That's Great it Starts With an Earthquake . . .

This project, Why Your Life Sucks, originally started on August 23, 1997 at 1:20 in the morning on a train from Lyons, France. Over the years, I've kept notes and thoughts in a notebook concerning this ever-changing idea. While I was living in New York City in 1999, I wrote the following entry, "What I'd Like to Talk to Michael Stipe About When He's an Old Man and We Go Out to Dinner". I have shortened it for your benefit (including an extended rant against Puff Daddy whose "Every Breath You Take" rip-off was ubiquitous at the time).

The first R.E.M. album I bought was Fables of the Reconstruction, purchased the year it came out, 1985. Admittedly, I bought it because I liked the album cover. I had been flipping through the cassettes at "That's Entertainment"--a local audio and video (yes, Beta!) store that sadly fell, as many across the country, to the bloated and mass marketing savvy chain stores that somehow managed to offer more volume but strikingly less quality and selection. I would go to "That's Entertainment" everyday after school, since I was a latch-key kid, a term popular in the Eighties for kids who came home to empty houses due to both parents working. I could watch movies for free on one of the walls of stacked TVs, or listen to the small but diverse collection of cassettes and vinyl. To make it seem like I was actually serving a purpose, I offered my services of Alphabetizing all of the new inventory. So, that's how I came across this cool looking cover with one of the best titles of all time. And the music was exactly what I needed to hear. Instantly, this band, R.E.M., became one of my all time favorites, and possibly, as Rolling Stone soon pointed out, was America's Best Rock & Roll Band (RS Issue 514, December 3rd, 1987).
A year later the unbelievable occurred. R.E.M. came to Little Rock in support of the equally classic Life's Rich Pageant. They played Robinson Auditorium, which was a smaller venue compared to Barton Coliseum where I saw my first concert, Styx, a few years earlier. I spent weeks before tickets went on sale trying to convince my friends--none of whom had ever heard of R.E.M.--to go with me. I made tapes for them to listen to, to get them as excited as I was, but I imagine those tapes were later recorded over for Madonna.
Determined I would have one of the best seats for this momentous occasion, I enlisted my oldest brother to drive me to the box office the morning tickets went on sale. We took my other brother's brand new convertible, since he was sleeping in. I was able to purchase four tickets on the third row. My brother also bought two tickets but was unable to make the show because of final exams in Fayetteville. However, on our way back from the box office, just a block from our home, we wrecked my brother's convertible. It was a four way stop sign and I don't think either my brother or the other car really came to a full stop. The other kid's jeep tore off the front of our convertible Cavalier. I walked home and told my brother, who was still sleeping, that we had destroyed his brand new convertible. He didn't think it as funny as I did, but I was still high on the adrenaline rush from being able to walk away from the accident.
The concert was great, combining their music with another of my interests, film. It was the first time I'd seen a band project images behind them as they performed. I remember specifically a shot of a dog sitting on a staircase in what looked like a home movie. I bought T-shirts and buttons (it was the '80's, I had to put them on my jean jacket) with Michael Stipe's poetic lyrics, "A pistol hot cup of rhyme".
With the subsequent release of Document, the band had their big radio friendly hit, "The One I Love". Now they belonged to everyone. I admit, I was a bit jealous at first, but grew to accept their growing success. With the release of Green, they were conducting world tours. Needless to say, they wouldn't be returning to Little Rock. The release of Out of Time saw their catalogue of brilliant songs grow with the addition of "Losing My Religion" and the beautiful ache of "Country Feedback".
But it was with Automatic for the People that they achieved their masterpiece. For me, no other album can more perfectly conjure up a time and place so clearly. The nostalgic beauty of "Nightswimming" has brought chills to my spine on several occasions. The triumph of "Find the River" keeping an overnight road trip pushing through to the pre-dawn hours. This is simply a perfect album. With the follow up, Monster, I was finally able to see them again, this time for two shows in Denver at the legendary Red Rocks. This tour is wonderfully documented in the film Road Movie.
I loved New Adventures in Hi-Fi. I had it on one side of a cassette and Radiohead's O.K. Computer on the other and I listened to that tape over and over as I traveled around Europe for three months [where, dear reader, I started this whole venture as I've mentioned]. Sadly, New Adventures was the band's last album with drummer Bill Berry. And subsequent recordings noticeably suffered for that loss.
Postscript: But R.E.M. is back, with a new album that is really pretty good, Accelerate, and more importantly, they're touring. I saw them once again after the Denver shows a few years ago in San Francisco when Wilco, now arguably America's Best Rock & Roll Band, opened up for them. But when it was announced a few months ago that they'd be playing two shows at the Berkeley Greek Theater, I got tickets to attend along with my friend Baines who flew down from Portland, and John, Chope, and Hudson who all live in the Bay area. Both shows were great featuring different gems from the back catalogue in each set. These are pictures I took at the show.

The Last Picture Show

In 1985 the Heights Theater closed its doors. Quite possibly it was due to the fact that they ran Ghostbusters for over a year. The Heights Theater was a local, neighborhood theater with only one screen. Blockbuster movies and multi-screen theaters put it out of business. It's a shame--it was a classic old movie palace, with a giant mural of the state in the floor of the lobby. I saw many films there growing up. During the summer they would do a special children's film series at 11am every week. In 1985 I would have been 12 years old. A group had decided to screen Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show as, fittingly, the last picture show at the Heights Theater.
My friends Stephen and Blake and I were determined to see the last movie to screen at the Heights Theater, so we rode up there on our bikes and parked them out front where we always had in the past. We went in to buy our tickets--it was a special event so tickets were $10, a pricey sum for a movie ticket in 1985, and several weeks' worth of allowance for a 12 -year-old. The woman selling tickets didn't know what to make of us three kids. She almost didn't sell us the tickets because the movie was R-rated. We made our case for how much the theater had meant to us just like everyone else there, so she finally gave in.
Our combined age still would have made us one of the youngest people there, so it's no wonder that the guy from the newspaper took our picture, perched in our standard seats on the third row. I just came across that picture this past weekend.
Four years earlier I had fallen in love with Film and decided that was what I wanted to do when I "grew up". I would like to say that the Heights Theater was my Cinema Paradiso, but it wasn't because it closed so early in my education. Coming of age when I did, I spent my time after school at the local video store--"That's Entertainment". It was the greatest place a boy could dream of. They sold TVs, VCRs, Albums, Cassettes, and rented movies in the superior but doomed Beta format (if you wanted VHS you had to go up the street to Al's Video). I could watch anything there, no matter what it was rated, on my choice of TV screens. That was my Cinema Paradiso, but I've always been nostalgic for the Heights Theater.
Shortly after the Heights Theater closed, a local Director/DP named Gary Jones bought the marquee and put it up at his production company. Now, 20 years later, that is where I work.