Adventures in Hi Fi: The Complete R.E.M.

When I was in Melbourne for New Years I scored a copy of "Adventures in Hi-Fi: The Complete R.E.M." by Rob Jovanoic and Tim Abott.

I finally started to read it it four months later ( I got soooo many non - r.e.m. books for christmas). It begins with an interview with Peter Buck and he got to talking about set lists and seeing as REMurmur has lots of REM set lists I thought I'd share.

R.E.M. Guitarist Peter Buck was asked how by an author how he arranged setlists:

"There's four things I have to keep in my head when I do the setlists, that I have to remember - what we played last time we were in that city, what songs everyone is sick of, the emotion and key of the song so, so that we don't do five slow, sad songs in a row.

I'm pretty good at it, so almost 100 percent of the time I do the set list and then Xerox the copies and pass them round."

That's not the end of it though, "Everyone goes, "I really don't want to play that song" or haven't we done those three songs in a row for the two weeks?" So that's my job."

So the inference I take from Adventures in Hi Fi is if you go to an R.E.M. concert and they leave out your favourite song, you can blame Peter Buck!

Source: Adventures in Hi-Fi: The Complete R.E.M." by Rob Jovanoic and Tim Abott.

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