You know you’re getting old when all your favorite bands are going into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame (read this). I’m not talking Beatles, Dylan, Stones or even The Boss. I’m talking about R.E.M., my first real adult favorite. I’m talking about Patti Smith, the punk-poet priestess. And the first great hip-hop act, the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
R.E.M. is on the short list of my favorite bands, has been since I first heard Murmur, with its lo-fi jangle and Michael Stipe’s mysterious mumble buried deep in the mix. There was a freshness, something that would come to be called Indie rock, something that existed apart from the New Wave that was fast growing stale.
I finally got to see the band in 1987, on my 25th birthday on its Document tour at the height of the band’s recorded powers. I’ve seen them twice since then — in 2003 and 2004 (pictured) — and have stayed with them through some less-than-stellar albums (Up, for instance, which has some good material on it but not enough).
My argument with those who have been what I think is overly critical of the later material is that the band is being judged against its peak; that’s an impossible standard and is not entirely fair to the music it makes now and has made beginning with Monster, much of it being pretty good. (If Around the Sun had been made by another band, it would have been rated far more highly than it was by the critics — sort of like that Borges story.)
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 
Not that I really care about it, but Van Halen isn\’t a Hall of Famer. Remove Eddie & his band\’s lead singers from the history of rock & nothing changes except somebody else plays the geetar solo in Thriller.