R.E.M.
Forum di Assago
Milan, Italy
January 15th 2005
Taped and edited by Matthijs
Source Information:
- Sound Professionals SP-CMC-2A cardioid mics
- SP-SPSB-6 Battery Box
- Sony Hi-MD MZ-NH900 in PCM (uncompressed) stereo mode
- Sony Sonic Stage -> digital transfer to PC via USB cable -> WAV
- Cool Edit Pro 2.0
- CD Wave
- Flac Frontend 1.7.1
CD 1
01. Finest Worksong
02. Begin The Begin
03. Departure
04. Animal
05. Boy In The Well
06. Seven Chinese Brothers
07. High Speed Train
08. Everybody Hurts
09. Aftermath
10. Leaving New York
11. Daysleeper
12. Imitation Of Life
13. I Wanted To Be Wrong
14. Final Straw
CD 2
01. Drive
02. The One I Love
03. Walk Unafraid
04. Losing My Religion
05. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
06. Bad Day
07. The Great Beyond
08. Country Feedback
09. Permanent Vacation (Featuring Joseph Arthur)
10. I'm Gonna DJ (Featuring Joseph Arthur)
11. Man On The Moon
BONUS TRACK FROM JOSEPH ARTHUR'S OPENING SET
12. In The Sun (Featuring Peter Buck and Bill Rieflin)
**********end original text*********
Timeline notes: Joseph Arthur guests on guitar on 'Permanent Vacation' and 'I'm Gonna DJ', and was introduced by Michael at the start of his opening set. Peter played guitar on 'In The Sun', and Bill Rieflin guested on drums on 'Can't Exist' & 'You've Been Loved' on Joseph Arthur's set. Before the 'proper' soundcheck Peter, Scott, Bill and Ken played 'Teenage Kicks' (Scott on vocals), plus half an hour of other classic songs
Notes:
-Seven Chinese Bros., Daysleeper and Country Feedback are highlights of the setlist.
-L&HTLI not present for the first time in this tour.
-Before IWTBW MS "We come a far away place called The United States of America. Our country is a place where people like myself sometimes find themselves lost. But my country is a place that is majority populated by people like me and like everyone on this stage tonight. It's a difficult time to find yourself in discord and disagreement with the actions of your government. However my glass is always half full and I walked into this new year, 2005 with a new motto. My motto for this year is taken from Joseph Arthur and my motto is 'I'm not giving up'. And so as people of the United States we would like to say good evening Italy, we love you and we're sorry. For the government I have nothing to say except these next two songs and I hope they're listening".
-Country Feedback is introduced as "kind of a request. We haven't played it in about a million years". PB's solo 2:30 but ends abruptly as if something broke, and a buzz appears in the PA.
Grade: B
-Inspired by Tapers Section's gear loaner program and hopeful we could get some better quality recordings out of Europe, I purchased a set of Sound Professionals SP CMC 2A mics with a pre-amp and sent them over to Europe, where a group of tapers and otherwise stellar people would use them and hand them off to the next user. While I thought I had sent them in plenty of time if memory serves, they arrived the day before the deadline or the whole plan would have been ruined. They also had to be 'bailed out' of customs with some more $$. They recorded 8 R.E.M. shows by my count on this leg, and more in 2008. One of the users liked them so much that he bought them from me, which was great because they were definately not in the budget at that time. The mics went on to record many more of the band members solo stuff, Minus Five etc. So in the end, it all worked out pretty well.