I don't know if this is old news, but I hadn't seen it...

From Pitchfork's summary of the Primavera Sound line-up:

A new supergroup will also perform in tribute to power pop icons Big Star, performing the band's 1978 album Third. The group includes Jody Stephens (Big Star), Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Chris Stamey (the dB's), Ken Stringfellow (Posies), R.E.M. producer Mitch Easter (Let's Active), and Brett Harris. The performance will also include appearances by the singers Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo), Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip), and more.

Full article here: http://pitchfork.com...ineup-revealed/

Michael Stipe along with writer Salman Rushdie are to host the Lunchbox Fund Bookfair, which is to take place in late-March 2012, in New York City.

According to its wikipedia page, "the Lunchbox Fund, established in 2005, is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing a daily meal for extremely poor and at-risk students in South African town ship high schools. The daily meal boosts the children’s nutrition and ability to learn".

This year's event will feature an auction of hand crafted books created with Ruth Lingen by a host of personalities including: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Paul du Toit, Sting, Sir Ben Kingsley, Mario Batali and Jim Dine, Chuck Close, Hugh Masekela, Philip Glass, Tony Bennett, Deepak Chopra, Bob Gruen and Joko Ono, Salman Rushdie and Francesco Clemente, and Michael Stipe, among many others.

The book fair is to take place March 21st in the Piedmonte Room of Del Posto restaurant. For more information and reservations visit the event's page: http://www.boomset.c.../eventpage/628#


The Lunchbox Fund's site is at: http://www.thelunchboxfund.org/

CIN came in a ridiculously low #73 when considering performers like Britney Spears were 20 spots above them. The full album list is here: http://www.villagevo...op/albums/2011/. If you look at "singles," you will find "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" and "Oh My Heart," amongst others (http://www.villagevo...p/singles/2011/).

But, when assessing for "enthusiasm" or "average points per vote (for albums that got at least 10 votes)" when "the default point-value is 10, but there are more <10 votes than >10 votes, so an enthusiasm of more than 11 is actually notable." it was #2! See here for a full explanation (and a little digging amongst these statistics is quite fascinating beyond this): https://pub.needleba...2011+Enthusiasm.

I'm really surprised I'm the first to post about this. Maybe someone else started a thread and I just didn't see it. If so, I'm sorry and feel free to move this wherever.
Last night saw a debut showcase of various performances by the band on the BBC. A lot of it had been broadcast before as clips from Top Of The Pops, Whistle Test and Later with Jools Holland, but this was a new collection, an overview of the band's work. It was bookended by a very brief interview with Michael and Mike about the band splitting, and a short Q&A from the archives about REM's political activism.
The rest was their music, going back to the 80's, and through the years. It was bittersweet re-living the era as we fans travelled through time with them. I spotted myself a few times in audiences, and let me tell you, that is surreal.
The most obvious change was Michael as frontman. How he evolved from a shy boy hiding in his hair to the confident blue striped wonder singing and doing his snake hipped dances. Quite an evolution.

It's a beautiful homage to REM, and the astounding amount of fantastic music they created. It's also testament to how amazing they were live. The best live band in the world.

And really, the show was only a fraction of REM's tv appearances, because the footage only comprised what was broadcast by the BBC. So add it together with all the other filmed appearances on other shows and in other countries and you begin to get an idea of the magnitude of their gifts to us, the audience.

I only have one gripe and it's to the Beeb. The first number they showed was Pretty Persuasion in 1984, and it sounded great. Then they followed it with a terrible version of Pop Song 89. The sound quality was awful. The vocal was way too low and distorted and you could barely hear the instruments. Whoever edited it was not up to the job. The BBC must have stuff in their archives from the Green era with decent sound, surely?

But other than that, I loved it. Closing shots form the 80's of the guys picking up their instruments and walking off the set, it made me well up because they were so young and so good and they went on to leave a legacy that is immaculate.
How lucky were we?

Michael sang with Patti at her customary New Years Eve show.