I had forgotten how great the band R.E.M. once were. After the bloat of late 1970s rock and the cheese of that era’s a.m. radio, it truly was a tonic when punk and New Wave came along. No 20-minute drum solos, no whiny guitar riffs, no wannabe soul-man Mick Jagger tropes. Just music with grace, power, beauty, and honesty. R.E.M. has a new retrospective cd of their early years out. They were never that good again. From 1985, when I was a sophomore in college and saw them for the first time:
