Watch R.E.M.’s US television debut on “Late Night with David Letterman,” 10/6/83
Because they really were a jangly punk band, right?
When Athens, GA Rickenbacker enthusiasts R.E.M. were recently inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, CBS News sent Anthony Mason to interview them. When Mason asked the individuals what initially inspired them to play music, Michael Stipe blurted unequivocally, “Punk rock!”
That made sense to me. I mean, R.E.M.’s really a jangly punk band, right?
Their debut album Murmur may have displayed Peter Buck’s unique facility with an arpeggio, which of course brought The Byrds to mind, but the energy was all eighth-note overdrive. Stipe’s impenetrable lyrics could have been written by either Wire or Patti Smith, likely made more obscure by his innate shyness, which led me and my lifelong buddy Will Kolodzie to rename the album Mumble. This was really clean art-punk, in our thinking.
Then R.E.M. made their network television debut Oct. 6, 1983, on Late Night with David Letterman, performing “Radio Free Europe” and an early version of “So. Central Rain” that wasn’t as gentle. They were taut and wired, Buck and Mike Mills jerking back and forth, Stipe hanging onto the mic stand for dear life, hiding behind all those messy curls, a creature both delicate and dangerous. When Letterman talks to the band between songs, Buck’s Fender amp hums unchecked. It’s reassuring.
All I could think was that R.E.M. was like the Ramones without distortion, and with opaque lyrics. Yeah, they were punk rock, alright….
Yet this was a take on punk as cryptically Southern as the kudzu on the record sleeve — Gothic, dense and wary, like a Flannery O’Connor/William Faulkner milkshake. They were determined to play rebel rock, but in their own fashion. It had nothing to do with leather jackets, and everything to do with being better read than redneck. It was electric, but surprisingly raunch-free. It drawled, but with articulacy. And wasn’t early punk about rejecting all standards and finding your own way, creating your art and your life despite brutal poverty?
Like many, they moved on, while still retaining some spark of what initially drove them. And whatever they did was damned good. But if I’m reaching for R.E.M., I’m reaching for “Radio Free Europe.” I’m reaching for R.E.M. at their most punk rock. That Letterman show appearance is always how they were, in my mind’s eye.
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Anything new that R.E.M. dropped was always worth the trip to the record store. But I’ll always have a fondness for the IRS years.
I watched this as it happened. I was a DJ in a new wave/punk dance club. We’d been playing REM since Chronic Town an we loved ‘em. We had a TV over the bar and when REM came on we stopped the dancing and watched. That sort of music wasn’t played on mainstream outlets and we had no “College Radio”as it came to be.
It was exciting times.