This week we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of R.E.M.’s Dublin residency at the Olympia Theatre in July of 2007. As you know by now, the shows were recorded and released a couple of years later as “Live at the Olympia” which we like to call “the best R.E.M. record you’ve never heard” as it was definitely overlooked and underrated at the time. It has just been re-issued for the first time by our label of the past couple of years, CRAFT Recordings (https://rem.lnk.to/OlympiaLive), and we are having fun going back into the memory vaults and archives for great remembrances like this one, a very personal, multigenerational review from “twhalliii” in IndieWire:
A taste:
“Most of all, though, R.E.M. felt like something in stark opposition to the conservative literalism of Reagan’s America, something much smarter and bigger than Middle and High School, connected to an almost impossibly vibrant scene (Athens GA, a place I dreamt of for years), an ideal of creative work, of personal possibility for me. There are infinite numbers of stories of kids claiming that bands saved their lives; my life didn’t need saving, I was a happy, confident kid. R.E.M. didn’t save my life or give it purpose, they simply offered me a portal into the possibilities of living, of a larger world. I listen to those records today and more than the music and the words, they convey the texture of memory and experience for me; they make me feel the same feelings, but through a new, changing perspective about who I am.”
Bertis