Last Night’s Party: R.E.M. in Raleigh

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The first concert I attended at Time Warner Pavilion (then Hardee’s Walnut Creek) was in 1992.  The lineup was The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Buckinghams and The Turtles. Classic. Interestingly, this was the same year that I acquired the R.E.M. album Automatic for the People. Although these artists have very little in common musically, last night’s performance at the pavilion did hark back memories of this fateful year.

The National and Modest Mouse opened the show. Having seen both of these bands live in the past few years, I shrugged off both as appetizers before a steak dinner. The National was amazing as usual, the dark crooning baritone of lead singer Matt Berninger echoing beyond the parking lot trees as we approached the venue. They are more suited for a venue like Cat’s Cradle where the darkness and intimacy of the space match their lyrics and sound. But hearing and watching Berninger is always an entertaining experience full of passion.

Modest Mouse followed with an intense and rocking set that had everyone wearing Modest Mouse shirts dancing. The rest of the crowd seemed quite still during their performance but there was a large standing ovation when they ended. Seeing Johnny Marr on stage with them was quite nice, having seen Morrissey live in 2007 without his former band mate next to him.

As the sun went down and Modest Mouse finished their set, there was a long break before R.E.M. hit the stage. I assume this was to let the darkness engulf the pavilion because of the multimedia they had planned for the performance. This was a correct assumption. When R.E.M. hit the stage, so did a multimedia display that covered the entire color spectrum and used all of the video cameras active under the canopy. Michael Stipe’s silhouette was replicated 10 times, tinted by any color available and projected at a scale of 20 on the two large side screens as well as an LED display of at least 15 panels behind the band. There was even one point when Stipe pointed towards a camera off stage in the second song and yelled into the microphone “Camera 3 GO!”  He proceeded to strike a pose for about 30 seconds while the music jangled around him and the projection lit up and flashed vividly with his confident and static vogue.

The set list dug deep into most of their albums with songs that Stipe labeled as “ones that we got our start on in the Iron Triangle or whatever you guys call this area.” Their performance was fantastic and Stipe was very energetic, dancing around the stage with a smile adorning his face throughout the night. Johnny Marr and Don Dixon joined R.E.M. on stage for songs in the encore. I thought a Smith’s cover would grace the stage at some point but that didn’t happen. The music was definitely the highlight of the evening but the multimedia experience added additional layers of visual memory into the performance. They even mixed the word “Raleigh” in Scrabble letters into the projection at one point.

As we walked towards the parking lot, the show was ending and the lyrics “Mott the hoople and the game of life. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Andy kaufman in the wrestling match. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” projected from the stage.  Man on the Moon was a fitting way to end the evening.  Automatic for the People and the year 1992 flashed before my eyes. The Four Tops and Temptations put on a great show that year, but a performance like this was one they didn’t have up their sleeve but everything was cool, yeah yeah yeah yeah….....

Set List (with Stipe commentary in parenthesis) via myrem.com

Harborcoat (“Good evening”)
Living Well
Bad Day
Kenneth
1,000,000 (“Hey you people on the lawn, check this shit out”)
Man-Sized Wreath
Welcome To The Occupation
Accelerate
7 Chinese Brothers
Hollow Man
Imitation of Life (“Our first #1 single…in Japan”)
Houston (“This is about the Katrina situation”)
Electrolite (“This is a west-coast song, and we’re sending it out to Modest Mouse”)
Walk Unafraid
The One I Love
Final Straw
Find The River
Let Me In
Horse To Water
Auctioneer (Another Engine)
Orange Crush
I’m Gonna DJ

Supernatural Superserious
Losing My Religion
Pretty Persuasion (“This is about growing up queer in the south”)
Fall On Me (“Please welcome to the stage, Johnny Marr!”)
Sitting Still (“You might have noticed the two men to our right, Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. This is called Sitting Still”)
Man On The Moon

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