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Easy Come, Easy Go

What's a good five-night rehearsal in Dublin without taking some time to over-analyze what was played? R.E.M.'s Open Rehearsals last week really seem to have gotten the fans pretty excited about the band again. After the first night, when I heard them playing a bunch of "olive branches," or old songs that us die-hard fans would love to hear, I was wondering how long it had been since they'd played some of these. I knew that many of these definitely hadn't been played since the 80's, but I wasn't sure if we were talking the Green Tour in '89 or some club in North Carolina in '84.

So, I headed over to the R.E.M. Timeline to figure this out for myself. Using the information there, I figured out that of the 28 old songs that they played, eight of these hadn't been performed since the 1980s. The one that had been dormant the longest is the one non-album song that they played, "Romance," which hasn't been played since 1983, right after Murmur was released. Out of all of these songs, I think I've only seen them play eight or nine of them, so I was pretty excited to hear what they played the first two nights and download the other three. Some other things that I discovered while researching this are:

• "Circus Envy" is the only one on the list that was last performed on the Monster tour.
  
• This was only the third time that "Worst Joke Ever" was played.
  
• R.E.M. has played songs from Chronic Town much more recently than I had remembered.
  

Finally, had anyone else been able to decipher the line "Peter, Mike, Bill are the book this season!" in "Second Guessing" before Michael told us from the stage at the Olympia that he had written them in? Not that they're to be trusted, but none of the lyric sites that I've read have this line correct.

Without any further commentary, here's the list, from "Romance" to "So. Central Rain," each with the date that they were last played before last week in Dublin.

Romance 7/17/83
Kohoutek 11/2/86
Second Guessing 11/25/86
Harborcoat 11/25/87
Letter Never Sent 3/13/89
1,000,000 9/27/89
Auctioneer 11/11/89
West of the Fields 11/13/89
Circus Envy 10/21/95
Carnival of Sorts 7/6/03
Feeling Gravity's Pull 9/30/03
Little America 10/3/03
Pretty Persuasion 10/7/03
Gardening at Night 10/11/03 3/12/07, thanks Michael!
New Test Leper 3/26/05
Maps and Legends 3/31/05
Worst Joke Ever 4/6/05
Disturbance at the Heron House 6/28/05
I've Been High 7/5/05
Welcome to the Occupation 7/5/05
Driver 8 7/6/05
These Days 7/10/05
Cuyahoga 7/16/05
Drive 7/16/05
Electrolite 7/16/05
Sitting Still 10/8/05
Wolves, Lower 10/8/05
So. Central Rain 9/12/06

Thanks to the R.E.M. Timeline and user Belisha Beacon (good Radiohead name!) who started this thread over at the Murmurs forums, which I used to confirm that my list of olive branches was complete.

Jerad posted this in Live | Comments (2)

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Comments

Posted by: dumbek at July 14, 2007 11:52 AM

Posted by: michael at July 18, 2007 12:11 AM

   jerad _at_ driveblind _dot_ net