Michael Stipe 4 Marc Jacobs, from Music Slut. i expected something more glamourshotish. photo by Juergen Teller.

file under; photographed; r.e.m.
link / 2 have made it up

as previously promised, here is the mp3 to the song from which Look at My Hands takes its title. this song has a few of my favorite guitar riffs ever. in particular, i love the one that first starts at about 0:31 and repeats several times throughout the song.

right- or ctrl-click to save / 320kbps mp3 / ~9MB

Green Grow the Rushes by R.E.M.
on Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985 / lyrics

extra photograph
Michael Stipe 2002 -->

file under; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.; sung
link / 2 have made it up

Look at My Hands

--
my first concert: R.E.M. Monster tour 1995, near Halloween. the first time i encounter Michael Stipe 'in person', in concert, he's already glammed-up and confident. i've told my parents that i'm staying the night with a friend, which i essentially am. we sneak out. believe it or not, a teacher from our high school picks us up and drives us to what was then the Blockbuster Pavilion, now the Hyundai Pavilion: supposedly the largest amphitheatre in the western half of the United States.

we're relatively close to the stage, maybe 5 rows back. when Michael Stipe first appears, he looks like he's wearing about 2 layers of clothing, max, like maybe 2 t-shirts with a pair of jeans. throughout the concert, swear to fucking god, he must take off like 10 different tops. he never looks like he's wearing more than 1 or 2 shirts at any time, but they keep coming off and keep coming off. his arms get totally bare and he starts to flex, blinking at his Krazy Kat tattoo. still, from someplace, the shirts keep coming off.

he never gets down to a bare chest, never runs out of shirts. Michael Stipe is, at that point, the most desirable thing i have ever seen. an animal so beautiful, i don't realize it's eating me.

the title for this drawing comes from one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, Green Grow the Rushes. mp3 maybe tomorrow.

file under; +; drawn; hero worship; male beauty; r.e.m.
link / 1065 have made it up

outfit 1: 2005, 'i raided Conor Oberst's closet, blow me'
outfit 2: 1999ish, what is that, duct tape? i own a closer crop of this print, and the weirdness of his outfit isn't readily apparent.

outfit 2 photo by Todd Oldham; don't know who shot the first one.

file under; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.
link / 0 have made it up

And, most days, I still kind of do.

Michael Stipe, 2003, photographed by?

One of the best live versions I have ever heard of ANY song by ANYONE is Harborcoat by R.E.M. from the 'Bochum 1985' bootleg. It makes me wish I could be Bill Berry as well, or rather play the drums the way he did back in 1985.

Harborcoat live in Germany, 1985
by R.E.M. / lyrics
album version on Reckoning, 1984

Too bad, isn't it, that the most recent R.E.M. album, Around the Sun, was such crap? Given that it was an overt response to 9/11 and the Iraq war, the impression I got was, 'OK, the war has creatively destroyed R.E.M.' I have high hopes for the next R.E.M. album, though. I found New Adventures in Hi-Fi and Up both subpar (the former, dreadfully so - why in hell does everyone call it their 'return to form'? it's SHIT!). But after those records, they made Reveal, their best album since Murmur.

Beat a Drum
by R.E.M. / lyrics
from Reveal, 2001

file under; hero worship; male beauty; photographed; r.e.m.; sung
link / 8 have made it up