Remember Every Moment

Last night I saw R.E.M. in concert for the fifth time. In all honesty, I think they played one of the greatest sets that I've ever seen them do. They played for nearly two hours and peppered their peformance with quite a few rarities, as well as several new songs and the usual fare. I invited Angelica to go along with me, as she had given me her extra ticket to Radiohead last year, so I kind of figured that I owed her.

We left my house at around 6:30 and began the long, arduous drive to Irvine. We would have arrived in plenty of time, were it not for some of the most ridiculous traffic I have ever seen on the 5 freeway. I suppose it was my fault for being dumb enough to take the 5 in the first place, but I had no way of knowing it would be THAT bad. It took us nearly two hours to go approximately 20 miles. As it turns out, all of this traffic was for Knott's Berry Farm, and it was a clear shot once we passed Buena Park.

Because of the traffic, we missed the opening act...some band I've never heard of called Five Eight. I listened to some of the stuff on their website and it sounded pretty good. I was looking forward to seeing them, but the folks going to Knott's thwarted that.

We arrived at Verizon Amphitheater at about 8:45, and R.E.M. took the stage at 9:30. As always, I have listed the setlist below, followed by the album on which the song can be found.

1. Get Up - Green
2. Finest Worksong - Document
3. Begin the Begin - Life's Rich Pageant
4. Animal - In Time: The Best of R.E.M.
5. The Outsiders - Around the Sun
6. South Central Rain - Reckoning
7. Aftermath - Around the Sun
8. World Leader Pretend - Green
9. Leaving New York - Around the Sun
10. Bad Day - In Time: The Best of R.E.M.
11. So Fast, So Numb - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
12. I Wanted to Be Wrong - Around the Sun
13. Star 69 - Monster
14. The One I Love - Document
15. Final Straw - Around the Sun
16. Losing My Religion - Out of Time
17. Walk Unafraid - Up
18. Life and How to Live It - Fables of the Reconstruction

Encore:
1. What's the Frequency, Kenneth? - Monster
2. Drive - Automatic for the People
3. Country Feedback - Out of Time
4. Permanent Vacation - Unreleased song from 1980
5. I'm Gonna DJ - New song, not released
6. Man on the Moon - Automatic for the People

Overall, it was an incredible set. There was something from nearly every album, except for Chronic Town, Murmur, Reveal or Dead Letter Office. Particularly noteworthy is the absence of It's the End of the World As We Know It. That's been their closing song for quite some time. There's only one other time I've seen them that they haven't played it, and that was because they only had an eight song set.

It started raining during the middle of the show, which led Michael to perform an impromptu verse of "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" and resulted in us getting a little wet. Somehow it also added to the experience, making it more memorable.

Anyway...since I'm probably the only one who cares about any of this, I'll shut-up now.