REMembering: from Reynolds Auditorium to Carver Hawkeye
source: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2011/09/21/remembering-from-reynolds-auditorium-to-carver-h...
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A couple of quick memories. I first saw the band live on the Fables tour on December 21, 1985. Winter Solstice, as it turns out. I had recently started working at Z-93 in Winston-Salem and they were playing Reynolds Auditorium on the campus of RJ Reynolds High School. The aud seats just under 1,900, and is one of those venues that can seem quite large, open and spacious. But at that point in their careers REM could have made Wembley Stadium feel like a small club.
They opened with the album’s lead track, ”Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” and could hardly have done a better job establishing a tone. The stage and lighting, like the album they were touring behind, was dark and murky, providing a perfect context for the band’s sound, a soup of neo-Byrdsian jangle, monochromatic Southern gothic atmosphere and Michael Stipe’s trademark vocal obscurity.
They opened with the album’s lead track, ”Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” and could hardly have done a better job establishing a tone. The stage and lighting, like the album they were touring behind, was dark and murky, providing a perfect context for the band’s sound, a soup of neo-Byrdsian jangle, monochromatic Southern gothic atmosphere and Michael Stipe’s trademark vocal obscurity.
