At the end of November in 1983 I had one of the great musical epiphanies of my lifetime. I go on about it a lot, (sorry folks), and surely bore people senseless, but it was a brief passage in my life that I really think about a lot and probably always will. A period of weeks when I went from being one person to becoming another and from which point I never looked back and don't plan to now.
On 18th November, Athens, Georgia band R.E.M. appeared on the Friday night live Rock show The Tube on Channel 4. I watched it on my own I think, in the family living room in Teddington, completely unaware of how utterly it was going to change me. The Tube was an absolute must watch in those days, and is incredibly fondly remembered by anyone who lived out their formative teenage years then.
What is less sharply acknowledged is how bad much of it was. The fact that the presenting was so clumsily and obviously made up as it went along to a frequently embarrassing degree. The comedians and poets that filled the support slots of its running order were more bewildering than entertaining. None of this mattered at all. Nobody would miss it anyhow.
That was largely because of the bands. Although the presenters barely seemed to know what they were doing at all, the bookers for the show clearly did, and during the years the show ran I saw some of the very best, probably the best live TV performances of my lifetime.
So that particular Friday I sat down to watch R.E.M who were on their first visit to British shores and were all but unknown, except to the very hippest of the hip. They made almost no impression on me at the time except that I thought they were weird and not quite like anything I'd ever seen or heard before.
Things move fast at that age though. In the next couple of weeks I read up on them in the music press and heard them getting play on evening radio. Gazed at the intriguing, entangled kudzu cover of debut album Murmur in Our Price in nearby Richmond, eventually felt obliged to purchase it, and played it on my newly bought stereo in my attic room in the house. Almost non-stop. For six months or so until their second record Reckoning came out and duly replaced it on the turntable with indecent haste.
R.E.M. were mine. They remained mine for years as I made my way through those precious changes and experiences. First crushes, first kisses, first true loves. I haven't stopped talking about them and how much they meant and still mean to me since really. I'm not ashamed. R.E.M. were my first true loves and guides and I'll always be grateful. How can you repay a debt like that.
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