April 28, 1985
BuschStudentCenter,RutgersUniversity,Piscataway,NJ; Support: The Neats
Set: Feeling Gravitys Pull / Harborcoat / Green Grow The Rushes / So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry) / Good Advices / Hyena / Seven Chinese Brothers / Driver 8 / Can’t Get There From Here / Sitting Still / Maps And Legends / Talk About The Passion / Auctioneer (Another Engine) / Old Man Kensey / Pretty Persuasion / When I Was Young / Little America
Encore 1: Have You Ever Seen The Rain? / (Don’t Go Back To)Rockville/ Life And How To Live It; Encore 2: White Tornado / Theme From Two Steps Onward / Gardening At Night / 9-9 / Windout
R.E.M. Timeline. “1985 Concert Chronology.” 24 March 2007 <http://members.iinet.net.au/
~darryl74/1985.html>.
A week after losing my virginity, another hometown friend, Tom Hartman, drives me to Rutgers University to attend my first real rock concert. He picks me up in his Black 1985 Mustang, and we listen to punk and new wave bands—with exotic names like Microdisney, XTC, Style Council, Red Guitars, Smiths, Undertones—all the way up the Turnpike. We pass a bottle of peach schnapps back and forth on the way to Piscataway, we drink bottles of this strong beer called Hacker-Schoor Oktobkerfest. I am fairly blotto by the time my new favorite band, called R.E.M., takes the stage for a free outdoor concert.
There’s about fifty people. I sway on the wet grass and mud on the field. I look around at the college kids in white make-up and long black coats who drink cases of Red White & Blue beer. I wear white jeans, untied docksiders, no socks, and a poncho with a Corona beer logo on it. I throw my poncho away and put on an R.E.M. Murmur shirt.
“Could everyone turn around, look at the sunset?” Michael Stipe, the band’s lead singer, asks us before their encore. “That’s beautiful.”
We turn around. The empurpled sky gets dark and more cloud-filled. The band starts to play a song I don’t recognize at first. Then Stipe starts singing: “Someone told me long ago/there’s a calm before the storm.” It is a cover of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”
The sun set at 7:51 in Piscataway, NJ that night.
