R.E.M. News

If you don't like R.E.M., you likely won't like this. Alright, now that that's over with, Live at the Olympia in Dublin is a collection of songs recorded during a five-night stand in the summer of 2007 in Dublin where they played old favourites and mixed in new songs from their since-been-released Accelerate.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street , first broadcast on PBS on November 10, 1969.

The band's songs, which take singer Ritchie Young's quivering voice - one that often switches from a deep register to an androgynous falsetto in the same verse - and surround it with layers of baroque instrumentation, have always been pretty.

If anyone was wondering how R.E.M. [ tickets ] went from the brooding, disappointing murk of 2004's "Around the Sun" to the urgent, clarion call, return-to-form of 2008's "Accelerate," you'll find part of the answer on "Live at the Olympia." This two-CD, 39-song set is culled from the band's 2007 five-night engagement at Dublin's historic Olympia ...

Seventy musicians and visual artists - including Damien Hirst, Debbie Harry, Kylie Minogue and REM frontman Michael Stipe - who had been shot by the Dazed & Confused founder were told to "do something to the [iconic shots], something that's totally unique and original, and theirs.

Let the plundering commence. The slapped-together soundtrack to the King of Pop's new film merely repackages a bunch of previously released hits with one new song, the so-so "This Is It." The "souvenir edition" includes a skimpy bonus CD with the spoken-word piece "Planet Earth" and demo versions of "She's Out of My Life" and other songs, although ...

Michael Stipe of REM was in attendance on the opening night of The xx 's first ever European tour.

R.E.M. set up camp at the venerable Olympia Theatre in Irelanda s capital city and tested new material over five nights before passionate, capacity crowds.

Would they were so considerate of the rest of us. "I think every musician should be involved," said Rosanne Cash in a telephone interview Wednesday.

IFIED: If the Hidden Cameras are reduced to the gay man's R.E.M., then with Origin , they've delivered their Automatic for the People - which is to say, they clean up nice.

It's been an odd past few weeks for the music industry. Lil' Wayne's street cred has shot through the roof , Michael Jackson proved he is the king of posthumous lawsuits, and of course, Kanye West's ego has reached heights the "balloon boy" could only dream of.

Singer/songwriter Pete Yorn, who's been a favorite on the indie scene since the early part of this millennial decade, will appear at Hilton Head's Shoreline Ballroom Saturday, Nov.

Two years in the making, the early stages of R.E.M. 's newly-released double live album Live at the Olympia go back to early 2007 as singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and their on-stage entourage tested out new tunes for their 2008 studio album Accelerate .

In 2007, over five nights in Dublin, R.E.M. tested out 39 songs in rehearsals that included new songs that would end up on 2008's bold album "Accelerate." R.E.M.'s "Live at The Olympia" capture the best moments from those nights -- nights where the Athens band didn't play greatest hits such as "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts," but rather ...

When we talked on the phone Thursday afternoon, Mark Kelley was sounding pretty pumped up.

Early on in "Live at the Olympia," R.E.M.'s latest live release, frontman Michael Stipe warns the eager audience that the Dublin, Ireland gig is just a rehearsal.

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. performs at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin during the summer of 2007.

Maybe it's the circumstance - The Swell Season's Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were a real-life couple before they played one in the movie "Once" and subsequently broke up just as the accolades, including an Oscar for best original song, started rolling in.

Next week R.E.M. is releasing R.E.M. Live at the Olympia , which features two CDs worth of live recordings from the band's five-show run at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, Ireland in 2007.

Most live albums are fairly disposable artefacts, intended primarily as souvenirs for those who attended the shows, and usually consisting of an act's most recent album along with a few of their greatest hits from which the life has been gradually worn away through repetition.