R.E.M., Stipe Find Their Religion
R.E.M., the musical heroes of Athens, Ga., are back! More in a minute.
First, this: "Sting isn't staying," the rock star's publicist told me during his Saturday night show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. "He's going right after the show to see Bruce and Patti."
That would be Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, who were wrapping up the E Street Band's three-night stand at Shea Stadium. Sting's show jam-packed with fan club members and Alec Baldwin, as well as Access Hollywood's Billy Bush (I wonder if they had a political discussion) was over soon enough that he could have made it to Shea.
I don't know if he did, but Bob Dylan, Garland Jeffreys and Gary U.S. Bonds all joined The Boss on "Twist and Shout" in honor of the Beatles' famous 1966 Shea shows. Dylan led the band on his own "Highway 61" and Bonds did his old chestnut "Quarter to Three."
If that wasn't enough music in New York for one night, R.E.M. sold out Madison Square Garden. We managed to make it across Eighth Avenue from the Sting show just in time to hear Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck give a performance so energized you'd think we were back at the Ritz circa 1981. The audience loved it, too, literally keeping the group past the traditional 11 p.m. cutoff and pushing them into encores.
The group pulled out their own chestnuts: ''Fall on Me," "Finest Worksong," "The One I Love," "It's the End of the World," "Man on the Moon" and "Losing My Religion" crackled with a kind of virtuosity that is all but absent at this point in rock.
Stipe still has his kind of trademark staccato movements, but you know, it works even when he looks a little like a dancing toy at the end of a stick. His sincerity about the music, about New York, is genuine and heartfelt.
Best sign of the night: The band played "Drive" and not the now-yucky "Everybody Hurts" from "Automatic for the People." Their only mistake: Not doing more from their last CD, "Reveal," such as "I'll Take the Rain" or "All the Way to Reno."
At the after-party at the new Maritime Hotel, the group mingled with Helena Christensen, Macaulay Culkin, Bebe Buell and Casey Affleck, among others.
Yeah, I asked Casey about Ben and J-Lo, but he knows as much as you do about what's going to happen next.
What about Casey himself? He's going to make "Ocean's 12" (he was very, very good in "Ocean's 11") and try to stay out of US Weekly.
How does his brother deal with tabloid reporters following him into hardware stores? (Last week we learned that Ben bought a piece of wood. This week: Probably breakfast cereal and dental floss!)
"It's like being on EdTV," Casey quipped, referring to the underrated Ron Howard movie.
By the way, check out R.E.M'.s very funny, trenchant fake-news Web site www.morningteam.com.
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