R.E.M.

Tonight the assembled R.E.M. faithful are in for a bumper airing of some seriously classic moments from a time when the Georgians were little more than the biggest shower of cults around. The venue is great – wide and expansive rather than being long and narrow, guaranteeing a reasonable view regardless of your vantage point. The sound quality is pristine and on the whole this is the best post-Witnness bash a muso body could ask for.

Set opener ‘Begin The Begin’ from Life’s Rich Pageant indicates it’s a night for the fans and not the lighters in the air brigade. ‘Get Up’ from Green follows, and already proceedings are closer to the Tourfilm era than the somewhat predictable jukebox routines the band have favoured in recent times. Stipe’s Republican baiting on ‘Drive’, with its “bushwhacked” lyric is all the more meaningful in the context of the newest world order, and the use of a megaphone during ‘Orange Crush’ is jaw-droppingly great. Exactly all the elements I missed at their mid-’90s Slane soiree are present and correct, except for Bill Berry.

‘She Just Wants To Be’ goes out to “the good people of Dalkey” (what a Southsider affair this is turning out to be!) while Stipe’s platitudes to Dublin’s Fair City sound honest rather than routine. Two new songs sound a lot better than the output of recent years, but pretty much the entire set list pales in comparison to an extremely rare rendition of their first single ‘Radio Free Europe’. Mills and Stipe harmonise hypnotically on the chorus, and this four minutes of gold are worth the admission price alone.

They leave us with a mesmerising ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ and we’re feeling more than fine. Like many, I’ve been somewhat guilty of taking R.E.M. for granted in recent years. This was much more than a mere wake up call.