“I’d studied your cartoons, radio, music, TV, movies, magazines,” Michael Stipe once sang, vicariously, as though channelling Dan Rather.
R.E.M. mirrored the fortunes of the media business – a band that found its own audience through toil on the road, rode the MTV wave, benefitted from what major labels could offer when they had it to offer and which experimented with fan mash-ups and online releasing.
Now, in this, the week that R.E.M. hangs it up after 31 years, a just-posted clever video remix brought to our attention shines a light on the media explosion that has tracked the Athens, Ga. band’s own career these past three decades…