly on this set, don’t they?  “Second Guessing” in the 2-hole?  That’s nice.
This is another nicely balanced show.  I like “Rockville” in the encore.  Mike should always sing a song in the encore.  That’s a great place to put it.  It’s fun when Mike comes out [...]

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Forgive me for I fear you dear readers will misinterpret my tone when I call this a standard-issue rarity show.  It seems like a contradiction in terms and it kind of is.  I like this set list.  It’ balances singles and rarities, IRS and WB-era very well.  This is a model set list.  It’s also [...]

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It’s time to go back to the future, boys and girls.  With all the Springsteen blather leading up to the Nashville show I completely lost track of R.E.M.’s tour across Europe to promote Accelerate.  We’ve got six shows to catch up and we’re going to go in reverse chronological order, starting with last night’s show [...]

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I hope R.E.M. haven’t made one of those silly little limousine liberal declarations to leave the country if Candidate A doesn’t win… for their sake.  They’ve been playing “Imitation of Life” a lot in Europe and I don’t know how many hospitable countries are left.  I kid, I kid.  It’s not that bad.  It’s not [...]

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After a brief respite, the mighty R.E.M. returned to the stage last night as well.  I wonder if R.E.M. and Springsteen have the same booking agent.
Anyway, they’re back in action once again playing the European festival circuit, meaning abbreviated set lists that aren’t quite as good as their longer sets.  That said, last night’s show [...]

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This has to have been another festival set because it’s short 3-5 songs, and the song selection shows it. I’m stunned to see they managed to work “Pretty Persuasion” into the mix. It’s the lone rarity in the set and not one I’d expect.  They haven’t played it much in Europe so it’s [...]

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