By James Finlayson 06.28.99 Sonicnet R.E.M. played hits and vintage nuggets, Al Green mixed gospel with classic soul and Orbital brought techno music to the so-called “jazz/world” stage at Glastonbury Festival. This year’s edition of the event drew more than 100,000 music fans to farmland in southwestern England over the weekend. The three-day, multiple-stage festival [...]
By James Bedding 06.28.99 London Evening Standard Rating: 3 stars “We finally made it to Glastonbury!” yelled frontman Michael Stipe as he opened REM’s headline slot on Friday night, at the end of a day that had festival-goers stripped and sizzling in their tens of thousands from the Pixie Power Stage to the Sacred Sauna-Chillout. [...]
06.26.99 New Musical Express Peter Buck from REM on the tunes that made him a maaan! Song To Drive Down to Glastonbury: ‘Atlantis’ – Donovan “It has that Glastonbury vibe to it, doesn’t it? Ancient Celts, that sort of thing. We actually played that song once, it was pretty great. We hired a string section, [...]
By Garry Mulholland 06.23.99 Time Out Magazine “My biggest fear is that I start to come across as sentimental or menopausal. ‘Splutter!’” Michael Stipe has an odd but endearing laugh. It rears up from his throat in the middle of sentences, throws his deep, quiet speaking voice into a sudden spluttering cough, then disappears again, [...]
By Gary Crossing 06.23.99 Music365 He’s Definately Not The King Of Comedy….. Michael Stipe is telling a joke. To 20,000 people. An elephant and a mouse bump into each other in the street and the elephant says… well, we never find out. “I fucked it up,” laughs Stipe. “Don’t even ask.” Jimmy Tarbuck’s stand-up throne [...]
By Cat Mantione Holmes 06.22.99 Athens Daily News R.E.M. finally joined the rest of the world this past weekend — the World Wide Web, that is. At 5 a.m. Saturday, while the band was preparing to play a concert in Madrid, the band’s first official Web site made its debut. Of course, the band is [...]
06.18.99 MTV Online R.E.M. kicked off its first world tour in four years on Thursday night before a sold-out crowd of nearly 20,000 in Lisbon, Portugal — the first time they’ve played to audiences in that country. The nearly two-hour set opened with “Lotus,” off of 1998′s “Up,” then followed with “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth,” [...]
By Gil Kaufman 06.14.99 Sonicnet Though R.E.M. have released dozens of songs since their last major tour four years ago, singer Michael Stipe said he and the band plan on doing some musical reminiscing on their upcoming jaunt around the world. Among the chestnuts the Athens, Ga., superstar rockers recently practiced in their hometown, was [...]
By Ballard Lesemann 06.09.99 Flagpole Magazine Thursday, June 10 The Minus 5, The Possibilities High Hat Music Club Long-haired guitarist Scott McCaughey first gained recognition in the mid-’80s fronting the quirky Young Fresh Fellows. The amiable Seattle-based quartet sounded like The Sonics, The Beatles, The Soft Boys and Dylan all at once. They were the [...]
By Tom Scanlon 06.03.99 Seattle Times As a touring member of R.E.M., former Posies frontman Ken Stringfellow is accustomed to playing guitar in front of massive crowds in stadiums and arenas. The Posies never approached R.E.M.-like fame, but the power-pop band Stringfellow co-founded 11 years ago toured the country and Europe, winning critical acclaim for [...]