A Tournament, A Tournament, A Tournament Of Lies (REM Live Athens, Greece 2008 And Several More)
Washington is a tournament of lies.
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It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
For REM fans, this website discusses every REM song ever written. After a few months, Michael Stipe found the site and joined the discussions.
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(from sheet music corrected by Michael Stipe)
That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and
snakes, an aeroplane and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world
serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs. Feed
it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength, Ladder
start to clatter with fear fight down height. Wire
in a fire, representing seven games, a government
for hire and a combat site. Left of west and coming in
a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team
by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered cropped.
Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh,
overflow, population, common food, but it'll do. Save
yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs,
listen to your heart bleed dummy with the rapture and
the revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
psyched.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign
towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself
churn. Locking in, uniforming, book burning, blood
letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate.
Light a candle, light a votive. Step down, step down.
Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament,
tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
offer me alternatives and I decline.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
The other night I dreamt of knives, continental
drift divide. Mountains sit in a line, Leonard
Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester
Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You
symbiotic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel
fine...fine...
(It's time I had some time alone)
A Tournament, A Tournament, A Tournament Of Lies...A Government For Hire
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REM Live Very Funny Intro...'Spooky'
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REM with Eddie Vedder "Begin The Begin"
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REM with U2 doing "One" (Recommended)
Eddie Vedder Speech For REM's Introduction Into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
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REM Live "Gardening At Night"
Jun 23, 2010 at 2:35 AM
Reader Comments (8)
I was at that same REM-10,000 Maniacs show...saw a few on that tour.
"The Same As It Ever Was"
What was the name of the talking heads movie that came out in the mid 80s?
Byrne is still going, and puts on a great show. Saw him in Tampa in December.
@Robert
I love Athens, Georgia...another one of America's amazing college towns. I have followed REM since 1983, have seen about 25 live shows or so but never got to see them in Athens.
You probably saw them at the 40-watt club...what a strangely famous bar. I had a few beers there one night on a weekend pilgrimage to Athens during undergrad.
They had a dilapidated church where they threw parties at. Here's a funny story for you. At this point in time, I was laying carpet for a living and Pete said he wanted some black carpet for his bathroom. Black carpet was hard to find but we found him some and we installed it in this dinky bathroom off the home studio in the old house he bought on Meigs St (I think it was Meigs). He had everything in the bathroom painted black, countertop...everything. Anyway I asked him WTF and he said he was gonna go in there and take a shit and stare at all the gold records on the wall. Pretty funny but maybe this is one of those things where you had to be there but I thought it was funny.
Here's another- a bass player friend of mine was over there one day partying and they were doing something and he said he knocked over a stack of unopened mail. As he was picking them up he noticed they appeared to be checks...they were. He had a bunch of royalty checks laying around collecting dust. Pete opened up a few....$40k....80k.....30k...etc.
I guess when you go from being poor to rich that quick and after buying every toy you can think of (and they did), the money stops mattering. Must be nice. I don't think they let it go to their heads (at least back then, I wouldn't know about now) as I remember Mike Mills still coming out to play in the bar league softball games.
Those are great stories...I saw the church you were talking about during my short stay there...Athens must have been a great place to spend the 80s...I enjoyed your post.
I suspect it was like most places of that day- both good and bad. It was certainly a never-never land where you didn't have to "Grow Up". Rent was cheap, everyone was a musician, and of course there was tons of sexdrugsrocknroll. It was easy living and far too easy to get sucked into that lifestyle for far too many years. I think it's harder for a person to adjust to what the rest of the world does for a living coming from that background. Half of my friends from that era are dead now (I'm 52). I had to escape to get on with my life. It was fun but 'great'.......... I don't know.