R.E.M.
Nokia Live At Grand Prairie
Grand Prairie, TX
Friday 24 October 2008
Source/lineage: DPA 4061>Sony D100 DAT>Sony CDR W66>CDR>EAC>WAV>Flac (level 8) (tagged in foobar2000 v1.4.6)
Taper: V4TX
Original version seeded to Dime on 26 October 2008 by keithdylan
Remastered by Chris Hartstonge March 2020 and re-uploaded to Dime by eckythump 2 March 2020
01. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
02. These Days
03. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
04. Drive
05. Man Sized-Wreath
06. Ignoreland
07. Walk Unafraid
08. Hollow Man
09. Electrolite
10. Imitation Of Life
11. Exhuming McCarthy
12. Auctioneer (Another Engine)
13. Disturbance At The Heron House
14. The One I Love
15. She Just Wants To Be
16. I've Been High
17. Let Me In
18. Horse To Water
19. Bad Day
20. Orange Crush
Encore:
21. Supernatural Superserious
22. Losing My Religion
23. Sing For The Submarine
24. 7 Chinese Bros. / Michael tells stories
25. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
26. Man On The Moon
Michael Stipe - Vocals, harmonica
Peter Buck - Guitar, mandolin
Mike Mills - Bass Guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Bill Rieflin - Drums
Scott McCaughey - Guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Show notes: This was a really great show, a great performance and a with an election less than 2 weeks away at the time, Peter chose a setlist full of protest songs at the current administration, which you could imagine the band playing in 2020 if they were still touring. While unknown at the time, this turned out to be R.E.M.'s final non festival show in the USA, and its second to last. Michael actually dropped a huge clue as to the future of the band during this show which never really got picked up - after Losing My Religion he told the crowd that it might be their last ever show in Dallas, Texas, which drew many boos, after which he backtracked and said it might not be, but clearly it was on his mind, and makes me wonder if R.E.M. had already decided the end was nigh by this point. Michael also told some great lengthy stories about the history of the songs 'What's The Frequency, Kenneth?' and 'Supernatural Superserious' after '7 Chinese Bros.' which is essential listening for any R.E.M. fan. The show also includes a very rare performance of 'Sing For The Submarine', which was only played live 3 times, this one being the last time. With the benefit of hindsight, it certainly feels like the band are saying goodbye to Dallas at this show.
Recording notes: The original torrent notes stated "Pretty nice recording of a really nice show. Quiet bunch of people around me, help to make this a nice listen. You will notice how overbearing the bass drum was in the mix. The proof is during “Frequency” where the pedal brakes and the recording loses almost all bottom. I thought I heard a couple of spots where the bottom distorts, but this is very rare." Overall it's a fine sounding recording, and with the remaster (see below) it's never sounded better.
Torrent notes: As noted above, this show was uploaded to Dime a few days after being recorded back in 2008, and then hadn't been since dropping off the tracker. With the blessing of original uploader keithdylan this is a remaster of his original recording, which suffered from a number of glitches, particularly at the start and end. It was also released for burning to CD. Now the recording is completely seamless. If you downloaded the original torrent (which I don't think many of you did given how hard it was to track down a recording of this show), this will be an upgrade. If you haven't heard this recording before and you're an R.E.M. fan, you must listen to this one, if just for Michael's stories during the encore. Enjoy!
http://remtimeline.com/ for all your R.E.M. setlist needs!
********end original text********
Notes:
-There was a whole bunch of blank lines and 'Disc 5' at the end of the original text not included here.
-Setlist highlights: Auctioneer (2 promo, 12 tour, last performance), Disturbance At The Heron House (17), She Just Wants To Be (17), Sing For The Submarine (3).
-After WTFK? MS notes there were two Texas references in the song and that he got stuck in traffic on the way to the show.
-Before MSW MS notes someone in the audience's tie and the presence of so many protest songs in the setlist.
-Before Ignoreland MS references his father still being upset about the Iran hostage crisis in the late 70's.
-Before D@THH MS polls the crowd as to who was born before 1975 and talks about the origin of Falls To Climb as being from a book called 'The Lottery' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery) after seeing a video Marilyn Manson made about the story.
After 7 Chinese Bros MS "Let me se this up because I'm not going to assume anything tonight. We have been playing together as a band for a great long time. Centuries. Although I'm not an autobiographic writer, I did live in Texas for five years of my like. Long before the band. This is the frst time this past week, I was looking at one of the airline magazines and for the first tie ever I saw Killeen/Ft. Hood as one of the cities. I don't know if that's worthy of applause or what but apparently it's grown a little bit since I was there. Anyway, I've used those five years repeatedly to be able to acknowledge my hatred of this despicable administration and It's been really useful. But there's a lot of noise out there, there's a whole lot of noise and I'm kind of a glass half full guy and I feel like I've had a very fortunate and a very privileged life. I think all of us have or we wouldn't be at an R.E.M. concert on a Friday night. But I'm really an optimist and I'm happy to say as terrible as the first decade of the 21st century started, particularly with 9/11 and particularly with the aftermath of that and a part of this administration, I think we're going to end it in a really fucking beautiful way with the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. Copper's Cove, Texas. I lived there for five years, heart of Texas, heart of Texas county: Corryell County. I still know my zip code 76522 was my zip code. If anybody wants to do a search, I lived on Live Oak Drive 2607 Live Oak Drive, Copper's Cove, Texas 76522 and that kept me from being kidnapped as a child, knowing all that. Anyway the two references in What's The Frequency Kenneth that are Texas based, number one Rick Linkletter, the amazing filmmaker from Austin is quoted in the second verse because he actually said [MM] 'withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy'. [MS] and the other reference is one that I've never actually said before tonight but when I sang it tonight I almost forgot it because I was thinking too hard but I want to say it here and now: my English teacher was a woman named Debbie Biggers and she was probably 21 years old. She was a feminist. It was 1972. And instead of teaching us English, it was her first year teaching English and instead of teaching us stupid lessons that didn't mean a lot she would bring in Carly Simon records and she would play them for us in English class. There's a line in the third verse of What's The Frequency Kenneth? about a rear view mirror. It's kind of an obvious metaphor or analogy [ironic--maybe he should have learned that in English class?] I'm trying to talk and I'm trying to stay on point. Write that in a blog and send it out there and I'm sure I'll read it. Thank you. My concentration levels are not what they used to be. She had a boyfriend who had a rear view mirror on his Volkswagen Bug and it had a decal of a butterfly on it and he looked like Joe Namath. I think I kind of had a crush on both of them but anyway that made it into the third verse of that song. Finally, the first song of our encore, is called Supernatural Superserious, which is quite the opposite of superserious. Although I don't write autobiographically, I'm going to come right around and wrap it all up really nicely. The summer camp where I had the bizarre seance experience is actually not far from here and if anyone wants to look it up it's Camp Tahauya(?). Nothing actually sexual occurred and it in in fact did not impact my adult sexual proclivities. But I took that experience, I know it's ok, that's why I'm talking about it, I took that experience and I changed a lot of the details and brought in some bondage and stuff like that and made it kind of an interesting song. So there's that, another little Texas reference there." The rear view mirror part of the story has been told once before. After introing the band, MS announces he is Drinking Rahr & Sons Storm Cloud
Grade: C
-Bass distortion throughout, probably a B if not for that.