R.E.M.
Charles E. Smith Center, The George Washington University
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday 12 November 1986
Support: Let's Active
Venue still exists, no name change as of 2021
Digitised to WAV from cassette kindly supplied by Henrik1978. Audience recording, unknown taper and equipment
Eckythump May 2021 remaster: iZotope RX8 Advanced (various adjustments) -> iZotope Ozone 9 (EQ adjustments) -> Audacity 3.0.2 (split tracks and export to FLAC Level 8) -> Traders Little Helper 2.8.4 (Fix SBE's, ffp and md5 files) -> foobar2000 1.6.5 (files tagged). First shared to Dime on 6 May 2021.
01 - These Days
02 - Moral Kiosk
03 - Crazy (Pylon cover)
04 - Pilgrimage
05 - Driver 8
06 - Sitting Still
07 - The One I Love
08 - Feeling Gravitys Pull
09 - The Flowers Of Guatemala
10 - White Tornado
11 - Tired Of Singing Trouble
12 - I Believe
13 - Michael's tree story
14 - Swan Swan H
15 - Superman
16 - Can't Get There From Here
17 - 7 Chinese Bros.
18 - Auctioneer (Another Engine)
19 - Lightnin' Hopkins
20 - Pretty Persuasion
21 - Little America
Encore 1
22 - Fall On Me
23 - Cuyahoga
24 - Funtime (Iggy Pop cover)
25 - After Hours (The Velvet Underground cover)
Encore 2
26 - Oddfellows Local 151
27 - Red Rain (snippet, Peter Gabriel cover)
28 - So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry) (Buck and Stipe)
Michael Stipe - Vocals
Peter Buck - Guitar
Mike Mills - Bass, vocals
Bill Berry - Drums, vocals
Buren Fowler - Guitar
Show notes: The 53rd show out of 64 on the short but sweet Pageantry tour saw the band heading south to Washington D.C. at the 5,000 capacity Charles E. Smith Center. They may have still been a year away from the first top 10 hit (which was already written and in the set nearly every night), but the crowd reaction to every song at this show proves they'd already hit the bigtime. A fun show, highlights included a rare for 1986 performance of Crazy, a particularly long intro to Feeling Gravitys Pull, and Michael's amusing but going nowhere in particular story about a tree, that had really nothing to do with Swan Swan H, but was fun regardless. The new songs destined for Document sounded great, at this point Lightnin' Hopkins had different lyrics, but I really like this version, and Little America absolutely rocked to close the set. With audiences that were getting larger and larger, this was a band that was clearly heading for bigger things.
Recording notes: This is a pretty good recording that required a little bit of work. Henrik1978 again kindly digitised his tape, with tape 1 requiring more effort to get sounding better. While not the best recording of the tour, this is still a very nice one to listen to. While presumably circulating amongst a small group of traders on cassette since the 80's, this is the first time it's been available in the digital world and on Dime. The R.E.M. Timeline lists Shaking Through being performed after Auctioneer, but there's no obvious cut there on this recording, so unless someone comes up with a version of this show that has that song, it seems it wasn't performed. Samples provided. Enjoy!
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Timeline notes: Peter Buck played guitar & Mike Mills on tambourine on Deep Purple's 'Hush' with Let's Active on their opening set.
Notes:
-Standard intro to Flowers Of Guatemala
-Before Swan Swan H MS tells his story of the Ginko tree and goes into great detail about the color and shape of the leaves and how well the tree does in urban settings.
-Interesting intro to Auctioneer. I like it.
-As noted above, there is not an ovious cut where Shaking Through is supposed to be. It likely wasnt there.
Grade: B